LINGUIST 3II3 Lecture Notes - Lecture 21: Truth Condition, Lexical Semantics, The Tall Guy
27 Nov 2018
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If we are given a range of possibilities. Desires specify which possibilities we are striving to make real: in our ideal world, example: james wants to attend mcmaster (1st choice) Brock (4th: his desires = ordering os possible worlds, if for whatever reason, mcmaster is taken out of the picture, his second choice will move up in rank. Reminder: the meaning of a proper name is its referent: the meaning of john is john (individual, the meaning of a sentene is its truth condition, under which conditions it is true or false. Assumption: imagine there is an individual weihan. Noah is happy - are these sentences synonymous: yes. Patricia believes that noah/weihan is happy - are these sentences synonymous: yes: if patricia knows they refer to the same individual - if she doesn"t then no. Noah is happy vs weihan is happy > synonymous in terms of truth conditions. It"s a truth of mathematics that two plus two is four.
