PART VII: SENSE RELATIONS

 

“The sense of an expression is a function of the senses of its component lexemes and of their occurrence in a particular grammatical construction (Lyons, 1977, p.206). Lyons further explains that sense is here defined “to hold between the words or expressions of a single language independently of the relationship, if any, which holds between those words or expressions and their referents or denotata” (p.206). He also draws a line between a sense and a meaning. Regarding the sense, we ask the question, “What is the sense of such a word or expression?--instead of “What is the meaning of such a word or an expression?” Sense is an internal relation. Lyons further analyzes that the relationship of denotation is logically basic: we know that cow and animal are related in a certain way because denotatum of cow is included into the denotatum of animal. However, the problem occurs with such a word as a unicorn, which does not have denotation. The sentence There is no such animal as a unicorn is understandable; however, There is no such book as a unicorn is odd because animal and unicorn are related in sense, but a unicorn and a book are not related; therefore, it is a nonsensical sentence. Even if the words and expressions do not have denotation, they still may have sense.

We should also draw the distinction between reference and sense. Reference deals with “the relationship between linguistic elements, words, sentences, etc., and the non-linguistic world of experience” (Palmer, 1981, p. 29), while sense deals with “the complex system of relationships that hold between the linguistic elements themselves and is concerned with extralinguistic relations” (p. 29).

Words and phrases can enter into a variety of sense relations with other words and phrases in the language. “The sense of an expression is its place in a system of semantic relationships with other expressions in the language” (Hurford, Heasley, & Smith, 2010, p. 29). These sense relations are synonymy, antonymy, polysemy, and hyponymy.