Semantics and Pragmatics

2019\2020
Second Semester
Lecture 4

Hurford et al. (chapter 3)

Sense and Reference

 Sense and reference
• In talking of sense, we deal with relationships
inside the language;
• In talking of reference we deal with the
relationships between language and the world.
• By means of reference, a speaker indicates which
things in the world (including persons) are being
talked about.
• My son is in the beech tree.
• My son = identifies person
• The beech tree = identifies thing
 Reference
• “On this page and the following ones, we cover sense and
reference.”
• The phrase this page is a part of the English language. The phrase,
when it was used in the paragraph above, actually identified a
particular sheet of paper, something that you could take between
your finger and thumb, a little part of the world.
• The actual page, the sheet of paper, is not a part of the English
language, since languages are not made of pieces of paper.
• So we have two things: the English expression this page (part of the
language) and the thing you could hold between your finger and
thumb (part of the world).
• We call the relationship between them ‘reference’. That is, in the
above paragraph, this page refers to the physical sheet
 Variable reference
Touch your left ear.
(1) Write down the last three words in the above instruction.
..............................................................................................................
(2) Is the thing you touched a part of the world or a part of the
language?
..............................................................................................................
(3) Is your answer to (1) a part of the language?
(4) If you say to your mother ‘There’s a wasp on your left ear’, does ‘your left
ear’ here refer to the thing you touched in response to a previous
question?

The same expression can, in some cases, be used to refer to different things.
There are as many potential referents for the phrase your left ear as there
are people in the world with left ears. Likewise, there are as many
potential referents for the phrase this page as there are pages in the
world. Thus some (in fact very many) expressions in a language can have
variable reference.
 Variable reference
(1) What would be the referent of the phrase the present President of the
United States used:
(a) in 2007?....................................................................................................
(b) in 2018?....................................................................................................
(2) Therefore we can say that the phrase the present President of the United
States has
.........................................................................................................................
(3) What would be the referent of the phrase the President of the United
States used in a conversation about:
(a) United States politics in 2007? ...............................................................
(b) United States politics in 1996? ...............................................................
(4) In the light of the preceding questions, does the reference of an
expression vary according to (a) the circumstances (time, place, etc.) in
which the expression is used, or (b) the topic of the conversation in which
the expression is used, or (c) both (a) and (b)? Circle your choice.
 Constant reference
• There are cases of expressions which in normal everyday
conversation never refer to different things, i.e. in most
everyday situations that one can envisage, have constant
reference.
• Imagine two different everyday situations in which separate
couples are having separate conversations about what they
refer to with the phrase the moon.
• (1) Would they be talking about the same object (i.e. does
the moon normally have constant reference)?
• (2) Does The People’s Republic of China normally have
constant reference?
• (3) Does Angola normally have constant reference?
• (4) Does Halley’s Comet normally have constant reference?
 Two expressions – one referent
• Two different expressions can have the same
referent. The classic example is the Morning Star
and the Evening Star, both of which normally
refer to the planet Venus.
• (1) In a conversation about the United States of
America in 2007 can the President and the Leader
of the Republican Party have the same referent?
• (2) If we are talking about a situation in which
John is standing alone in the corner, can John
have the same referent as the person in the
corner?
 Sense
• The SENSE of an expression is its place in a system of
semantic relationships with other expressions in the
language. The first of these semantic relationships that we
will mention is sameness of meaning, an intuitive concept
which we will illustrate by example.
• Say whether the pairs of words in parentheses in the
sentences below have approximately the same meaning (S)
or a different meaning (D).
• 1) I (almost / nearly) fell over.
• 2) It is (likely / probable) that Raymond will be here
tomorrow.
• 3) He painted the fireplace (blue / green)
• 4) I’ll see you on (Wednesday / Thursday).
 Sense
• We can talk about the sense, not only of words, but
also of longer expressions such as phrases and
sentences.
• Practice Intuitively, do the following pairs mean the
same or nearly the same thing?
• (1) Rupert took off his jacket
• Rupert took his jacket off
• (2) Harriet wrote the answer down
• Harriet wrote down the answer
• (3) Bachelors prefer redheads
• Girls with red hair are preferred by unmarried men
 One word = more than one sense
• Does the word bank have the same meaning in the following
sentence pairs?
• (1) I have an account at the Bank of Scotland
• We steered the raft to the other bank of the river
• (2) The DC-10 banked sharply to avoid a crash
• I banked the furnace up with coke last night.

• Anything spelled with the same sequence of letters and

pronounced with the same sequence of phonemes (distinctive
sounds) in a standard dialect as being the same word. Thus, for
example, we treat bank in the practice above as a single word with
many senses.
• Later, this will be discussed in terms of HOMONYMY and POLYSEMY
 One sentence – different senses
• (1) Write down two sentences bringing out
clearly the two different meanings of The chicken
is ready to eat.
• ...........................................................................
• (2) Write down two sentences bringing out
clearly the two different senses of He greeted the
girl with a smile.
• ..........................................................................
• (3) Do likewise for He turned over the field.
• ..........................................................................
 Sense but no reference
• Rule Every expression that has meaning has sense, but not every
expression has reference.
• Do the following words refer to things in the world?
• (1) almost Yes / No
• (2) probable Yes / No
• (3) and Yes / No
• (4) if Yes / No
• (5) above Yes / No

• When you look up the meaning of a word in a dictionary, what do

you find there, its referent, or an expression with the same sense?
• (2) Is a dictionary full of words or full of things, like a box or a sack?
 Proposition and sense
• There is something semantically complete about a
proposition, as opposed to the sense of a phrase or
single word. One might say, roughly, that a proposition
corresponds to a complete independent thought.
Are the senses of the following expressions propositions?
• (1) Johnny has got a new teacher
• (2) A new teacher (not understood as an elliptical
sentence-fragment)
• (3) Johnny (not understood as an elliptical sentence-
fragment)
• (4) This is the house that Jack built
 Same proposition?
• Perfect translation between languages is possible,
essentially the same sense can be said to belong to
expressions in different languages.

• (1) Do ‫ لعب برجر كرة قدم هذا الصباح‬and Berger played

footbal this morning express the same proposition?
• (2) Do the two sentences in (1) have the same sense?
• (3) Do the expressions ce matin and this morning have
the same sense?
• (4) Does ‫ أعزب‬have the same sense as an unmarried
man?
• Just as one can talk of the same sense in different
languages, so one can talk of expressions in different
dialects of one language as having the same sense.

• (1) Do pavement in British English and sidewalk in

American English have the same sense?
• (2) Do pal and chum have the same sense?
• (3) Can expressions with entirely different social
connotations have the same sense? For example, can the
following have the same sense?
• People walking in close proximity
• People walking near each other
• Both referring and uttering are acts performed by particular speakers on particular
occasions.

• Imagine that a friend of yours says to you, ‘John is putting on weight these days’,
and imagine that a friend of ours happens to utter the same sentence to us one
day.
• (1) Would this be a case of one utterance or two?
• ..........................................................................................................................
• (2) Would the John referred to be the same John or two different Johns?
• ..........................................................................................................................

• In the two separate utterances above, there are two separate acts of referring. In
fact, most utterances contain, or are accompanied by, one or more acts of
referring. An act of referring is the picking out of a particular referent by a speaker
in the course of a particular utterance.
• What is intended by the word mean, meaning, etc. in
the following examples, reference (R) or sense (S)?
• (1) When Helen mentioned ‘the fruit cake’, she meant
that rock-hard object in the middle of the table R / S
• (2) When Albert talks about ‘his former friend’ he
means me
• (3) Daddy, what does unique mean?
• (4) Purchase has the same meaning as buy
• (5) Look up the meaning of apoplexy in your dictionary
• (6) If you look out of the window now, you’ll see who I
mean
 Summary & revision
1. Sense reference referent
Context dialect proposition
2. Can different expressions have the same referent? Give
an example not found in this unit.
3. Can the same expression have different referents? Give
an example of your own.
4. Give an example of an expression not found in this unit
that has an invariable referent and of one that has no
referent.
5. Explain this sentence in your own words: ‘Every
expression that has meaning has sense, but not every
expression has reference’.
• 6. Comment on the following examples, making
reference to concepts introduced in this unit.
– the Evening Star / the Morning Star
– the President of the United States / the Commander-
in-Chief / the Leader of
– the Republican Party
– Visiting relatives can be boring
– the planet Mars
– Smoking grass can be dangerous