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  #1  
Old 06-Jun-2004, 03:06
Anonymous
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Default UNDERSTAND MEANING...please help

Dear Sirs,

I would like to ask for your help to use the terminology for analysis the following sentences in order to 'UNDERSTAND MEANING'. The sentences (a) below are extracted from sentences (b). I wish to explain in what way the sentences (a) are indeterminate without a context. I have analysed and written as below. Please see whether it's appropriate to suit 'UNDERSTAND MEANING' concept. Thanks a million....

(1a) Yet only recently has the field summoned the will -- and the money --to do much about it.

(1b) Linguists have known for years that thousands of the world's languages are at grave risk of extinction. Yet only recently has the field summoned the will ¡V and the money ¡V to do much about it.

(2a) Please check this page for new service announcements.

(2b) CiteSeer.IST is a freely available version of CiteSeer at the School of Information Sciences and Technology at Penn State University. It has most of the documents in the original CiteSeer and updates will start soon. New services such as OAI compatibility are now available. Please check this page for new service announcements.

My analysis is:

As an effective communication, the speaker must make his / her intention to be as clear as possible to the hearer and the hearer find it easy to interpret the intended meaning of the speaker. However, our language often contains many elements whose meanings are inherently indeterminate as the linguistic communication is in process. The indeterminacy inherent includes: 1) from the utterance itself: in the sentences 1a and 2a, it is very clear that the objects in 1a is 'it' (also pronoun) and 2a is 'this (also adjunct) page for new service announcements' but we don't know 'it', 'this' and 'for new service announcements' for what. 'It' may be for the programme, or the business market, etc. and 'this page' may be for any page of the book, or of the magazine, or of the file, or depending on when the sentence is produced, and 'for new service announcements' may be for slim products service announcement, or equipment logistic service announcement, or depending on who utters these sentences. These kind of indeterminacy are due to the fact that the meaning of deictic pronouns, adjuncts, and noun phases (it, this, for new service announcements) is highly context-dependent, and in the absence of the context, the utterances a1 and 2a are indeterminate. 2) the same sentence gives different meaning implications when uttered in different contexts under different circumstances. 3) the way in which utterances may be used to perform different functions under different circumstances. In the use of 'to do much about it' and 'please check this page for new service announcements', they can be interpreted in a variety of ways, depending on the intended meaning of the speaker and the context. For instance, the former implies that you haven't done any more in the previous time and need to put more efforts on the event now, etc. and the latter implies that 'you did not know any new company service because you did not check the company web page', and etc.
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  #2  
Old 06-Jun-2004, 06:36
Editor, UsingEnglish.com
 
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How about the deictic definite article in 'the field' in 1A?
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  #3  
Old 07-Jun-2005, 21:23
safya
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Default Re: UNDERSTAND MEANING...please help

i cant understand i want it to be in rabic
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  #4  
Old 08-Jun-2005, 03:49
Editor, UsingEnglish.com
 
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Default Re: UNDERSTAND MEANING...please help

I can't help with Arabic.
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