chapter-FXQ.ppt

Meaningful and meaningless sentence Feng Xueqing 3110067012 How to identify whether a sentence is meaningful or not? The verificationist theory: the meaning of an expression, if it has one, is determined by the verifiability of the sentences, or propositions, containing it. (p40) ; Sentences are meaningful if (and only if) they have a determinate truth-value (philosophical semantics).(p131) The?verificationist theory?(of meaning): sentences meaning is determined by the method through which it is?empirically verified. In other words, if something cannot be empiricially verified, it is meaningless. (Wikipedia) For example, It is snowing. Truth-condition theory (linguistics semantics) The meaning of an expression is its contribution to the truth-conditions of the sentences containing it. (p40) Truth-conditional semantics?is an approach to semantics of natural language that sees the meaning of sentences as being the same as their?truth conditions. Truth-conditional theories of semantics attempt to define the meaning of a given sentence by explaining whether the sentence is true. (wikipedia) For example, “snow is white” “swan is white” Grammaticality Grammaticality?is the quality of a linguistic utterance?of being?grammatically?well-formed. (wikipedia) John? Lyons defines the concept as part of the acceptability of utterances which can be accounted for in terms of the rules (1968). --The complement criterion for being semantics soundness. e.g. She intend to do it. × 同学们坐在宽广的阅览室里看书。 × Meaningfulness Semantically well-formed(p134) Meaningfulness reflects the significance of a piece of information which can be comprehended or interpreted by human beings. Part of the acceptability of utterances. And a complement criterion for being semantics soundness. “What color is my purple bag? ”（p135…literally meaningless) “贾小凡, 你叫什么名字？” Acceptability To say that an utterance (more precisely, an utterance-type) is acceptable is to imply that