Words and morphemes are the smallest meaningful units of language. For the most part, however, we communicate in phrases and sentences, which also have meaning. The meaning of phrases or sentences depends on both the meaning of its words and how these words are structurally combined. (Idioms are exceptional and will be discussed later.) Some of the semantic knowledge we have about words can be allied to sentences. Words are synonyms; sentences are paraphrases. Words can be homonyms; sentences may be ambiguous. Words have opposites; sentences can be negated. Words are used for naming purposes; sentences can be used that way too. Both words and sentences can be used to refer to, or point out, objects; and both may have some further meaning beyond this referring capability, as we shall see in the following section.
SENSE AND REFERENCES
Words other than proper names both have a meaning and can be used to refer to objects, and so can larger units such as phrases and sentences. The Grman philosopher Bottlob Frege proposed that the meaning of and expression be called sense (Sinn) , and if the expression refers to something, it has reference (Bedeutung). Noun phrases normally have sense and can be used to refer. Thus the noun phrase
The man who is my father
refers to a certain individual and has a certain sense or meaning that is different from that of
The man who married my mother.
although both expressions may have the same referent.
Phrases may, however, have sense but no reference. If not, we would be unable to understand sentences like these:
The present king of France is bald.
By the year 3000, our descendants will have left Earth.
Speakers of English can understand these sentences, even though France now has no king, and our descendants of a millennium from now do not exist.
No comments:
Post a Comment