CHAPTER 3: SCOPE OF MEANING I : EXTERNAL CONTEXT

Certain linguistic expressions can only occur within certain contexts, and its role in this context can
determinate the meaning. This chapter revises one type of context: external or real-world context.
(entities which we refer)

-Relation between sense and referent (Referent specific thing we refer to, sense general
meaning, one word can have different senses, like the deffinition)
-Dictionary knowledge / Encyclopedic knowledge

MEANING AND CONTEXT

Words only exist and have meaning within a particular context and we could not achieve a good
meaning if we dont take these contexts into account. One of the things that any linguistic theory
must cover is the scope of an expressions meaning (alcance) the extension that a words effect
can be attributed to the meaning

Denises teacher got burnt a

Denises cake got burnt b

Different scope: Relation vs possession Difference in the meaning or difference in context?

Linguists suggests that English possessive s has two meanings (a and b) because it receives two
different interpretations. In both cases is the same, it has a basic meaning and depending on what
we know of the context.

External or real-world context vs intrapersonal context

Pragmatics is a linguistic field which studies language in real contexts but it is closely related with
semantics because pragmatics can not study the context of words and how we manipulate the
meaning according to the context, without knowing the meaning of words. And semantics can not
establish a meaning without taking into account their real use in certain context both fields of
linguistics are in symbiosis.

We will consider the external or real-world context to which linguistic expressions refer. Our
understanding of expressions meaning is closely related to our knowledge of this context. In order
to understand what the speaker means, the hearer must:3.1 Meaning and context

1. Disambiguate the nouns. Given the context, which interpretation is intended?

2. Assign referents to the noun phrases: who does the speaker mean by X?
3. Determine the quantity referred to by some:
4. Realize that the expression is intended as part of the context of advice, and is an instruction
5. As a result of (4), it causes a consequence

EXTERNAL CONTEXT: SENSE AND REFERENCE

One of the most basic type of contexts is the extralinguistic context of reference which concerns to
the entity the expression refers to (Specific entity). Although for a long time there was no clear
distinction between reference and sense (general meaning).

Who first saw a distinction between sense and reference was Gottlob Frege.

3.2.1 The Fregean distinction

He distinguished three aspects of a words total semantic effect:

-Force, which covered whether it was a statement or a question

-Tone, refering to register, connotation, perception, situation of a word

-Sense

But if a terms reference is all there is to its meaning, how can this be explained? If meaning is no
more than what a term refers to, the two pairs of sentences should not differ in their cognitive effect.
Freges solution was that an expressions reference is not the only part of its meaning: there is
something else, which he called its sense. (Meaning is more than reference)

In his famous essay On sense and reference Frege introduced the distinction between sense and
reference. An expressions sense is the way in which we understand its referent. It is sense which
gives an expression its cognitive value or significance.

We can express the same referent in different ways and it does not change the referent but the sense,
different modes of representation of the same referent (sense)

But how do we explain the sense of a proper name? How do we assign sense or referent to a
proper name? To explain this, there are two theories:

1. The first theory compares them to common nouns, we have an entity we certain characteristics
and we assign sense and reference if the entity fulfills these characteristics. PROBLEM: Not all the
people who have the same name share exactly the same characteristics, it is not a label.

In fact we use a common label that may have many referents to refer to a single thing.

Freige: To Frege sense determines referent, we can call something the way we do because in our
heads we have a way to categorize. If we do not know what something is we thing on another
sense similar to it, we can use another label because we do have the category in our head.

To Frege, everything that has to do with senses, are language dependent. In his theory senses are
stable and determines referents. The referents are assigned by speakers and sense is what languages
do. According to him we all share the same senses but outside his theory each person individually
creates their own conceptualizations and senses with different connotations.

SENSE AND PSYCHOLOGY

Referent is private and individual for each speaker, under the speaker control. Many times we use a
reference with a sense which is not totally correct (Libro / Libretalike) We are changing the sense
to book if you give me a book with different properties?

We are stretching the limits of the possible referents. But it is sense which determinates reference
(According to Freger) so it is my sense of book that set the possible objects in the world that have
the same sense / denotation. It may be not correct but it may be successful to communication (Le
puedo dar unas hojas y que sea un libro).

There is no need to share common characteristics.

DEIXIS

Are defined as those elements which make reference to some aspect of the context as an essential
part of their meaning (Space, time ) Here, there, now. Deictic expressions have the peculiarity
that their reference is relative to the situation in which they are used. They lack any independently
sense: They can not be given a general description, they are context dependent.

The listener has to infer what the intended referent is.

person deixis, by which speaker (I), hearer (you) and other entities relevant to the discourse
(he/she/it/they) are referred to;

temporal deixis (now, then, tomorrow); and

discourse deixis, which refers to other elements of the discourse in which the deictic expression
occurs (A: You stole the cash. B: Thats a lie).

Space: depend on the speaker, proximity Proximal / Distal

3.3 DICTIONARY AND ENCYCLOPEDIA

Pretheoretically there are two types of knowledges: basics (the ones you can find in dictionaries)
that allow the speaker to understand a word in a linguistic Linguistic knowledge + morphologic
and syntactic information,

The connotations of that word are part of another type of knowledge that is registered in
encyclopedias, they deal with knowledge of the world.

Our brain does not have two modules and we do not share knowledge in a different way, if we
access to basic knowledge we will some times need knowledge about the word or vice versa. There
is no limitation in our brain, we construct the knowledges through our life and there is no fully
separation