Name: Tasya Puteri Subowo

NIM: 2019130090

“Assignment of Semantics”

Chapter 7.3-7.4 & 7.8

- 7.3 Some different kinds of referents

Three kinds of differences in referents are:

concrete and abstract, unique and non-unique, countable and non-countable.

7.3.1 Unique and non unique

A referring expression has fixed reference when the referent is a unique entity or unique set
of entities, like Lake Ontario, Japan, Boris Yeltsin, the Dead Sea Scrolls, the Philippine Islands. A
referring expression has variable reference if its referent may be different every time it is used: that
dog, my uncle, several people, a lake, the results

When a referring expression has fixed reference, knowledge of it is part of one’s general
knowledge. Recognizing the referent when the expression has variable reference is a matter of
specific knowledge; one has to identify that dog, my uncle or the results from the physical or
linguistic context, including knowledge of the speaker, perhaps.

The name of a person, for example Shakespeare, which necessarily has concrete, fixed
reference, acquires variable reference when applied to other people (“No Shakespeare wrote this
play”) and abstract reference for the works produced by that person (“We’re reading Shakespeare”).

7.3.2 concrete and abstract referents

Lexemes such as dog, door, leaf, stone denote concrete objects, which can be seen or
touched; the objects denoted by lexemes like idea, problem, reason, knowledge are abstract; they
cannot be perceived. directly through the senses. This is not a linguistic difference in itself; there is
nothing in the pronunciation of raisin and reason, for instance, that indicates which lexeme has an
abstract denotation and which has a concrete one. But lexemes with different kinds of denotation
generally occur in different kinds of utterances and then may have different effects on other
lexemes.

Language is fluid, so lexemes which typically have concrete denotations can be given
abstract ones, and vice versa. A character is, first, a kind of mark or sign, something that appears on
paper or other surfaces, and is therefore concrete; character is also the totality of qualities that
define a person or thing, in other words something abstract. Likeness is similarity, the quality of
being like something (abstract), such as a picture or other representation—a likeness of someone
(concrete).
 7.3.3. countable and non-countable refrents

Noun phrases in English, as in other European languages, are either countable or non-
countable. Both countable and non-countable noun phrases may be concrete or abstract. Concrete
countable expressions refer to items that are separate from one another, like apples, coins, pens and
toothbrushes, which can ordinarily be counted one by one. Abstract countable phrases have such
nouns as idea, problem, suggestion. Non-countable phrases, if their references are concrete, have
three kinds of reference. Some refer to continuous substances, such as apple sauce, ink, mud and
toothpaste, which do not consist of natural discrete parts. Others name substances that consist of
numerous particles not worth counting, like sand and rice. A few non-countables are like furniture,
jewelry, luggage, collections whose parts have quite different names. Then there are abstract non-
countables such as advice, information, beauty, which are treated, in the English language, as
indivisible.

The singular countable noun phrase must have an overt specifier; the plural countable and
non-countable may have a zero specifier; the specifier some can be replaced by zero in the last two
lines above. We do not say that there are countable and non-countable nouns because, as Allan
(1986) has shown, nouns display a range of ‘countability.’ At one extreme there are nouns that occur
almost exclusively in countable expression.

These distinctions—concrete/abstract, unique/non-unique, countable/ non-countable—

seem to reflect differences that exist in nature, but only partly so. All languages have reference
classes which may be ‘natural’ to some degree. We take it for granted that countable nouns should
be singular or plural, but nature does not have two categories, a category consisting of one single
item and another category that consists of all numbers from two to infinity.

- 7.4 Different ways offering

The demonstrative determiners this and that (plural these and those) indicate, respectively, that
the referent is near or not near the speaker’s location. So-called possessive determiners refer to an
entity in its relation to another referent, but ‘possession’ is a term for various kinds of relation: my
necktie expresses ownership; my brother, kinship; my friend and my employer, other associations;
Vivaldi’s ‘Four Seasons’ expresses authorship; Donna’s picture may refer to a picture of Donna or to
one drawn or photographed by Donna. Some determiners, quantifiers, express the amount or
quantity of the entity denoted by the noun.

7.4.1 generic and non generic

In this section we will explore the question of what sorts of things can be generically related
to one another (the further question of the precise nature of this relation lies beyond the scope of
the present work). From a syntactic perspective, NP's and certain sorts of adverbials can be related
to predicates on the one hand, and propositions (or perhaps predicates as well) on the other. about
how to deal with the disjunction predicate or proposition--there are notions available such as
'situation type' (Barwise and Perry, 1983) which seem capable of unifying the two. Instead, I would
like to focus on the related constituent, making the point that intensionality of the related
constituent is a crucial ingredient in the interpretation of generic sentences.

We define "definiteness" as a property of the noun phrase that indicates reference to a

unique entity identifiable by both speaker and hearer. This contrasts with "indefiniteness" which is
where the noun phrase lacks this property. Definiteness can also be compared to specific reference
vs. nonspecific (generic) reference. Specific reference is where the speaker refers to a particular
instance of a class of referents and generic reference is where the whole class of entities is referred
to. So, in English a reference can be definite but generic, as in The tiger is a dangerous animal. Here
the definite reference the tiger is generic as it does not refer to a particular example of "tiger"

Example:

a. Apple is a delicious source of vitamin C.

b. Apples are a delicious source of vitamin C.
c. An apple is a delicious source of vitamin C.
d. The apple is a delicious source of vitamin C.
e. The apples are a delicious source of vitamin C.

7.4.2 Specific and non-specific references

8a We have a dog.
8b We’d like to have a dog.
9a I’m sure there are answers to all your questions.
9b I trust we can find answers to all your questions.
In sentence 8a, above, a dog  refers to a specific dog. The reference is to some particular animal, and
we could insert the word certain before dog  without changing the meaning. In sentence 8b a
dog  would ordinarily be interpreted as non-specific in reference—‘some dog, not any particular
one’—though of course it could mean ‘a certain, particular dog.’ Similarly, answers  has specific
reference in 9a but not in 9b. Whether a referring expression has a specific referent or not cannot be
determined from the expression itself; it is determined by the larger context.

7.4.3 Definite and non-definite references

Demonstrative, possessive, and quantitative determiners identify a referent in a fairly precise way.
The definite determiner the  occurs in a referring expression when the speaker assumes that the
hearer can identity the referent (I’ve got the tickets)  or when identification is made part of the
referring expression (I’ve got the tickets that you wanted).  Indefinite determiners, a(n), some  and
zero, indicate that the referent is part of a larger entity.
When the referring expression is definite, the speaker assumes that the referent can be identified by
the addressee for one of four reasons. If none of these reasons applies, the speaker provides the
identification.
 7.8 Refential Ambiguity

Ambiguity is of interest to philosophers for a variety of reasons, some of which we will look
at below. First, ambiguity makes vivid some of the differences between formal languages and natural
languages and presents demands on the usage of the former to provide representations of the
latter. Second, ambiguity can have a deleterious effect on our ability to determine the validity of
arguments in natural language on account of possible equivocation. Third, ambiguity in art can
intentionally (or unintentionally) increase the interest in a work of art by refusing to allow easy
categorization and interpretation. Fourth, ambiguity in the statement of the law can undermine their
applicability and our ability to obey them. Finally, ambiguity resolution is an important feature of our
cognitive understanding and interpretative abilities. Studying ambiguity and how we resolve it in
practice can give us insight into both thought and interpretation.

Referential ambiguity can result because of the presence of pronouns.

For example,
- The boy told his father the theft. He was very upset.
He is referentially ambiguous because it can refer to both the boy and the father

If it is unclear what a referring expression is referring to, then the expression is referentially
ambiguous. For example, a pronoun is a referring expression such as ‘it’, ‘he’, ‘they’, etc.
Referential ambiguity occurs when a speaker has one referent mind for a definite expression.

a. An Indefinite referring expression may be specific or not. I wanted to buy a magazine

Referential ambiguity arises whenever readers or listeners are unable to select a unique
referent for a linguistic expression out of multiple candidates. In the current article, we review a
series of neurocognitive experiments from our laboratory that examine the neural correlates of
referential ambiguity, and that employ the brain signature of referential ambiguity to derive
functional properties of the language comprehension system. The results of our experiments
converge to show that referential ambiguity resolution involves making an inference to evaluate the
referential candidates. These inferences only take place when both referential candidates are, at
least initially, equally plausible antecedents. Whether comprehenders make these anaphoric
inferences is strongly context dependent and co-determined by characteristics of the reader.