SESSION 1:

Language can be viewed as “a social fact, as a psychological state, as a set of

structures, or as a collection of outputs” – Bauer
Language always exists in every aspect of life. (social, mind, utterances).
Language is a finite system of elements or principles that help speakers to form
structured sentences.
Grammatical competence and Communicative competence = functions of language
Sounds -> human sounds -> speech sounds

Grammatical competence: the ability to recognize sounds of the language, know when
to combine or not and the meaning signified by sound sequences.

Universal Properties of Language:

- Modularity: language is a modular system (people produce and interpret language
using a set of component subsystems
Phonetics -> phonology -> morphology -> syntax -> lexicon -> semantics (pragmatics
– discourse analysis)
- Constituency and recursion
- Arbitrariness: there is no systematic connection or principle between words and
their meanings. The conventional and arbitrary relationship between the form (sound
and meaning (concept) of a word is also true in sign language.
People who know Chinese sign language might find it difficult in American Sign
Language.
- Reliance on context: this is a crucial property of language which helps us figure out
the meaning of words and interpret the meaning of entire utterances.
E.g: won and one (need context to find out which is used)
How many dogs do you have? -> I have one.
Did you win the game? -> I won.
- Variability

The meaning of meaning

- You know when a word is meaningful or meaningless (flick – blick)
- You know when the sentence is meaningful or meaningless (Jack swims – Swim
Jack there is)
- You know when a word has more than one meaning and when a sentence has two
meanings or more.
- You know when two words have the same meaning or when two sentences have the
same meaning.
- You know when two words or two sentences have the opposite meanings.
- You generally know the real-word objects that words refer to like the chair in the
corner.
- Even if the words do not refer to actual objects, such as the unicorn behind the bush,
you still have a sense of what they mean.
- You know, or have the capacity to discover, when sentences are true of false. That
is, if you know the meaning of a sentence, you know its truth conditions.
e.g:
All kings are male. (true)
All bachelors are married. (false)
- If you know that a sentence is true, you can infer that another sentence must also be
true: that is, the first sentence entails the second sentence.
e.g: Nina bathed her dogs. => Nina’s dogs got wet. (entailment – presupposition)

SESSION 2:
- Semantics is the study of meaning in language. This is also the study of the linguistic
meaning of morphemes, words, phrases, and sentences.
- Semantics meaning is context-free while pragmatic meaning is context-dependent.
(1): A: Would you like a piece of cake?
B: I’m on a diet.
-> Semantic meaning: She wants to lose weight.
-> Pragmatic meaning: She wants to refuse the invitation. She doesn’t want any pieces
of cake.

(2): Tom: Do you like the wine I picked out?

Gina: It’s Italian, isn’t it?
-> Semantic meaning: She wants to know the origin of the wine.
-> Pragmatic meaning: She doesn’t want the wine.

- Speaker meaning is what a speaker means (intend to convey).

- Sentence meaning (or word meaning) is what a sentence (or word) means, what is
counts as the equivalent of in the language concerned.
- Many sentences do carry information in a straightforward way while many sentences
are used by speakers not to give information at all, but to keep the social wheels
turning smoothly.
E.g: I’m going to France next month? – Oh, are you? That would be nice for a family.
I’m going to take the car? – Oh, are you? I need car to take kids to school.
(Are you? In the two conversations are different in meaning – one shows interest
while one shows rejection)

- The same sentences can be different in meanings based on different occasions.

- Once a person has mastered the stable meanings of words and sentences as defined
by the language system, he can quickly grasp the different conversational and social
uses that they can be put to.
- The gap between speaker meaning and sentence meaning is such that it is even
possible for a speaker to convey a quite intelligible intention by using a sentence
whose literal meaning is contradictory and nonsensical.
E.g: This suitcase is killing me! – I’m so hungry that I could eat a horse!
(anthropomorphism)

Semantic features: definition

- Semantic features (nét nghĩa) or semantic components or semantic properties are the
smallest units of meaning in a word.
- We identify the meaning of a word by its semantic features.
E.g: father may have the following semantic features:
Father => [+human], [+male], [+mature], [parental], and [+paternal].
- Semantic features or properties are part of word meanings and that reflect our
knowledge about what words mean.
- Semantic features are among the conceptual elements that are part of the meanings
of words and sentences.
E.g: The assassin killed Thwacklehurt.
Assassin => [+killing], [+murderer], [+kill a very important person]

Semantic features: characteristics

- Some semantic features need not be specifically mentioned. This generalization can
be expressed as a redundancy rule.
- Some redundancy rules infer negative semantic features. Thus, semantic features are
often shown in binary opposites.
- Different words may share same semantic features.
- Different parts of speech may share same semantic features.
- The semantic properties of words determine what other words they can be combined
with.
e.g: The two following sentences are grammatically correct and syntactically perfect
but semantically anomalous.
(1) My brother is an only child. (can’t be together – meaning)
(2) The bachelor is pregnant. (can’t be together – meaning)
e.g: Colorless green ideas sleep furiously. => semantically anomalous sentence.
+ Colorless => [-color]
+ Green => [+color]
+ Sleep => [+dormant state]
+ Furiously => [+violent or quick action]
+ Idea => [+abstract]
+ Sleep => [+concrete], [+animate]
e.g: “She who was who I hold, the fats and the flower, …” – a grief ago by Dylan
Thomas
+ Grief => [+sadness], [+emotional]
+ Ago => [+past time], [+temporal], [+durational]
=> it evokes certain emotions/ a durational feature to grief (poetic effect)

SESSION 3: sentences, utterances, and propositions (phần nghĩa logic của câu –
true or false)
- Utterance: is any stretch of talk, by one person, before and after which there is
silence on the part of that person. It is the use by a particular speaker, on a particular
occasion, of a piece of language, such as a sequence of sentences, or a single phrase,
or even a single word.

- Sentence: A sentence is neither a physical event nor a physical object. It is,

conceived abstractly, a string of words put together by the grammatical rules of a
language. A sentence can be thought of as the ideal string of words behind various
realizations in utterances (spoken language) and inscriptions (written language).
A sentence is a grammatically complete string of words, expressing a complete
thought. This definition is intended to exclude any strings of words that does not have
a verb in it, as well as other strings.
e.g:
I would like a cup of coffee is a sentence.
Coffee, please is not a sentence (verb missing)
In the kitchen is not a sentence (verb missing)
Please put it in the kitchen is a sentence.

=> Utterances are different from sentences in term of physicality. Sentences are in
your mind and they need to be grammatically correct.
=> The distinction between utterances and sentences is of fundamental importance to
both semantics and pragmatics. Essentially, we want to say that a sentence is an
abstract theorical entity defined within a theory of grammar, while utterance is the
issuance of a sentence.
=> People do not converse wholly in (tokens of) well-formed sentences. But the
abstract idea of a sentence is the basis for understanding even those expressions which
are not sentences. In the overwhelming majority of cases, the meanings of non-
sentences can best be analyzed by considering them to be abbreviations, or incomplete
versions, of whole sentences.
=> The term ‘utterance’ can be used to refer either to the process (or activity) of
uttering or to the product of that process (activity). Utterances in the first of these two
senses are commonly referred to nowadays as speech acts; utterances in the second
sense may be referred to – in a specialized sense of the term – as inscriptions.
- Everything that is written between single quotation marks represents an utterance,
and anything that is italicized represents a sentence or (similarly abstract) part of a
sentence, such as a phrase or a word.
e.g:
+ ‘help’ => utterance
+ The steeples have been struck by lightning => sentence
+ ‘The steeples have been struck by lightning’ => utterance
+ John represents a word conceived as part of a sentence. (a sentence must be
grammatically correct => John just a single word not a sentence)

A: Who did you meet?

B: John. (utterance) – (sentence: I met John.)

- A given sentence always consist of the same words, and in the same order. Any
change in the words, or in their order, makes a different sentence.
e.g:
Helen rolled up the carpet.
Helen rolled the carpet up.
=> different sentences

Practice: from utterances to well-formed sentences

Jane: ‘Coffee?’
Steve: ‘Sure!’
Jane: ‘White?’
Steve: ‘Black.’

=> Sentences:
Jane: ‘Would you like some coffee?’
Steve: ‘I am sure to have one.’
Jane: ‘Would you like white or black coffee?’
Steve: ‘I prefer black coffee.’

- Proposition: is that part of the meaning of the utterance of a declarative sentence

which describes some state of affairs.
- The state of affairs typically involves persons or things referred to by expressions in
the sentence and the situation or action they are involved in.
- In uttering a declarative sentence, a speaker typically asserts a proposition.
- A proposition is an abstraction that can be grasped by the mind of an individual
person.
- Propositions are public in the sense that the same propositions is accessible to
different persons: different individuals can grasp the same proposition.
- The notion of truth can be used to decide whether two sentences express different
propositions. Thus, if there is any conceivable set of circumstances in which one
sentence is true, while the other is false, we can be sure that they express different
proposition.
- Propositions are clearly involved in the meanings of other types of sentences, such
as interrogatives, which are used to ask questions, and imperatives, which are used to
convey orders.
- Normally, when a speaker utters a simple declarative sentence, he commits himself
to the truth of the corresponding proposition, i.e. he asserts the proposition. By
uttering a simple interrogative or imperative, a speaker can mention a particular
proposition, without asserting its truth.
Declarative => asserting a proposition
Interrogative and imperative => without asserting a proposition.
e.g:
(1)
Is the weather nice? (interrogative)
The weather is nice. (declarative)
=> same propositions
(2)
Go away, will you? (no asserting truth)
You will go away. (asserting truth)
e.g:
(1)
Dr Findlay killed Janet. (Findlay is the killer.)
Dr Findlay caused Janet to die. (Findlay may not the killer -> he may kidnap her and
something killed her.)
=> different propositions

(2)
John gave Mary a book.
Mary was given a book by John.
=> same propositions.

(3)
John was injured by a stone. (He may injure himself by hitting a stone.)
John was injured with a stone. (Someone may use a stone to hurt him.)
=> different propositions

- True propositions correspond to facts, in the ordinary sense of the word fact.
- False propositions do not correspond to facts.
- Propositions, unlike sentences, cannot be said to belong to any particular language.
Sentences in different languages can correspond to the same proposition, if the two
sentences are perfect translations of each other.
e.g: English I am cold, French J’ai froid, German Mir ist kalt, and Russian Mne
xolodno can, to the extent to which they are perfect translations of each other, be said
to correspond to the same proposition.

- Accents and dialects

=> Accent is differences in pronunciation
=> Dialect is differences in pronunciation, vocabulary, grammar, and word order.

- A single proposition could be expressed by using several different sentences, and

each of these sentences could be uttered an infinite number of times.

- Paraphrase is the relationship between a word and a combination of other words

with the same meaning. For instance, many people would agree that loud means
something can be heard from far away. Ultimately, the whole project of describing or
explaining word-meanings depends on paraphrase because we must use words – or
other equivalent symbols – to explain other words. Paraphrase relies on meaning (or
proposition)
e.g: The weather is mild. => The weather is neither hot nor cold.
- Ways to paraphrase a sentence:
1. Change individual words (using synonyms or using relational antonyms – also
called converses)
e.g:
Cats drink cream. => Domestic felines consume the liquid fat of milk.
I lent that book to Jim. => Jim borrowed that book from me. (relational antonym)
2. Change sentence structures
e.g: Cats drink cream. => Cream is drunk by cats. (active -> passive)

3. Change both individual words and sentence structures

e.g: Cats drink cream. => The liquid fat of milk is drunk by domestic felines.

Advertising affects consumers.

(1): Advertisements have an effect on buyers.
(2): Consumers are affected by advertising.
(3): Buyers are affected by advertisements.

SESSION 4: Reference and Sense (mối quan hệ nội tại bên trong ngôn ngữ)
- In talking of sense, we deal with the relationships inside the language; in talking of
reference we deal with the relationships between language and the world.

- Reference: is a relationship between parts of a language and things outside the

language (in the world – physicality)
- By means of reference, a speaker indicates which things in the world (including
persons) are being talked about.
(reference and referent – the thing/person that a word stands for)
e.g: ‘My son is in the beech tree’
my son => identifies person
the beech tree => identifies thing

‘Touch your coursebook’

Your coursebook => identifies thing -> identified particular sheets of paper.
=> the phrase your coursebook is a part of the English language but the actual book is
not a part of the English language, since languages are not made of pieces of paper.

- The same expressions can, in many cases, be used to refer to different things. Some
(in fact very many) expressions in a language can have variable reference.
e.g: There are as many potential referents for the phrase your left ear as there are
people in the world with left ears.
You say ‘touch your ear’ and ‘mom, touch your ear’ => same expression but different
things
- The reference of an expression varies according to the circumstances (time, place,
etc) in which the expression is used, or the topic of the conversation in which the
expression is used.
e.g:
1. What would be the referent of the phrase the present Prime Minister used (a) in
1982 and (b) in 1944?
2. What would be the referent of the phrase the Prime Minister used in a conversation
about (a) British politics in 1982 and (b) in 1944?
=> Time and topic are the two factors that have a significant effect on the referent that
are talked about.

- 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.
e.g: the moon, Angola, Halley’s comet, Vietnam, …

- In fact, there is very little constancy of reference in language.

- Two different expressions can have the same referent.

e.g: the Morning star = the evening star = the plant Venus

- 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 is sameness of meaning.
- The sense is not only of words, but also of longer expressions such as phrases and
sentences.
e.g: I almost/nearly fell over. (same sense – sameness of meaning)
It is likely/probably that Raymond will be here tomorrow. (two expressions – same
sense)

- In some cases, the same word can have more than one sense.
e.g:
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.

(1) Bank (n): ngân hàng

(2) Bank (n): bờ sông
(3) Bank (v): lượn (máy bay)
(4) Bank (v): thêm than vào lò
=> polysemy or 4 senses/meanings of expressions “bank”

Practice (1 sentence but different senses)

1. John loves his dog than his wife.
-> John loves his dog than his wife
-> John loves his dog than his wife loves the dog.

2. They hit the ball.

-> They (do) hit the ball. (present)
-> The (did) hit the ball. (past)

3. Flying planes can be dangerous.

-> The act of flying planes can be dangerous.
-> Planes that are flying can be dangerous.

4. Old men and women will be served first.

-> Old men and old women will be served first.
-> Old men and all women will be served first.

- The referent of an expression is often a thing or a person in the world; whereas the
sense of an expression is not a thing at all.
- Intuitively, the sense is part of the meaning of an expression that is left over when
reference is factored out.
- The sense of an expression is an abstraction, but it is helpful to note that it is an
abstraction that can be entertained in the mind of a language user.
- When a person understands fully what is said to him, it is reasonable to say that he
grasps the sense of the expressions he hears.
- Every expression that has meaning has sense, but not every expression has
reference.
- Similarly, defining the senses of words and other expressions
often has something of this circular nature. This is not necessarily a bad
thing, and in any case it is often unavoidable, since in many cases (e.g. cases
of expressions that have no referents: and, etc.) there is no way of indicating
the meaning of an expression except with other words.
- Just as there is something grammatically complete about a whole
sentence, as opposed to a smaller expression such as a phrase or a single
word, there is something semantically complete about a proposition, as
opposed to the sense of a phrase or single word.

Practice: are the senses of the following expressions propositions?

1. Johnny has got a new teacher. (sense is the proposition)
2. A new teacher (sense is not the proposition)

- Senses and propositions can be said to belong to expressions in different language.

- To the extent that perfect translation between languages is possible (and this
is a very debatable point, as mentioned earlier), essentially the same sense can
be said to belong to expressions in different languages.
- 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.
e.g:
1. Pavement (British English) – Sidewalk (American English) => same sense
2.
People walking in close spatio-temporal proximity.
People walking near each other.

The relationship between reference and utterance

- The relationship between reference and utterance is not so direct as that
between sense and proposition, but there is a similarity worth pointing out.
Both referring and uttering are acts performed by particular speakers on
particular occasions
- 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.

Denotation (nghĩa đen – cái có thể tìm thấy ở từ điển) and Connotation (nghĩa
mở rộng)
e.g:
Child is denotatively describe as [+human], [-mature] and [+male]/[-male]
Child can be connoted as [+irritating], [+annoying]

Woman is negatively and connoted described as [+wicked], [+talkative]

- The denotation of a word can easily be found in a dictionary while its connotation(s)
may probably depend on such factors as culture, language user’s family, educational
background, language user’s social or political class, speech community or ethnic
group, etc.
=> These factors are by virtue of personal and cultural associations.

Literal meaning and Figurative meaning

- The basic or usual meaning of a word is usually referred to as its literal meaning.
- The figurative meaning of a word is one which is different from its usual (literal)
meaning and which create vivid mental images to readers or listeners.
e.g:
- the two wings of an airplane (part of an aircraft and supports it in the air to fly)
- we hope college life will help him to spread his wings a bit. (=extend his activities
and interests)