0:07 hello and welcome back to another
0:10 lecture today we talk about levels of
0:13 abstraction so basically there are three
0:15 levels of abstraction that we're going
0:17 to talk about today the basic form is
0:19 called the utterance and more abstract
0:22 forms called the sentence and then even
0:25 more abstract forms called a proposition
0:27 so an utterance is less abstract or
0:31 concrete it's something physical as we
0:34 move up we get something more abstract
0:38 so this is something you cannot hear now
0:39 why is it important to talk about the
0:42 levels of abstraction well we discussed
0:44 that in working out a theory of
0:47 semantics one aspect is first
0:51 pinpointing which parts of semantic
0:53 analysis you want to deal with are we
0:56 looking at semantics on the utterance
0:58 level or on the sentence level or on the
1:01 proposition level and out of all these
1:03 levels which one is more important to
1:05 meaning which one carries universal
1:09 meaning which one carries more locally
1:11 bound meaning or speaker bound meaning
1:13 are there any differences between them
1:15 this will be our topic for today's
1:17 lesson so let's start by identifying
1:19 each one of these three levels of
1:22 abstraction one by one and then we can
1:23 look at some main differences between
1:25 them so the first one we're gonna start
1:29 with is the utterance okay now when
1:33 utterance really is just any act of
1:36 uttering that speakers performed so
1:38 uttering basically means that you're
1:41 saying something now it is of convention
1:44 that we indicate an utterance by using
1:46 two quotation marks single quotation
1:49 marks so in this example I like apples
1:51 between two single quotation marks
1:54 indicates to me that this is an
1:57 utterance uttered by some speaker it's
2:00 not a sentence which will be written in
2:04 italics and the reason is
2:06 because there is a difference between
2:09 uttering a sentence and the actual
2:12 sentence so for example if someone says
2:16 I like apples and then again another
2:20 time they say I like apples and then
2:25 third time they say I like apples the
2:28 result here is three utterances on the
2:31 part of the speaker because that speaker
2:35 had uttered I like apples three
2:37 different times on three different
2:39 occasions what if he noticed they're all
2:43 the same sentence so it's only one
2:47 sentence so this is one sentence uttered
2:50 three times plus so that's just a simple
2:55 example of why we need conventions like
2:57 the simple quotation marks or the
3:00 italics to distinguish between if
3:04 something was an utterance or a sentence
3:07 now back to our utterance the following
3:11 are all examples of utterances ouch my
3:15 dog yeah I hate apples this is very
3:17 interesting so if you notice all of
3:21 these are what we just call uh pterence
3:23 --is but they are not all of equal
3:26 length so in this one we actually have
3:29 an entire sentence here as well but in
3:31 the first three they are not complete
3:33 ideas they are not complete sentences or
3:35 regardless they are still considered to
3:40 be utterances however the following word
3:45 is not an utterance because it's not a
3:49 word it's not from the language that we
3:51 speak now it could be from another
3:53 language a language we do not speak and
3:56 still be considered an utterance as long
4:01 as it is part of language any language
4:04 so this is not part of any language and
4:09 so it is not an utterance but this is it
4:11 is used in English and so that is an
4:13 utterance so now let's look at some of
4:16 the basic characteristics of utterances
4:18 just discussed all these different sizes
4:21 of utterances are still considered to be
4:24 occurrences believe it or not an entire
4:27 paragraph may also be considered an
4:30 utterance but under special
4:33 circumstances for example it has to be
4:36 uttered all at once with no pauses
4:40 because after and utterance is silenced
4:43 so think of it as taking turns when we
4:46 speak if it's one person's turn to speak
4:49 the entire stretch of their speech so
4:52 long as they're not any major pauses
4:56 will be considered an utterance so what
4:57 are the major characteristics of
5:02 utterances number one they need not be
5:05 grammatical for example ouch is not a
5:07 full sentence does not contain a full
5:10 idea there really is not much grammar
5:12 involved here the second thing is that
5:16 it needs to be uttered by one person at
5:21 a specific time location and event like
5:23 we said before it needs to it can be any
5:28 piece of language so far is it so far as
5:33 it is a piece of a language and not just
5:34 some gibberish
5:35 so these are some of the basic
5:39 characteristics of utterances let's take
5:42 a look at what a sentence is like next
5:43 now I'm sure all of you know what a
5:46 sentence is like we said the conventions
5:48 we're going to use for sentences is to
5:51 write them in italics so as to
5:54 distinguish a sentence from an utterance
5:58 now recall the example where one
6:01 sentence I like apples was uttered three
6:03 different times by the same person so
6:06 why did we consider to be one sentence
6:09 well because they all contain the same
6:12 grammatical information they're all
6:15 really just the same sentence now one
6:17 major difference between a sentence is
6:20 an and an utterance is that a sentence
6:24 takes into consideration the grammar so
6:28 if I say something like is what
6:31 it is this an utterance yes is it a
6:35 sentence no it is not a sentence and
6:37 that's because it is not grammatical so
6:40 a sentence takes into consideration the
6:43 grammatical aspect so if we go back to
6:47 our levels of abstraction and utterance
6:53 is a non abstract physical event going
6:56 up the scale of abstractness is the part
6:59 where we care about grammar now we'll
7:01 see the third part the third part is
7:04 called propositions this is the most
7:08 abstract level that we will do that we
7:10 will deal with here so if you recall
7:15 just like one sentence was was uttered
7:19 three different times and so the result
7:23 was three different utterances of one in
7:25 the same sentence likewise in this case
7:29 we can have two different sentences
7:33 three different sentences all summing up
7:36 to the same exact proposition let's take
7:39 an example five a sentence John ate the
7:42 apple and in other sentence the Apple
7:46 was eaten by John how many sentences do
7:47 I have here
7:49 that's one and that's two first of all
7:51 why did I consider these two different
7:54 sentences well recall that a sentence
7:58 has at its central core grammatical
8:00 facts now since the grammar of this
8:02 sentence is different from the grammar
8:05 of the second sentence one being active
8:08 and other being passive voice then they
8:10 are considered two sentences well here's
8:12 the million dollar question both of
8:15 these sentences still say the same thing
8:17 they both have essentially the same idea
8:20 behind him they both want to convey to
8:23 us the same exact message and that
8:25 message is that there's an apple and
8:27 there's a person named John and there's
8:32 an event of eating John was a person who
8:35 performed the action of eating and the
8:39 Apple was the object upon which the
8:41 action takes place
8:43 so that is the essential idea that we
8:45 find in both of these sentences I would
8:48 not only that EP nice also changed the
8:52 language like take Arabic for example
8:56 akela John Alto Faja so this is
8:59 basically eight John the Apple is this
9:03 another sentence yes it is why because
9:05 the grammatical structure changed and
9:08 why did the grammatical structure change
9:09 well because we have another language
9:11 and this other language has its own
9:14 grammatical rules so now we have three
9:16 different sentences all saying
9:19 essentially the same thing now we can
9:22 translate what they say into a
9:25 proposition the proposition will take
9:28 the form of the action and then we want
9:32 to ask about the agents of the action
9:34 and then we want to ask about the theme
9:39 or patience of that action okay or the
9:42 object affected by the action so that
9:45 would end up looking like this each
9:49 agent is John as we see here and then
9:53 the thing affected by it is the Apple
9:55 and here a to faha which also means the
9:58 apple so that is basically the
10:00 proposition or the essential core
10:03 meaning behind all these three sentences
10:06 what our propositions use for in daily life
10:06 life
10:10 well think of a translator a translator
10:12 might want to translate the Arabic
10:15 sentence ekkada Johnna too far into
10:18 English the translator first converts
10:21 this Arabic sentence into a proposition
10:23 in his mind they end up with eat
10:26 John the Apple then from this
10:29 proposition they applied the grammatical
10:32 rules of English and creates the
10:35 sentence John ate the Apple which abides
10:38 by the grammatical rules of English now
10:39 you might notice a few things about this
10:42 proposition here number one in the
10:44 sentence John ate the apple the tense of
10:47 the action or the verb was past tense
10:52 but that is not reflected here also in
10:54 the Arabic sentence
10:58 atif aha the verb is also in past tense
11:01 and not only that it's in Arabic akela
11:07 not eat or ate so why did we end up
11:10 creating a proposition where the action
11:13 does not take into consideration
11:16 grammatical grammatical information and
11:20 it does not take into consideration for
11:23 the language being used so propositions
11:26 are the essential core meaning of
11:28 sentences regardless of the language
11:30 being used then definitely their
11:34 function would be to provide the core
11:37 essential universally understood meaning
11:39 and therefore it would not make any
11:41 sense for them to be tied to any one
11:44 language in particular so the reason we
11:47 use English here is only by convention
11:50 we could have easily used Arabic instead
11:53 or French instead of that that is
11:56 exactly why we use all capital letters
11:59 in this proposition to indicate that we
12:04 do not mean the word eat in English but
12:09 the concept of eat as it is universally
12:12 understood we also do not care about the
12:14 grammatical information here and that's
12:17 why we are at the highest level of
12:20 abstraction we are abstracting away from
12:22 grammatical information here we don't
12:23 care about grammatical information
12:25 because what we care about here is the
12:28 essential core meaning that all these
12:31 sentences share regardless of the
12:33 language switching to any language or
12:35 switching to active or passive voice
12:38 will change the grammar but the meaning
12:41 of all of them will stay the same this
12:42 is why we do not care about grammatical
12:46 information for propositions hope that's
