Sense and Reference

Designated by

NONIK NILAN SARI

“Every expression that has meaning has sense,

but not every expression has reference”

Almost, probable, and, if, and abovedo not refer to a thing in the world,but all have sense.

Please have a look at the sentences below….!!!

Rupert took off his jacketRupert took his jacket off

I love youSaya mencintai anda

Ich liebe Dich

The example above has the same sense

SENSE

THE WORLD

X1--------X2

Language

SENSE

The relationship inside the language .

One linguistic elements--------------- Other linguistic Elements

INTRA LINGUISTIC RELATIONS

SENSEDEFINITION:• The sense of an expression is its place in a system

of semantic relationships with other expressions in the language.

• E.g :– Every house has got a main bedroom.Intra – linguistic relations:

(between every and house; between main and bedroom or between every house and has got ; between has got and main bedroom)

One sentence can have different senses too

Example :

The chicken is ready to eat

• The chicken is ready to be eaten• The chicken is ready to eat

something

The same sense in different languages.

Example:

• Pavement in British English and Sidewalk in American English

• Good Morning Guten Morgen

Sense and Proposition• Sense is the general meaning or the concept underlying the

word. Sense can be a word, phrase and sentence.

• And proposition is the mind either way whether they are true or false, we can know it can be true false by thinking them or believing them.

• Example:• My father is a prime minister.

• In the sentence above the proposition got from the speaker can be true or false (it’s false; based on the fact, her father is headmaster),

• while the sense of the sentence above are (1) father is a male parent, (2) prime minister is a leader of the country.

Conclusion

Sense is meaning of word/ sentence/ phrase. It is abstract. E.g. ‘I kick the ball.’ ‘ball’ in that sentence is something which has round shape.

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 language user

REFERENCE

Think about this sentence!

• William Shakespeare lived in this house.

– William Shakespeare indicates the person– The house indicates a thing

By means of reference, a speaker indicates which object/ thing (person, animal, things) in the world are being talked about.

REFERENCE

THE WORLD

XLanguage

REFERENCE

The relationship between parts of the language and the things outside

the language.

y

REFERENCE

• Reference is a relationship between part of a language and particular thing outside the language (in the world).

• Referent of a part of language ----thing or people exist in the world. Even something or someone that not exist but we believe they are available.

Two different expressions can have the same referent

• The morning star and the evening star• The husband and wife and the lifetime couple.• Bung Karno and the first president• K.H. Abdurrahman Wahid and Gus Dur

One expression can have many references

• Pak De Karwo is a governor

Pak De Karwo has referenceA governor has reference

Reference and Utterance

• Reference indicates things in the world which are being talked by a speaker.

• And utterance is a single word or single phrase or sentence that use by speaker before and after a silence condition.

Example:• ‘My inspiration woman in this world is my mother.’• The whole sentence above is an utterance because it used

before and after silence part.• The underline phrases is reference because it indicates to thing

(include person).

REFERRING EXPRESSION

REFERRING EXPRESSION

•A referring expression is any expression used in an utterance to refer to something or someone (or, a clearly delimited collection of things or people), i.e. used with particular referent in mind.

• Some expressions can be used to refer or not, depending on the kind of sentence they occur in.

Referring expression or not?

• Jacob in ‘Jacob kiss me’ is a referring expression because the speaker has a particular person in mind when he says ‘Jacob’.

• Jacob in ‘There’s no Jacob in this attendance list’ is not a referring expression because the speaker would not have a particular person in mind in uttering the word.

The expressions such as:

SheJohnMy uncleThe girl sitting on the wallA manMy parents

Can be possibly used as referring expressions However,

the expressions like:

AndSendUnder GoesPerhapsLikely

Cannot be used as referring expressions

The same expression can be a referring expression or not, depending on the context and on the circumstances of utterance.

• When a speaker says, ‘A man was in here looking for you last night’, a man is used to refer to a particular man. Therefore a man is a referring expression.

• But, when a speaker says, ’The first sign of monsoon is a cloud on the horizon, no bigger than a man’s hand’, a man is not used to refer to a particular man. Therefore, a man is not a referring expression.

Thus, reference is something that is

referred to; while a referring expression is

something that refers to.

Two kinds of referring expressions:

Primary referring expressions (referring directly to the referent)

e.g. a dog, your friend, Alwi Shihab, the flowers in that basket, etc.

Secondary referring expressions (referring indirectly to the referent and determined only from primary referring expressions in the context in which they are used)

e.g. he, the big ones, that one, etc.(Kreidler, 1998: 130)

An Opaque context is a part of sentence which could be made into a complete sentence by the addition of a referring expression, but where the though they refer to the same thing or person, in a given situation, will yield sentences with DIFFERENT meanings when uttered in a given situation.Opaque contexts typically involve a certain kind of verb, like:want, believe, think, feel, consider, wonder about.Those verbs reflect the state of mind that is not clear.

‘John thinks that Anisa is smart’‘John thinks that the girl with glasses is smart’

The sentences are an ‘opaque context’.

Therefore the meaning of the two sentences is unclear.

The girl with glasses may refer to Anisa, but may also refer to somebody else.

An equative sentence is one which is used to assert the identity of two referring expressions, i.e. to assert that two referring expressions have the same referent.

• Barack Obama is the president of USA• Tokyo is the capital of Japan• Java is the most densely-populated island in

Indonesia

• Miss. Evi is the lecturer of Semantics

• Miss. Evi is a lecturer of Semantics

• The first sentence is an equative sentence because equative sentences can be false.

• The second sentence is not an equative sentence because it does not state identity of reference.

A feature of many equative sentences is that the order of the two referring expressions can be reversed without loss of acceptability.

For example:• Java is the most densely-populated

island in Indonesia• The most densely-populated island

in Indonesia is Java

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