LIN200H1 Lecture 6: lecture6-semantics
Document Summary
Semantics is oten taken to be speciically concerned only with literal meaning, while pragmatics is concerned with non-literal meaning, making it a sep- arate but related branch of linguistics. In this way, by looking at sets of entities, we can determine the truth value of a sentence: whether it is true or false in the universe. Because extensional meaning is tied to the universe, it is limited by context: the state of afairs at a particular time and place. For example, professor sanders usually refers to the entity deined above when spoken by a linguistics student at the university of toronto. However, there is also a profes- sor sanders who studies ants at the university of tennessee. Because of its intensional meaning, we can tell that professor sanders is a professor is a true sentence, without having to know which speciic entity professor sanders happens to refer to.