UNIT 9 SENSE PROPERTIES AND STEREOTYPES Entry requirements ONE-, TWO-, and THREE-
PLACE PREDICATES (Unit 5), EXTENSION and PROTOTYPE (Unit 8). If you feel unfamiliar with any
of these ideas, review the appropriate unit. Otherwise, take the entry test below. Entry test (1)
Which of the following are two-place predicates? Circle your answer. below, smother, sleep,
come, annihilate, vanish, afraid (of) (2) Write the terms ‘referent’, ‘extension’, and ‘prototype’ in
the appropriate boxes in the chart below: (Set of things that could be referred to using a
particular predicate) (Thing referred to on a particular ................................................... occasion
of utterance) (Thing typically referred to .................................................... using a particular
predicate) .................................................... Feedback (1) below, smother, annihilate, afraid of
Extension (2) Referent Prototype If you have answered both questions correctly, continue to the
introduction. Otherwise, review the relevant unit. Introduction It is sometimes hard to
distinguish a factual (or ‘ontological’) question from a semantic one. Practice (1) Have you ever
been asked an apparently factual question about something (call it ‘X’), and found it necessary
to say to your questioner ‘Well, it depends on what you mean by X’? Yes / No (2) Have you ever
been involved in an argument with someone over an apparently factual matter, only to discover
that some particularly crucial word in the argument had a different meaning for the other
person? Yes / No (3) In a case where someone says, ‘Well, it depends what you mean by X’, is it
often possible, once the meaning of X has been agreed by both parties, for the original factual
question to be answered straightforwardly? Yes / No PART THREE . . . to sense 94 (4) If two
people can be said to agree on the meanings of all the words they use, must any remaining
disagreements between them be regarded as disagreements about matters of fact? Yes / No (5)
If we could not agree about the meanings of any of the words we use, could any disagreement
about matters of fact even be formulated, let alone resolved? Yes / No Feedback (1) Probably,
almost everyone has been in this situation. (2) again, probably Yes (3) Yes (4) Yes (5) No
Comment In order to be able to talk meaningfully about anything, it is necessary to agree on the
meanings of the words involved. This is a truism. In everyday life, people reach practical
agreement on the meanings of almost all the words they use, and effective and successful
communication takes place as a result. If a person wants to hinder or obstruct communication,
he can begin to quibble over the meanings of everyday words. Although there may be
disagreement about the fine details of the meanings of words ‘around the edges’, we find in the
everyday use of language that all words are understood by speakers as having an indispensable
hard core of meaning. Practice Given below are three conversations which get stuck. In each
one, speaker B seems to ignore some particular convention about the meaning of one of the
words involved, a convention universally accepted in everyday English. For each conversation,
write out a statement about the meaning of the word concerned, a statement that speaker B
seems not to accept. (1) A: ‘I saw something strange in the garden this morning.’ B: ‘Oh! What
was it?’ A: ‘An animal perched on top of the clothes pole.’ B: ‘How do you know it was an
animal?’ A: ‘I saw it. It was a cat.’ B: ‘You might have seen a cat, but how can you be sure it was
an animal?’ A: ‘Well, of course it was an animal, if it was a cat.’ B: ‘I don’t see how that follows.’