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