5/1/26 (4,5,6,9,10,11) => groupwork

Chuẩn bị bài => thuyết trình phần study guide (up bài thuyết trình lên moodle)
- Speaker meaning: what speaker means
- Sentence meaning (word of meaning – context-free): what a sentence means (in the dictionary)
- Pragmatics (context-dependent) is: study of text & context in use
- Semantics: study on meaning in language
+ 3 main aspects: word meaning (or lexical meaning), sentence meaning, utterance meaning
EX1: The meaning of “remarried”
=> word-level:
=> sentence-level:
=> utterance-level:
EX2: The meaning of “meaning”
=> word-level: 21 senses of meaning
=> sentence-level:
+ Different types of Meaningfulness: linguistic meaning, communicated meaning, significance
Would you like a piece of cake?
I’m on a diet.
- The semantic meaning: “I want to lose weight”
- The pragmatic meaning: “I don’t want it”
Do you like the wine I picked out?
It’s Italian, isn’t it?
- The semantic meaning: literal meaning
- The pragmatic meaning: “I don’t want it”
Her father is a billionaire.
She fails the mid-test on Semantics => context-free/semantics meaning
She learnt so well => pragmatic/context-dependence meaning
Exercise 2/page 14, page 6
12/1/2026
“quotation mark” => utterance (phát ngôn)
Grrrl : a young woman => can be an utterance
SENTENCE: .EXPRESSING A COMPLETE THOUGHT
Ex: pls put it in the kitchen => sentence
Declarative = proposition: mệnh đề

14/1/2026
Referent: object/entity in the real world, in the world of your imagination (đối tượng, vật sở chỉ)
For example: The queen has fallen of the table (different context => different referent, same sense)
Reference of a word (in linguistic): the relationship between that word or expression and the thing, the
action, the event, the quality it refers to. (quan hệ sở chỉ)
Sense of word: the general meaning of the concept underlying the word (nét nghĩa)
Sense of expression: is its place in a system of semantic relationships with other expressions in the
language
Type of reference:
1. Variable reference: same expression may refer to different objects/reference.
- The present Prime Minister of Vietnam: 2023, 2022, 2018 => different reference
- My mother: different ladies depending on different speakers
2. Co-reference (đồng sở chỉ):
HCM City and Saigon => same city
The morning star & evening star => same planet Venus
3. Constant/Invariable reference: one expression always refers to the same object (regardless who is the
speaker)
Proper name:
Unique things: the sun, the moon, the earth
19/1/2026
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 a particular referent in mind.
Ex: Fred hit me => Fred is a referring expression.
There’s no Fred at this address’ => Fred is not a referring expression

26/1/2026
A GENERIC SENTENCE is a sentence in which some statement is made about a whole unrestricted
class of individuals, as opposed to any particular individual.
Opaque referring (ngữ cảnh tối nghĩa): is a part of a sentence which could be made into a complete
sentence by the addition of a referring expression, but where the addition of different referring
expressions, even 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.
Equative referring (câu ngang bằng): one which is used to assert the identity of the referents of two
referring expressions, i.e. to assert that two referring expressions have the same referent.
thường nối bằng to be, can be reversed between 2 referent without changing meaning.
Predicator
 He is tall/ He is a stranger
 They are going to build a saloon in this area. => predicate
Argument (tham tố)
A simple sentence only has one predicator, in general it’s called predicate
A tall, handsome, stranger entered the saloon. => predicates because they can function as predicators in
other sentences.
Enter: predicator.
- PREDICATE & PREDICATOR:
+ Predicator: động từ chính
+ Predicate: tất cả những từ miêu tả subject
Simple sentence only has one predicator, although it may well contain more than one instance of a
predicate.

PREDICATE PREDICATOR
- A PREDICATE is any word (or sequence of
words) which (in a given single
sense) can function as the predicator of a
sentence.
- helps hearers to identify the referent of a
referring expression
Most nouns are 1-place predicates. But a few nouns could be said to be “inherently relational”.
Identity relation: mối quan hệ đồng nhất.
28/1/2026
- predicating expression (indefinite noun phrase)
- The presence of a predicate in a referring expression helps the hearer to identify the referent of a
referring expression.
2/2/2026
An ANALYTIC sentence is one that is necessarily TRUE, as a result of the senses of the words in it. An
analytic sentence, therefore, reflects a tacit (unspoken).
A SYNTHETIC sentence is one which is NOT analytic, but may be either true or false, depending on the
way the world is.
A CONTRADICTION is a sentence that is necessarily FALSE, as a result of the senses of the words in it.
Thus, a contradiction is in a way the opposite of an analytic sentence.
A NECESSARY CONDITION on the sense of a predicate is a condition (or criterion) which a thing
MUST meet in order to qualify as being correctly described by that predicate.
A SUFFICIENT SET OF CONDITIONS on the sense of a predicate is a set of conditions (or criteria)
which, if they are met by a thing, are enough in themselves to GUARANTEE that the predicate correctly
describes that thing.
The STEREOTYPE of a predicate is a list of the TYPICAL characteristics or features of things to which
the predicate may be applied.
PROTOTYPE (ĐIỂN HÌNH)
EXTENSION (MỞ RỘNG CỦA PROTOTYPE)
Vd: extension of dog is set of all dogs in the universe.
2/3/2026
SYNOMYMY: ex: road & street, big & large => have the same sense
Perfect synonyms are hard to find, => little difference in the sense of meaning
PARAPHRASE
Entails: sự kéo theo
Ex: John killed Bill (X) entails Bill died (Y) => X đúng kéo theo Y đúng
16/3/2026
Sense property of sentence:
- ANALYTIC
- SYNTHETIC
- CONTRADICTION
Sense relations
4 types of antonymy of predicate (semantic incompatibility):
+ Binary antonyms (complementary): predicates which come in pairs and between them exhaust all the
relevant possibilities, if it entails the negative of the other predicate.
+ Gradable antonyms:
+ Converses: If a predicate describes a relationship between two things (or people) and
some other predicate describes the same relationship when the two things (or people) are mentioned in the
opposite order, then the two predicates are CONVERSES of each other.
Ex: parents & child
greater than & less than
own & belong to
buy & sell
borrow & lend
Two sentences may be said to be PARAPHRASES of each other if and only
if they have exactly the same set of ENTAILMENTS
A word is said to be ‘vague’ when it appears to have one basic sense
(monosemy) which is nevertheless flexible enough to allow for minor
variations in meaning or use which are not particularly entrenched in the
mind of the speaker.