SEMANTICS (REFERENCES)

GROUP ASSIGNMENT

SEMANTICS

REFERENCES

Lecturer: Yulia Ramadhiyanti. M.Pd

Members of the group 4:

v  Adil Riyana

v  Fitria             

v  Kemas Herma

v  Maharani      

v  Siti Teriyani  

v  Veronika Liyanti

v  Yustina Meri

Class                            :           A Afternoon

Semester                      :           IV (Genap)

Study Program            :           English Program Study

INSTITUT KEGURUAN DAN ILMU PENDIDIKAN

PERSATUAN GURU REPUBLIK INDONESIA

PONTIANAK

2014

A referring expression is a piece of language, a noun phrase, that is used in an utterance and is linked to something outside language, some living or dead or imaginary entity or concept or group of entities or concepts. That ‘something’ is the referent, not necessarily physical nor necessarily ‘real.’ A referent is the concrete object or concept that is designated by a word or expression.

We need to distinguish three terms: referring expression, referent, and way of referring. Uncle Fred and that canary are obviously different referring expressions and have different referents when used in utterances. Lake Ontario and a lake are different referring expressions with different kinds of referent; one referent, Lake Ontario, is unique and the referring expression, Lake Ontario, always refers to that referent; the other referring expression, a lake, can have different referents in different utterances. A canary, the canary, this canary and our canary are different referring expressions with possibly the same referent but they refer in different ways.

In the sections that follow we discuss three ways in which referents differ from one another: unique like Lake Ontario versus non-unique like a lake; concrete, such as an apricot, versus abstract, such as an idea; and countable like a bottle, several bottles versus non-countable like milk. Subsequently, we take up different ways of referring and consider such differences as definite and indefinite, generic and nongeneric, specific and non-specific.

We also need to recognize a distinction between primary referring expressions and secondary referring expressions. A primary referring expression is a noun phrase like a dog, your friend, George Adams, the flowers in that basket; they refer directly to their referents. Examples of secondary referring expressions are: he, the big ones, ours, that one. These expressions are headed by pronouns and they refer indirectly; their referents can only be determined from primary referring expressions in the context in which they are used. Secondary referring expressions are the topic of section 4.5, Anaphora. As you might expect, most of this chapter is about primary referring expressions.

7.1 Referents and referring expressions

We begin with an attempt to clear up some possible sources of confusion:

1a Howard is your cousin, isn’t he?

1b Howard is your cousin’s name, isn’t it?

1 A referring expression is not a referent; the phrase a carrot can be a referring expression but it is not a carrot. This may seem obvious, but throughout history people have failed to distinguish between lexemes and what lexemes denote.

2 There is no natural connection between referring expression and referent. Some ancient philosophers and ancient and medieval etymologists held the opinion that there is—or once was—a natural relation between symbol and what is symbolized. But this is simply not so.

3 The existence of a referring expression does not guarantee the existence of a referent in the physical-social world that we inhabit. We can easily use language to create expressions with fictitious referents such as the skyscrapers of Antarctica, the present Emperor of Texas, the pain-reliever recommended by 91 percent of all doctors. In fact, we need such expressions in order to deny the existence of any physical referent.

4 Two or more referring expressions may have the same referent, but they do not necessarily have the same meaning.

Robert Blair

the husband of Mildred Stone Blair

the father of Patrick and Robin Blair

the city editor of the Morgantown Daily Enquirer, etc.

All these and no doubt other referring expressions may identify the same individual, but they do not mean the same.

7.2 Extension and intension

The extension of a lexeme is the set of entities which it denotes. The extension of dog includes all collies, dalmatians, dachshunds, mongrels, etc., etc. that have ever lived or will ever live and every fictitious creature that is accepted as being a dog. All the things that can be denoted by the noun lake are the extension of that lexeme. The lexeme Lake Ontario has a single item in its extension, and the Dead Sea Scrolls has a single collection of items as its extension.

The intension of any lexeme is the set of properties shared by all members of the extension. Thus everything that is denoted by lake must be a body of water of a certain size surrounded by land.

Extension has to do with reference, but reference, as we know, is not all of meaning: the lexemes violin and fiddle have the same extension. Extension can change while intension remains the same. The extension of the referring expression the capital of Australia is a single item, the city of Canberra. The intension of the same term is ‘city in which the national government of Australia is located.’ If the capital should be moved at some future time to another city, the extension changes but the intension remains the same. The Mayor of Chicago or the Prime Minister of Great Britain always has the same intension but the extension of each of these changes from time to time.

In the discussion hyponymy in Chapter 5 we noted that the denotation of a hyponym like collie is included in the denotation of its superordinate, dog, but the meaning of the superordinate is included in the meaning of the hyponym. We can now restate this with the terms ‘intension’ and ‘extension’: the extension of the hyponym is included in the extension of the superordinate (all collies are dogs) but the intension of the superordinate is included in the intension of the hyponym (the characteristic of being a dog is part of the characteristic of being a collie).

7.3 Some different kinds of referents

The entities that we refer to are of different kinds and a language may have ways of recognizing different kinds of referents, different reference classes. Three kinds of differences in referents are: concrete and abstract; unique and non-unique; countable and non-countable. To some extent the differences are in the referents and to some extent in the way English, or any language, treats the referents.

            7.3.1 Unique and non-unique referents

2a We swam in Lake Ontario.

2b We swam in a lake.

Both of the underlined noun phrases are referring expressions. They might have the same referent, but a lake can refer to various bodies of water whereas Lake Ontario always refers to the same body of water. A referring expression has fixed reference when the referent is a unique entity or unique set of entities, like Lake Ontario, Japan, Boris Yeltsin, the Dead Sea Scrolls, the Philippine Islands. A referring expression has variable reference if its referent may be different every time it is used: that dog, my uncle, several people, a lake, the results. When a referring expression has fixed reference, knowledge of it is part of one’s general knowledge; we either know what the Dead Sea Scrolls are or we don’t know (though of course we may learn what they are from the context in which the Dead Sea Scrolls occurs). Recognizing the referent when the expression has variable reference is a matter of specific knowledge; one has to identify that dog, my uncle or the results from the physical or linguistic context, including knowledge of the speaker, perhaps.

7.3.2 Concrete and abstract referents

Lexemes such as dog, door, leaf, stone denote concrete objects, which can be seen or touched; the objects denoted by lexemes like idea, problem, reason, knowledge are abstract; they cannot be perceived directly through the senses. This is not a linguistic difference in itself; there is nothing in the pronunciation of raisin and reason, for instance, that indicates which lexeme has an abstract denotation and which has a concrete one. But lexemes with different kinds of denotation generally occur in different kinds of utterances and then may have different effects on other lexemes. Consider these contrasts:

the key to the front door         the key to success

a bright light                            a bright future

Here the lexemes key and bright have literal meanings when they occur in concrete contexts and figurative meanings in abstract contexts.

7.3.3 Countable and non-countable referents

Noun phrases in English, as in other European languages, are either countable or non-countable. Both countable and non-countable noun phrases may be concrete or abstract. Concrete countable expressions refer to items that are separate from one another, like apples, coins, pens and toothbrushes, which can ordinarily be counted one by one. Abstract countable phrases have such nouns as idea, problem, suggestion. Non-countable phrases, if their references are concrete, have three kinds of reference. Some refer to continuous substances, such as apple sauce, ink, mud and toothpaste, which do not consist of natural discrete parts. Others name substances that consist of numerous particles not worth counting, like sand and rice. A few non-countables are like furniture, jewelry, luggage, collections whose parts have quite different names. Then there are abstract non-countables such as advice, information, beauty, which are treated, in the English language, as indivisible.

Countable noun phrases show a distinction between singular and plural while non-countable noun phrases do not:

an apple, a coin, a pen, a toothbrush

some apples, some coins, some pens, some toothbrushes

some apple sauce, some mud, some ink, some toothpaste

The singular countable noun phrase must have an overt specifier; the plural countable and non-countable may have a zero specifier; the specifier some can be replaced by zero in the last two lines above. We do not say that there are countable and non-countable nouns because, as Allan (1986) has shown, nouns display a range of ‘countability.’ At one extreme there are nouns that occur almost exclusively in countable expressions: coin, pen and toothbrush are good examples. Then there are nouns which in countable phrases indicate (what are linguistically treated as) items and in non-countable phrases denote (what are treated as) substances.

an apple, some eggs                some apple, some egg on the plate

a hair, a piece of string,           hair, string, fire, light

a fire, some lights

These distinctions—concrete/abstract, unique/non-unique, countable/ non-countable—seem to reflect differences that exist in nature, but only partly so. All languages have reference classes which may be ‘natural’ to some degree. We take it for granted that countable nouns should be singular or plural, but nature does not have two categories, a category consisting of one single item and another category that consists of all numbers from two to infinity.

7.4 Different ways of referring

There are three kinds of referring expressions: proper names, which have unique reference like Lake Ontario or Barbara Collins; pronouns such as she, he, they, which we discuss below in Section 7.6, Anaphora; and noun phrases that have nouns with variable reference as the head, preceded by a determiner and possibly followed by one or more complements:

determiner       head                complement                 complement

a                      cat

that                  broom             in the corner

your                 home

some                questions          to be answered

the                   plate               that is broken              that you mentioned

Some complements can be reduced and become modifiers in prehead position.

The demonstrative determiners this and that (plural these and those) indicate, respectively, that the referent is near or not near the speaker’s location.

3 We’ll use this table and those chairs (over there).

They also identify present or future events versus past events.

4a We’re going to see ‘Madame Butterfly’ tonight.

     We’ve been waiting for this performance for a long time.

4b We saw ‘Rigoletto’ last month. That was a great performance.

Some determiners, quantifiers, express the amount or quantity of the entity denoted by the noun. Cardinal numbers are specific quantifiers: one day, five people, 76 trombones. General quantifiers are the ones discussed in Section 5.10: some eggs, a little milk, a few problems, much traffic, several accidents. If a countable noun phrase expresses a total, it may be collective (all donkeys) or distributive (every donkey).

Demonstrative, possessive and quantifying reference intersects with three other kinds of reference, generic, specific and definite. These last three require more extensive discussion and illustration.

7.4.1 Generic and non-generic reference

What seems to be the same referring expression may have quite different kinds of reference, as in the following sentences.

5a A dog makes a fine pet.

5b Dogs make fine pets.

6a A dog is lying in the middle of the street.

6b Dogs are lying in the middle of the street.

In sentence 5a a dog has generic reference; the sentence is not about a particular dog but about the class of dogs as a whole, dogs in general. We can express the same meaning with sentence 5b, which is also a generalization. You may agree with these sentences without committing yourself to the belief that all dogs make fine pets. Neither sentence is an answer to a question ‘Which dog(s)?’, for the question is not relevant. A dog in sentence 6a does not have generic reference; it clearly does not refer to the whole class of dogs, and a change to Dogs are lying in the middle of the street (6b) produces quite a different message. Sentences 5a and 5b are equivalent; 6a and 6b are not. Sentences 6a and 6b do not answer the question ‘Which dog(s)?’ but the question is relevant. (Some semanticists would prefer to say that reference can only be specific. Then, rather than ‘generic reference,’ they would prefer the term ‘generic use of referring expressions.’)

Generic reference in English can be expressed in several ways which are more or less interchangeable.

7a The dog was man’s first domestic animal.=

7b Dogs were man’s first domestic animal.

We know that these have generic reference because the change from singular to plural, or vice versa, does not make a difference. (Note that man also has generic reference here; it is equivalent to ‘humans,’ a general class.)

7.4.2 Specific and non-specific reference

8a We have a dog.

8b We’d like to have a dog.

9a I’m sure there are answers to all your questions.

9b I trust we can find answers to all your questions.

In sentence 8a, above, a dog refers to a specific dog. The reference is to some particular animal, and we could insert the word certain before dog without changing the meaning. In sentence 8b a dog would ordinarily be interpreted as non-specific in reference—‘some dog, not any particular one’—though of course it could mean ‘a certain, particular dog.’ Similarly, answers has specific reference in 9a but not in 9b. Whether a referring expression has a specific referent or not cannot be determined from the expression itself; it is determined by the larger context.

7.4.3 Definite and indefinite reference

Demonstrative, possessive, and quantitative determiners identify a referent in a fairly precise way. The definite determiner the occurs in a referring expression when the speaker assumes that the hearer can identity the referent (I’ve got the tickets) or when identification is made part of the referring expression (I’ve got the tickets that you wanted). Indefinite determiners, a(n), some and zero, indicate that the referent is part of a larger entity.

When the referring expression is definite, the speaker assumes that the referent can be identified by the addressee for one of four reasons. If none of these reasons applies, the speaker provides the identification.

1 The speaker assumes that the hearer can identify the referent from the physical-social context—a form of deixis (Section 7.5).

10 Take the cups off the table and put them in the cabinet.

2 The speaker assumes that the addressee can make the necessary implicature to relate a new reference to a previous one.

11 This was the site of the old Stanwick Theater. The stage was over here and the lobby was over there.

3 The reference is fixed and therefore presumably part of the addressee’s general knowledge, like Lake Ontario. A referring expression with fixed reference is always definite. (A referring expression with variable reference may be definite or indefinite.) Some fixed-reference expressions contain the determiner the, others do not. In a few instances expressions with and without the word the are equivalent: the Argentine=Argentina, the Ukraine has become Ukraine. More frequently, presence and absence of the with a name yields two different referring expressions: the

Mississippi is not the same as Mississippi. Family names used in the plural occur with the—the Johnsons; other personal names do not.

4 The referent, while not unique in the way that Lake Ontario is unique, has a unique or nearly unique position in the more limited world of the speaker and addressee.

12 Careful! You might wake the baby.

13 Have you received the reports from the doctor?

When the referring expression is indefinite, the hearer has to make a choice from the extension of the noun—that is, has to decide which of all possible referents—what part of the extension—is intended. Frequently in a discourse a topic is introduced as an indefinite referring expression (new information) and subsequent mention of the topic is made with one or more definite referring expressions (given information). A definite noun phrase presupposes the existence of its referent and an indefinite noun phrase presupposes the existence of more than its referent, a class of referents to which this one belongs.

7.5 Deixis

In linguistics, deixis (/ˈdaɪksɪs/) refers to words and phrases that cannot be fully understood without additional contextual information. The most primitive way of referring to something is to point to it. Of course, this kind of reference can only be accomplished with people and concrete things in one’s immediate environment. On a less primitive level, every language has deictic words which ‘point’ to ‘things’ in the physical-social context of the speaker and addressee(s) and whose referents can only be determined by knowing the context in which they are used. For example, if we should encounter a message like the following, on paper or on an electronic recording

15   I was disappointed that you didn’t come this afternoon.

      I hope you’ll join us tomorrow.

we wouldn’t be able to identify the referents of I, you, us, this afternoon or tomorrow though we understand how the first three and the last two are related to one another; because we know English, we know, for example, that the referent of I is part of the referent of us and we know the time sequence of this afternoon and tomorrow. The meaning of any lexeme depends to some extent on the context in which it occurs, but deictic elements can only be interpreted through their contexts.

English examples of deictic words include (1) pronouns I, you and we, which ‘point’ to the participants in any speech act; he, she, it and they, when they are used to refer to others in the environment; (2) locative expressions here and there, which designate space close to the speaker or farther away; this/these and that/those, which respectively indicate entities close to or removed from the speaker; and (3) temporal expressions: now, then, yesterday, today, tomorrow, last week, next month and so on. These last are all relative to the time when they are used.

Words which can be deictic are not always so. Today and tomorrow are deictic in “We can’t go today, but tomorrow will be fine.” They are not deictic in “Today’s costly apartment buildings may be tomorrow’s slums.” Yet the relation between the two words is analogous. Similarly, here and there are deictic in “James hasn’t been here yet. Is he there with you?” They are not deictic in “The children were running here and there.” The pronoun you is not deictic when used with the meaning ‘one; any person or persons,’ as in “You can lead a horse to water but you can’t make him drink.” Similarly, they has a generalized, non-deictic reference to people in general, especially those in charge of some endeavor or other, as in “They say that an ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure,” “They don’t make good cider the way they used to.”

7.6 Anaphora

In linguistics, anaphora /əˈnæfərə/ is the use of an expression the interpretation of which depends upon another expression in context (its antecedent or postcedent). In the sentence Sally arrived, but nobody saw her, the pronoun her is anaphoric, referring back to Sally. The term anaphora denotes the act of referring, whereas the word that actually does the referring is sometimes called an anaphor (or cataphor). Usually, an anaphoric expression is a proform or some other kind of deictic expression.^[1]Some deictic words can also be used as anaphoric items. Anaphora is a kind of secondary reference in which a previous reference is recalled by use of special function words or equivalent lexemes. For example, in

16a Jack and Jill tried to lift the box and push it onto the top shelf.

16b however, (he, she, it, they) slipped and fell to the floor

the choice of he, she, it or they serves as a link to some referring expression that has occurred recently in the discourse—in this illustration to a referring expression in the previous sentence. Every language has special function words which repeat a reference without actually repeating the referring expression or any part of it. Each of the four pronouns illustrated here has a particular scope of reference: they is tied to the last plural referring expression, it to the last singular non-personal expression, she to the last singular feminine expression, and he to the last singular masculine expression.

The difference between deixis and anaphora is fairly plain, even though some function words can be used in both functions. If someone says, for example, “She wants to leave now” and nods in Lucy’s direction and/or Lucy is the only person present to whom she can refer, she is used deictically. On the other hand, in the utterance “Lucy has been here for over an hour and she wants to leave now,” the word is used anaphorically.

It is important to see that an anaphoric word refers to the referent of the primary referring expression, not to that expression itself.

17a I asked the secretary to telephone Mr Letterman.

17b _____ had Mr Letterman on the line in a few minutes.

18a We watched the sheep moving slowly across the pasture.

18b _____ seemed to be in no hurry at all.

Should the blank in 17b be filled with he or she? We have to know the referent of the secretary in order to decide; that information is not in the referring expression itself. Occupational nouns such as secretary, teacher, cashier, doctor, which don’t indicate gender, are more common in modern English than pairs like actor/actress, waiter/waitress, which make a gender distinction.

What pronoun fills the blank in 18b? Sentence 18a doesn’t tell us whether it was one sheep or more than one, but the pronoun that fills the following blank has to give this information, so if the sheep has plural reference, the anaphoric word is they. And if there is only one animal in question, the blank may be filled with it or he or she depending on the sex of the sheep and its importance to the person speaking or writing. Of course, countable nouns like sheep which can be singular or plural with no overt indication of number are rather uncommon in English, but the choice among he, she, and it referring to a sheep reflects a common fact of English usage: the pronoun for referring to an animal is the same as the pronoun for referring to a lifeless object, it, except that a pet-owner or a farmer, who cares about the animal, can refer to a pet or farm animal with the same distinction as is made in referring to people (Halliday and Hasan 1976:47). Thus the grammatical system of English makes distinctions that the lexicon often ignores.

English is said to have ‘natural’ gender, which means principally that we use he, she or it in secondary reference, he referring to males, she to females and it for inanimate entities. But this distinction is not upheld rigidly; she can refer to an inanimate object, it to a baby or an animal, regardless of sex. In other words, it is the referent

and, to some extent, the speaker’s attitude toward the referent that determines the choice of pronoun, not the noun that would be used in a referring expression.

On the other hand, numerous languages have ‘grammatical gender’ so that all nouns belong to one gender class or another and other parts of a noun phrase must ‘agree’ with the noun. In Spanish, for example, we have

esta pared blanca                     this white wall

esta camisa blanca                   this white shirt

este papel blanco                     this white paper

este sombrero blanco               this white hat

Pared and camisa belong to the ‘feminine’ gender, a class that contains some nouns that denote females; papel and sombrero belong to the ‘masculine’ gender, a class which has some nouns that denote males.

The words for ‘this’ (esta or este) and ‘white’ (blanca or blanco) must show gender agreement with the noun that heads the phrase in which they occur. An anaphoric phrase can be created by omitting the noun; thus esta blanca and este blanco both correspond to English ‘this white one’ but they are not equivalent. The choice of esta blanca or este blanco depends, not on the referent itself but on the noun that occurs in the referring expression.

Somewhat similar, in other languages, is the use of classifiers. Nouns in Japanese, for instance, belong to different classes. When a noun is modified by a number, a classifier is required with the number, and different noun classes require different classifiers. Examples:

kippu san-mai             three stamps

tegami san-mai            three letters

enpitsu san-bon           three pencils

sereri san-bon  three stalks of celery

Mai is the classifier that accompanies certain nouns, some of which denote flat, thin objects like stamps and letters. Hon (or bon) is the classifier for another group of nouns, some of which denote cylindrical objects like pencils and stalks of celery. The sentences San-mai ga arimasu and San-bon ga arimasu can both be translated “There are three”; the classifier is determined by the noun, even when the noun is not there.

19a There was a strange painting on the wall.

19b I wondered where (the painting/the picture/this work of art/ it) had come from

The four underlined expressions in 19b are co-referential with the underlined expression in 19a. These four are different kinds of anaphoric expressions. As frequently happens in a discourse, the first referring expression, a strange painting, is indefinite and each of the anaphoric expressions is definite. The first three of these are examples of lexical anaphora, achieved by repeating the same noun head (painting), or by using a noun which, in the context, is equivalent in reference, a synonym (picture), or by using a term which has a more inclusive reference, a superordinate (work of art) (Halliday and Hasan 1976:278).

7.7 Shifts in ways of referring

Sentences 19a and 19b were partly like this: There was a strange painting on the wall. I wondered where (the painting/ it) had come from. Here the first referring expression is indefinite but specific. In the next sentence the co-referential expression is definite. If the first referring expression is indefinite and not specific, a following coreferential expression may be definite or indefinite.

29a If we were going to buy a car, we would buy it at Hudson’s.

29b If we were going to buy a car, we would buy one at Hudson’s.

A speaker may shift from specific reference to generic reference.

30a We didn’t buy a new car because they cost too much now.

Note the vagueness here. Does they mean ‘cars’ or ‘new cars’? Prosody could make one meaning clear.

30b We didn’t buy a NEW car because they cost too much.

Here they must be equivalent to ‘new cars.’

31 Every woman who has a husband should treat him with respect.

Does him have definite reference here? That depends on how we define ‘definite.’ The expression every woman who has a husband has distributed reference and him, we may say, acquires distributed reference by association. Thus it is equivalent to ‘the husband that every woman who has a husband has,’ which McCawley (1988:333) calls an ‘identity of sense.’

7.8 Referential ambiguity

Misunderstandings occur when a speaker has one referent in mindfor a definite expression like George or the papers, and the addressee is thinking of a different George or some other papers. No doubt we have all experienced, and been troubled by, this kind of problem in reference. We can see other instances of referential ambiguity that are due to the nature of referring expressions, the vagueness that pieces of language necessarily have. Referential ambiguity occurs when

1 an indefinite referring expression may be specific or not;

32 I wanted to buy a newspaper.

Here a newspaper may refer to a specific newspaper or some newspaper, any newspaper. The ambiguity disappears if we add, on the one hand, but I couldn’t find it or, on the other hand, but I couldn’t find one.

2 anaphora is unclear because a personal pronoun, he, she, it or they, can be linked to either of two referring expressions:

33 Jack told Ralph that a visitor was waiting for him.

3 the pronoun you is used generically or specifically:

34 If you want to get ahead, you have to work hard.

(Is you the addressee or is this sentence a general platitude?)

4 a noun phrase with every can have distributed reference or collected reference:

35 I’m buying a drink for everybody here.

(One drink for all or one drink for each?)