U TTERANCE, S ENTENCE, P ROPOSITION

REVIEW State true or false! 1. Semantics is a part of Linguistics 2. All meaning is conceptually acceptable for all people 3. Meaning can be interpreted from the word, phrases, and / or signs.

S IGNIFIER AND S IGNIFIED ( SAUSSURE ’ S C ONCEPT ) Signifier are the words, phrases, signs and symbols which need to be interpreted to grab the signified concept. A context is determining the signified concept. Look at these examples: 1. A thief comes to the cashier and says “open it! ” 2. A husband gives something to his wife and says “open it”

Questions : 1. What is the signifier from the example above? 2. What are the signified concept from the examples above? 3. What element that determine the signified concept ?

UTTERANCE… An utterance is the use of any piece of language by a particular speaker on a particular situation. It can be in the form of a sequence of sentences, a single clause, a single phrase, or just a single word. Examples: Tina visits her niece and meets a new friend Tina :”Hi” Toni was sweeping the floor when a hot frying pan was fallen Toni: “Ouch”

SENTENCE A sentence is a grammatically complete string of words expressing a (partial) complete thought. A sentence can include words grouped meaningfully to express a statement, question, exclamation, request or command. Example : After cooking, mother speaks to father softly Mother : “I am tired”

WHAT ABOUT PROPOSITION ? It is an active declarative sentence either it s true or false. e.g. The sun rises everyday. William Shakespeare died in 1945.

H OW TO IDENTIFY … Look at the characteristics of the signifier. Identify the type of the signifier Identify the signified concept based on the context

L ETS P RACTICE … Open page 25 and do the exercises no 2, 3 and 4. No. 2 Is semantics concerned only with complete sentences? Explain. No. 3 Indicate the conventions used in the text to distinguish a sentence from an utterance. Give an illustration of each.

No.4 Indicate whether each of the following sentence pairs expresses the same or different propositions. a. Mary read the book / The book was read by Mary d. The chef cooked the meal / The chef had the meal cooked e. Hondas are easy to fix / It’s easy to fix Hondas 9