SENSE

By :
• Santi Oktaviani 0203516012
• Anugrah Cahyo Hudi 0203516029
•

English Education
March 13, 2017 Graduate Program
Semarang State University
 OUTLINE

1. Sense Properties and Stereotypes

2. Sense Relations: Identity and

Similarity of Sense

3. Sense Relations: Oppositeness and

Dissimilarity of Sense
and Ambiguity
1 Sense Properties and Stereotypes
 DEFINITION OF SENSE

Sense is the kind of meaning associated

with words and sentences by the language
system, not speaker meaning.

Sense is independent of particular

occassions and utterance. It excludes any
influence of context or situation of utterance.

Every expression that has meaning has

sense, but not every expression has
reference.
SENSE OF EXPRESSION

The sense of an expression is its

indispensable hard core of meaning.

The sense of an expression is its place in

a system of semantic relationships with
other expressions in the language.

The sense of an expression is the sum of

its sense properties and sense relations
with other expressions.
 SENSE PROPERTIES OF SENTENCES

• Necessarily
true
• Reflecting
unspoken SYNTHETIC
• Necessarily
agreement
• Either true or false
• Not informative
false • Reflecting
• That man is
• Depending on unspoken
human
the circ. agreement
ANALYTIC • Informative • Not informative
• The man is tall • That man is not
human
CONTRADICTION
 PRACTICE

Choose the correct sense properties of the following

sentences, A for analytic, S for synthetic, or C for
contradiction.
1. Carrots are vegetables. A/S/C
2. Carrots are animals. A/S/C
3. Bachelors are male. A/S/C
4. Bachelors are lonely. A/S/C
5. The girl is her mother’s daughter. A/S/C
6. Sam’s wife is not married. A/S/C
 A speaker’s knowledge
Limitation in of the sense of a Limitation in
the idea of predicate provides him the idea of
sense with an idea of its extension
extension.

• Necessary Condition
1
• Sufficient set of condition
2
 • Necessary Condition on the sense of a predicate
is a condition/criterion which a thing MUST meet
in order to qualify as being correctly described by
1
the predicate.

• Sufficient set of conditions on the sense of a

predicate is a set of conditions/criteria which, if
they are met by a thing, are enough in
2 themselves to GUARANTEE that the predicate
correctly describes that thing.

Example : Predicate : square

Necessary condition : four-sided
Sufficient set of conditions : plane figure, four-sided, equal-sided,
and containing four right angles.
 PRACTICE

1. What is the necessary condition for husband?

2. What is the sufficient set of conditions for husband?
 STEREOTYPE

Stereotypes are defined in terms of typical

characteristics account for the fact that
people usually agree on the meanings of the
words they use.

Stereotype of a predicate is a list of the

typical characteristics/ features of things
to which the predicate may be applied.
RELATIONSHIP BETWEEN STEREOTYPE,
PROTOTYPE, SENSE, AND EXTENSION

Thing (or set of Abstract

things) specified specification

Pertaining to all
EXTENSION SENSE
examples

Pertaining to
PROTOTYPE STEREOTYPE
typical examples
 Sense Relations:
2 Identity and Similarity of Sense
 SENSE RELATIONS

The sense of an expression : the whole set of sense relations

it contracts with other expressions in the language.

Individual Predicates

Sense Relation

Whole Sentences
 Sense Relation
(SAMENESS OF
MEANING)

Individual Predicates Whole Sentences

(SYNONYMY) (PARAPHRASE)
 SYNONYMY

Synonymy is the similarity of meaning.

Synonymy is the relationship between two predicates that have
the same sense.
It requires identity of sense -> strict definition -> very few.

Example:
Stubborn and obstinate are synonyms (in most dialects of
English)

Examples of perfect synonymy are hard to find. Why?

There is little point in a dialect having two predicates with exactly
the same sense.
 DO THE CAPITALIZED PAIRS OF
WORDS HAVE THE SAME SENSES?

Practice 1 (Yes/No)

The thief tried to CONCEAL/HIDE the evidence. YE s

I’m going to PURCHASE/BUY a new coat. s

YE

NO
These tomatoes are LARGE/RIPE.
 SYNONYMY AND SENSE

interdependent -> we can’t understand one without

understanding the other
best communicated by a range of examples

When dealing with sense relations

-> stick to clear cases
-> abstract away from any stylistic, social, or dialectal
associations the word may have
-> concentrate on what has been called the cognitive or
conceptual meaning of a word
 DO THE CAPITALIZED PAIRS OF
WORDS HAVE THE SAME SENSES?

Practice 2 (Same/Different)

He comes to us every FALL/AUTUMN. S

Nothing is more precious to us than our FREEDOM/LIBERTY. S

We’ve just bought a new HOUSE/APARTMENT. D

Synonymy is a relation between predicates, and not between
words.

Each distinct sense of a word is a predicate.

hide1 -> intransitive verb -> Let's hide from Mummy

hide2 -> transitive verb -> Hide your sweeties under the pillow
hide3 -> noun -> We watched the birds from a hide

-> These senses are related in meaning

 SYNONYMY

The definition of synonymy as a relationship between the

senses of words -> requires a clear separation of all the (closely
related/different) senses of a word.

The sense of a word does not depend entirely on its part of

speech.

deep & profound -> (adjective & adjective)

sleeping & asleep -> (verb & adjective)
 PARAPHRASE

A sentence which expresses the same proposition as another

sentence is a PARAPHRASE of that sentence.
Paraphrase is to SENTENCES (on individual interpretations)
as SYNONYMY is to PREDICATES.
Practice 3 -> Indicate your answer P (paraphrase) or NP (not
a paraphrase)
1. John is the parent of James. 3. Some countries have no coastline.
James is the child of John. Not all countries have a coastline.
P P

2. John is the parent of James. N 4. The fly was on the wall.

N
Kames is the parent of John. P The wall was on under the fly. P
 Sense Relations
(MEANING INCLUSION)

Propositions in
Individual Predicates language involving
(HYPONYMY) truth conditions
(ENTAILMENT)
 HYPHONYMY

It is a sense relation between predicates (or sometimes longer

phrases) such that the meaning of one predicate (or phrase)
is included in the meaning of the other.

Example : The meaning of red is included in the meaning of

scarlet. Red is the superordinate term; scarlet is a hyponym of
red (scarlet is a kind of red).

It is sense relation.
 ENTAILMENTS

• It applies comulatively. Thus if X entails Y and Y entails Z,

then X entails Z. Entailment is a transitive relation.

Practice 4 -> Look at the following pairs of sentence and see

if they have the same set of entailments (Yes/No)

1. The house was concealed by the trees.

The house was hidden by the trees.
Y

2. I ran to the house.

N
I went to the house.
Relation between pairs Relation between pairs
of sentences of words

ENTAILMENT HYPONYMY

PARAPHRASE SYNONYMY
3
Sense Relations: Oppositeness and
Dissimilarity of Sense and Ambiguity
Four basic types of anthonymy (or
incompatibility)

Binary Anthonyms

Converseness

Gradable

Contradictory
Binary Anthonyms
Binary Anthonyms are predicates which come in
pairs and between them exhaust all the
relevant possibilities. If the one predicate is
applicable, then the other cannot be, and vice
versa.

Examples:
True and false
Dead and alive
Same and different
Binary Anthonyms
Sometimes two different binary anthonyms can
combine in a set of predicates to produce a four-way
contrast

Male Famale

Adult Man Woman

Non-Adult Boy Girl

Converseness

If a predicate describes a relationship between two things (or people) and

some other predicate describes the same relationshipwhen the two things (or
people) are mentioned in the opposite order, then the two predicates are
CONVERSES each other

Example:
Below – above
Outside – inside
Buy – sell
Gradable

Two predicates are are GRADABLE anthonyms if they are at

opposite ends of a continuos scale of values (a scale which
typically varies according to the context of use)

Examples:
Hot – cold
Tall – short

A good test for gradability is to see whether a word can

combine with very, or very much, or how? Or how much?
Anthonymy is the relationship between predicates, and
the corresponding relationship between sentences is
contradictoriness.
Contradictory
A proposition is a CONTRADICTORY of another
proposition if it is impossible for them both to be true
at the same time and the same circumstances.

Example:
The beetle is alive is a contradictory of This beetle is
dead.
Ambiguity
 A word or sentence is AMBIGUIOUS when it has
more than one sense. A sentence is ambiguous if it
has two (or more) paraphrases which are not
themselves paraphrases of each other.

 Example:
We saw her duck is a paraphrase of We saw her lower
her head and these last two sentences are not
paraphrases of each other. Therefore, We saw her duck
is ambiguous.
 In the case of words and phrases, a word or phrase
is AMBIGUOUS, if it has two (or more) SYNONYMS
that are not themselves synonyms of each other.

 Example:
Trunk is synonymous with elephant’s proboscis and with
chest, but these two are not synonyms of each other,
so trunk is ambiguous.
Homonymy
 A case of HOMONYMY is one of an ambiguous
word, whose different senses are far apart from
each other and not obviously related to each other
in any way.
 Example:

Mug (drinking vessel vs. Gullible person)

Polysemy
 A case of POLYSEMY is one where a word has
several very closely related senses.
 Example:

Mouth (of a A opening from the interior of some solid

mass to the outside, and of a place of
river vs. Of issue at the end of some long narrow
an animal) channel.
Ambiguity

Structural (or grammatical) ambiguity

• Example: the chicken is ready to eat

Lexical ambiguity
• Example: the captain corrected the list
Referentially Versatile
 A phrase is REFERENTIALLY VERSATILE if it can be
used to refer to a wide range of different things or
persons.

 Example: the pronoun ‘he’

 THANK YOU

English Education
March 13, 2017 Graduate Program
Semarang State University