Referring Expression, Predicates, A universe of Discourse
Muchamad Adam Basori, M.A. TESOL
8 October 2011
Meeting Unit 4
Referring Expression (RE)
RE 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.
For example, the name Budi in an utterance such as ‘Budi hit me’, where the speaker has a particular person in mind when he says ‘Budi’, is a referring expression.
Budi in ‘There’s no Budi at this address’ is not a referring expression, because in this case a speaker would not have a particular person in mind in uttering the word.
Some REs are possibly used and not used in the following examples:
(1) John (Yes)
(2) My uncle (Yes)
(3) and (No)
(4) the girl sitting on the wall by the bus stop (Yes)
(5) a man (Yes)
(6) my parents (Yes)
(7) send (No)
(8) under (No)
The same expression can be a referring expression or not (or, as some would put it, may or may not have a ‘referring interpretation’), depending on the context.
1) When a speaker says, ‘A man was in here looking for you last night’ is a man being used to refer to a particular man? Yes
2) So, in the above example, is a man a referring expression? Yes
3) When a speaker says, ‘The first sign of the monsoon is a cloud on the horizon no bigger than a man’s hand’, is a man being used to refer to a particular man? No
4) Is a man in this example a referring expression? No
5) Is empat puluh bis, used in ‘Empat puluh bis telah ditarik dari trayek operasinya oleh PT. AKAS’, a referring expression? Yes
6) Is empat puluh bis, used in ‘Mesin ini memiliki tenaga seperti empat puluh bis’, a referring expression? No
Equative Sentences
An EQUATIVE SENTENCE is 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.
We conclude this RF by discussing one special relation, the identity relation. In English, the identity of the referents of two different referring expressions is expressed by a form of the verb be. For example:
George W. Bush is the 43rd President of the United States
The 43rd President of the United States is George W. Bush
Equative Sentences
A feature of many equative sentences is that the order of the two referring expressions can be reversed without loss of acceptability.
è The largest city in Africa is Cairo
è Cairo is the largest city in Africa
The ‘reversal test’ applied here is not a perfect diagnostic for equative sentences, however.
In What I need is a pint of Guinness, a pint of Guinness is not a referring expression, because a user of this sentence would not have any particular pint of Guinness in mind, but the sentence is nevertheless reversible, as in A pint of Guinness is what I need. And Cairo is not the largest city in Africa is not an equative sentence.
Summary of RE
At first sight the notion of reference as a relation between expressions used in utterances and people and objects in the world seems straightforward enough. But stating simple generalizations about when an expression is actually a referring expression and when it is not, is, to say the least, difficult.
Predicates
We start by examining the semantic structure of simple declarative sentences, such as Anjing itu telah menggigit Pak Pos or Dia sedang menunggu putranya pulang. Typically such sentences contain one or more referring expressions, plus some other words that do not form part of any of the referring expressions.
It is on these other words that we shall now concentrate.
The predicates of two sentences above are:
- ‘Telah menggigit’
- ‘Sedang menunggu’
The words we have just isolated from their original sentences we call the predicators of those sentences.
Predicator
The PREDICATOR of a simple declarative sentence is the word (sometimes a group of words) which does not belong to any of the referring expressions and which, of the remainder, makes the most specific contribution to the meaning of the sentence.
Intuitively speaking, the predicator describes the state or process in which the referring expressions are involved.
‘telah jatuh cinta’ is the predicator in Pak Syukur telah jatuh cinta kepada istrinya dengan membabi buta and describes the process in which the two referring expressions ‘Pak Syukur’ and ‘istrinya’ are involved.
However, words of other parts of speech, such as conjunctions (and, but, or) and articles (the, a), cannot serve as predicators in sentences.
The semantic analysis of simple declarative sentences reveals two major semantic roles played by different subparts of the sentence. These are the role of predicator, illustrated above, and the role(s) of argument(s), played by the referring expression(s).
For example:
- Dwinda is Indonesian (predicator: Indonesian; argument: Dwinda
- Dwinda loves Bima (predicator: loves; arguments: Dwinda, Bima)
- Dwinda membawa Bima ke KUA (predicator: bawa; arguments: Dwinda, Bima, KUA)
A PREDICATE is any word (or sequence of words) which (in a given single sense) can function as the predicator of a sentence.
The definition of ‘predicate’ above contained two parenthesized conditions. The first, ‘(or sequence of words)’, is intended to take care of examples like telah menggigit, sedang menunggu, which are longer than one word, but which it seems sensible to analyse as single predicates.
The second parenthesized condition, ‘(in a given single sense)’, is more important, and illustrates a degree of abstractness in the notion of a predicate. A ‘word’, as we use the term, can be ambiguous, i.e. can have more than one sense, but we use ‘predicate’ in a way which does not allow a predicate to be ambiguous. A predicate can have only one sense.
Normally, the context in which we use a word will make clear what sense (what predicate) we have in mind, but occasionally, we shall resort to the use of subscripts on words to distinguish between different predicates.
E.g.
We might distinguish between the predicates:
1. man (noun) èhuman being,
2. man (noun) èmale adult human being, and
3. man (transitive verb) as in The crew manned the lifeboats.
Notice that ‘predicate’ and ‘predicator’ are terms of quite different sorts. The term ‘predicate’ identifies elements in the language system, independently of particular example sentences. Thus, it would make sense to envisage a list of the predicates of English, as included, say, in a dictionary. The term ‘predicator’ identifies the semantic role played by a particular word (or group of words) in a particular sentence.
In this way, it is similar to the grammatical term ‘subject’: one can talk of the subject of a particular sentence, but it makes no sense to talk of a list of ‘the subjects of English’: similarly, one can talk of the ‘predicator’ in a particular sentence, but not list ‘the predicators of English’.
A simple sentence only has one predicator, although it may well contain more than one instance of a predicate.
A tall, handsome stranger entered the saloon. This sentence has just one predicator, enter, but the sentence also contains the words tall, handsome, stranger, and saloon, all of which are predicates, and can function as predicators in other sentences, e.g. John is tall, He is handsome, He is a stranger, and That ramshackle building is a saloon.
Comments
The identity relation is special because of its very basic role in the communication of information. The verb be, as we have seen, is simply a grammatical device for linking a predicate that is not a verb (i.e. an adjective, preposition, or noun) to its first argument, as in John is a fool or John is foolish. The verb be is also a device for ‘carrying’ the tense (present or past) of a sentence.
Summary of Predicate
The predicates of a language have a completely different function from the referring expressions. The roles of these two kinds of meaning-bearing element cannot be exchanged.
Thus John is a bachelor makes good sense, but Bachelor is a John makes no sense at all. Predicates include words from various parts of speech, e.g. common nouns, adjectives, prepositions, and verbs.
Universe of Discourse
The UNIVERSE OF DISCOURSE for any utterance as the particular world, real or imaginary (or part real, part imaginary), that the speaker assumes he is talking about at the time.
For example, when an astronomy lecturer, in a serious lecture, states that the Earth revolves around the Sun, the universe of discourse is, we all assume, the real world (or universe).
When I tell my children a bedtime story and say ‘The dragon set fire to the woods with his hot breath’, the universe of discourse is not the real world but a fictitious world.
Comments
We have interaction between fact and fiction, between real and imaginary worlds. When two people are ‘arguing at cross-purposes’, they could be said to be working within partially different universes of discourse.
E.g.
è Theist: ‘Diseases must serve some good purpose, or God would not allow them’
è Atheist: ‘I cannot accept your premisses (assumption)’
Here the theist is operating with a universe of discourse which is a world in which God exists. The atheist’s assumed universe of discourse is a world in which God does not exist.
Summary of Universe of Discourse
In the course of a sequence of utterances, speakers use referring expressions to refer to entities which may be concrete or abstract, real or fictitious. The predicates embedded in a referring expression help the hearer to identify its referent.
Semantics is not concerned with the factual status of things in the world but with meaning in language.
The notion of universe of discourse is introduced to account for the way in which language allows us to refer to non-existent things.
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