Sentence meaning Words are assembled into sentences. The meaning of a sentence is determined by the meaning of the words (or other lexical units) and grammatical structures of which it is composed.
Sentences designate situations, that is, mental representations of a state of affairs. To get an understanding of how language describes situations, the following four elements must be distinguished:
THE FOUR ELEMENTS OF A SITUATION
The event
The participants in the event
the setting where the event ind its participants are situated
The ground the situation in which the sentence is uitered