particular person on a particular occasion to pick out a particular tree

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UNIT 5 PREDICATES
Entry requirements REFERENCE and SENSE (Unit 3) and REFERRING EXPRESSIONS (Unit 4).
If you feel you understand these notions, take the entry test below. If not,
review Units 3 and 4.
Entry test (1) Which of the following is the phrase a tall tree? Circle your answer.
(a) a referring expression
(b) not a referring expression
(c) sometimes a referring expression and sometimes not, depending on
context and circumstances of use
(2) Is the following statement correct (Yes) or incorrect (No)? 
Whether a sentence contains any referring expressions or not 
depends on the time and place at which the sentence occurs.
Yes / No
(3) Which of the following sentences is equative? Circle your answer.
(a) Mahmoud is an Egyptian
(b) I was telling you about Mahmoud the Egyptian
(c) Mahmoud is the Egyptian I was telling you about
(d) Mahmoud is a genius
(4) Does if have sense in the same way that dog has sense?
Yes / No
(5) Do the expressions big and large have essentially the same 
sense in the following sentences?
I live in a big house
I live in a large house
Yes / No
(6) Circle those of the following words which can be referring 
expressions (in normal everyday English).
John, below, Venus, swims, round, beautiful, under, went.
Feedback
(1)(c) (2) No: replace ‘sentence’ by ‘utterance’ to get a correct statement.
(3) (c) (4) No (5) Yes (6) John, Venus
If you have scored less than 5 correct out of 6, you should review the relevant
unit. If you have scored at least 5 correct out of 6, continue to the introduction.
Introduction We start by examining the semantic structure of simple declarative sentences,
such as My dog bit the postman or Mrs Wraith is waiting for the downtown

PA RT  T WO
From reference . . .
46
bus. Typically such sentences contain one or more referring expressions, plus
some other words that do not form part of any of the referring expressions.
It is on these other words that we shall now concentrate.
Practice In the following sentences, delete the referring expressions and write down
the remainder to the right of the example. We have done the 
first one for you.
(1) My dog bit the postman
bit
(2) Mrs Wraith is writing the Mayor’s speech
(3) Cairo is in Africa
(4) Edinburgh is between Aberdeen and York
(5) This place stinks
(6) John’s car is red
(7) Einstein was a genius
Feedback
(2) Mrs Wraith is writing the Mayor’s speech
is writing
(3) Cairo is in Africa
is in
(4) Edinburgh is between Aberdeen and York
is between, and
(5) This place stinks
stinks
(6) John’s car is red
is red
(7) Einstein was a genius
was a genius
Comment The ‘remainders’ written in the right-hand column are quite a varied set.
But in each case it is possible to discern one word (or part of a word) which
‘carries more meaning’ than the others. For instance, write in example
(2) carries more speci
fic information than is and the suffix -ing. If one strips
away such less meaningful elements, one is left with a sequence of words,
which, though ungrammatical and inelegant, can still be understood as
expressing a proposition. The result is a kind of ‘Tarzan jungle talk’,
e.g. Boy bad for The boy is bad, or Woman write speech for The woman is

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