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Semantics: Lecture 3 & 4: Reference, Sense and Deixis

1) Reference refers to the relationship between language and real world entities, while sense refers to the meaning and relationships between expressions in a language. 2) Deixis involves using language to point to entities in the context of an utterance, including personal pronouns, spatial terms, temporal terms, and discourse elements. 3) Anaphora is a type of reference where a pronoun recalls an entity mentioned previously in the discourse.

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36 views

Semantics: Lecture 3 & 4: Reference, Sense and Deixis

1) Reference refers to the relationship between language and real world entities, while sense refers to the meaning and relationships between expressions in a language. 2) Deixis involves using language to point to entities in the context of an utterance, including personal pronouns, spatial terms, temporal terms, and discourse elements. 3) Anaphora is a type of reference where a pronoun recalls an entity mentioned previously in the discourse.

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anik
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SEMANTICS

LECTURE 3 & 4: REFERENCE, SENSE AND DEIXIS

M. S. Al Fajri, M.A
STKIP Qomaruddin
alfajricorpus.blogspot.co.id
REFERENCE
• Reference is a relationship between parts of a language and things outside the language ()

• The Present President of Indonesia

• The National Monument


SENSE
• The SENSE of an expression is its place in a system of semantic relationships with other
expressions in the language (Hurford, 2007)

• Almost, nearly
• Likely, probably

• Every expression that has meaning has sense, but not every expression has reference
REFERRING EXPRESSION
• Any expression used in an utterance to refer to something outside language (including
imaginary entity).

• Harry Potter
CONSTANT VS.VARIABLE REFERENCE
• The President of Indonesia
• The Big Ben
• The Sun
• The Cat
• The Pacific Ocean
• I,You, She

Note: two different expressions can have the same referent


EXTENSION
Basically, it is a set of physical objects

The house
DEIXIS
• “Deixis is the marking of the orientation or position of entities and events with respect
to certain points of reference” (Finegan, 2004). Simply speaking, it means pointing via
language (Yule, 1995)

• I will put this pen here


KINDS OF DEIXIS
• Personal deixis (I, she, you, me, us, my, our)
• Spatial deixis (here, there, this, that)
• Temporal deixis (now, yesterday, tomorrow, then)
• Discourse deixis

Example: I’ll put this pen here tomorrow

• Deixis is tied to the speakers’ context. The speakers’ location or time is most
typically the deictic centre.
MORE EXAMPLE
• I think he is going to be here
• Our family will visit Bali next week
• You can put the flower on that table

Proximal - an indication of something that is relatively close to the speaker


Distal – indicating a location that is some distance from the speaker
DISCOURSE DEIXIS
• used in reference not to apart of the context of utterance (such as its
time, place, or speaker),but rather to apart of the utterance itself, or a
proposition evoked by the utterance itself.

• A:You stole the cash. B: That’s a lie


ANAPHORA
• Anaphora is a kind of secondary reference (typically pronoun) in which a
previous reference is recalled by use of special function words or
equivalent lexemes (Kreidler, 1998).

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

Antecedent Anaphor
There was a strange painting on the wall. I wonder where the painting/the
picture/this work of art/ had come from.

Lexical Anaphora
REFERENCE & FURTHER READING
• Kreidler, Charles W. (1998). Introducing English Semantics. London: Routledge.
• Hurford, James R et al. (2007). Semantics: A Course Book. Cambridge: Cambridge University
Press.
• Birner, B. J. (2013). Introduction to pragmatics. West Sussex: Wiley-Blackwell.
• Yule, G. (1996). Pragmatics. Oxford: Oxford University Press
• Saeed, John I. (2009). Semantics. Third Edition. London: Wiley-Blackwell
• Finegan, E. (2004). Language: Its structure and use. Boston, Mass: Thomson Wadsworth.

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