Semantics and pragmatics Slide 2 Focuses on the literal meanings
of words, phrases and sentences; concerned with how grammatical
processes build complex meanings out of simpler ones Slide 3
Focuses on the use of language in particular situations; aims to
explain how factors outside of language contribute to both literal
meaning and nonliteral meanings which speakers communicate using
language Slide 4 To understand semantic meaning, we have to bring
together 3 main components: 1) the context in which a sentence is
used, 2) the meanings of the words in the sentence, 3) the
morphological and syntactic structure Slide 5 Semantics Semantic
meaning Speakers meaning Pragmatics lexicon grammar Context of use
Slide 6 Sense meaning without reference to the specific real object
in the world (e.g. house dwelling) Reference is meaning tied to a
specific instance (e.g. the red house and the house at the end of
the block do not have the same meaning in terms of sense, but they
could refer to the same house) Slide 7 Some argue that proper names
have only reference and no sense. Do you agree? Slide 8 It is
possible that proper nouns have reference but no sense, like Spain.
There are also noun phrases that have sense but no reference, e.g.
The present king of France is bald. Slide 9 The most fundamental
semantic concepts describe how words, phrases, and sentences relate
to each other and to the world Slide 10 Synonymous words have (more
or less) the same meaning. Some linguists argue that no two words
have exactly the same meaning, as they may differ in connotation
(e.g. slender, slim, skinny) Or in their typical contexts of use
(e.g. buy, purchase) Slide 11 A word is polysemous if it has more
than one closely related meaning (e.g. wood a piece of a tree, a
group of trees) In a dictionary, polysemous words are often listed
as one head word, with several different senses (e.g. bear: 2
entries: 1.a to move while holding up and supporting; 2. to give
birth to, 3. to suport the weight of; 1.b to hold in the mind; bear
n. a big shaggy animal Slide 12 It is often difficult to
distinguish vagueness from polysemy Polysemous words have multiple
different, but related, meanings; vagueness, in contrast, describes
a single general meaning which becomes more specific in a
particular context of use Since it involves more than one meaning,
polysemy is a kind of ambiguity, but vagueness is not Slide 13
Words which are pronounced ad possibly spelled in the same way
(homographs), but with different meanings, e.g. to, too, two; bat
(animal), bat (stick) Slide 14 Heteronymous words have the same
graphic form (homographs), but have a different phonetic form, i.e.
pronounced differently and have a different meaning (e.g. bass
musical instrument/bass fish) Slide 15 Words whose meanings are
specific instances of a more general word: e.g. red, blue, and
yellow are hyponyms of color; bed, sofa, table and chair hyponyms
of furniture Slide 16 Antonyms words that are closely related; they
have properties in common, such as grammatical class and lexical
field, but they oppose each other in one aspect of meaning Slide 17
1. complementary when the presence of one implies the absence of
the other, e.g. alive/dead, present/absent 2. gradable: e.g.
rich/poor, happy/sad, short/long 3. relational opposites: the
existence of one implies the existence of its converse, e.g.
buyer/seller, husband/wife. Slide 18 1. odd/even 2. polite/rude 3.
short/long 4. pass/fail 5. good/bad 6. moral/immoral 7.
asleep/awake 8. mother/daughter 9. black/white 10. winner/loser
Slide 19 For each of the categories below, provide examples: 1.
synonymy 2. polysemy 3. homonymy 4. heteronymy 5. hyponymy Slide 20
Note down the synonyms of your classmates. For each decide whether
they are exact synonyms, i.e. whether they can easily be
substituted for each other Slide 21 Grammar (morphology and syntax)
generates new words, phrases and sentences This gives us a
potentially infinite number of words, phrases and sentences that
can have meaning In order to explain how an infinite number of
pieces of language can be meaningful, and how we, as language
users, can figure out the meanings of new ones, semanticists apply
the Principle of Compositionality Slide 22 The semantic meaning of
any unit of language is determined by the semantic meanings of its
parts along with the way they are put together Slide 23 Mary liked
you the meaning is determined by (a) the meanings of the individual
morphemes that make it up (Mary, like, past, you) B) the
morphological and syntactic structures of the sentence Slide 24
Compositional semantics (or formal semantics) concerned how the
Principle of Compositionality applies Formal semanticists study the
variety of grammatical patterns which occur in individual languages
and across the languages of the world Slide 25 Chomsky: established
relationships between syntax, semantics and phonology Syntax: 2
components: 1. the base component: the phrase structure rules and
their hierarchical relationships, modeled by the deep structure
trees; generates the deep structure; 2. the transformational
component, which consists of the transformational rules; generates
surface structures Slide 26 Syntax draws information from the
lexicon and feeds both PF and LF PF LF Lexicon Synta x Slide 27
Meaning is generated both by the syntax and through the words which
attach to nodes of the trees Slide 28 In addition to the categorial
rules, the base component also consists of a lexicon, in essence
our mental dictionary which contains all of the information
(morphosyntactic, phonological and semantic) related to the
vocabulary items of a language Slide 29 The semantic information
contained in the lexicon is represented in terms of semantic
features, which are arrived at through componential analysis Breaks
down the lexical item into its smaller semantic components Slide 30
The entry for boy has the syntactic features: (+Noun), (+Count),
(+Common) and it consists of semantic features such as (+) human,
which subsumes other semantic features such as (+Animate) Boy
+HUMAN ADULT +MALE Girl +HUMAN ADULT MALE Man +HUMAN + ADULT +MALE
Woman +HUMAN +ADULT -MALE Slide 31 The categorial rules generate a
string of slots to be filled with items from the lexicon via
lexical insertion rules. Each slot - associated with a set of
features which indicate which kind of item can be filled in By
combining these features with those features in the lexicon, the
lexical insertion rules generate such sentences as The boy laughed,
but not such sentences as The chalk lauged. Slide 32 Semantic roles
which noun phrases play in relationship to the verb of the clause
Verb has the central role in the clause, and it assigns roles to
participants depending on the type of the predicate (e.g.The boy
kicked the ball) The boy doer of the action: agent The ball the
receiver of the action and is changed by it: the theme Slide 33
Agent/Causer: Instigator of some action. (John killed Harry) Theme
(inanimate) or Patient (animate): Entity undergoing the effect of
some action. (John killed Harry) Experiencer: Entity experiencing
some psychological state. (John felt happy) Recipient (animate):
Entity receiving sth. (John sent a letter to Mary) Goal
(inanimate): Entity towards which something moves. (John sent the
letter to the post-office) (Radford 1997: 326) Slide 34 Possible
worlds help explain the semantics of modals because they provide a
way of talking about alternative possibilities The ability to
imagine alternative ways that the world could be alternative
possible worlds an essential part of the human capacity to use
language Slide 35 Epistemic modals involve reference to facts that
we know (I must have left my keys in the car) Deontic modals
(Guests should leave their keys in the car); Modals which are about
rules, right and wrong, obligations etc. are known as deontic
modals Slide 36 Semantics can play a role in the interpretation of
legislation Case (direct and indirect causation): Raymond Moskal,
who lived in Pennsylvania, would buy used automobiles, set back the
milometers, send the inaccurate mileage readings to Virginia along
with other required information, and receive new titles from
Virginia with the incorrect mileage. He would then sell the cars
for inflated prices to unsuspecting customers. He was prosecuted
and convicted for violating a statute that prohibits the interstate
transportation of falsely made securities. In short, Moskal got
real titles that contained false information. Slide 37 Legislation:
Whoever, with unlawful or fraudulent intent, transports in
interstate or foreign commerce any falsely made, forged, altered,
or counterfeited securities or tax stamps, knowing the same to have
been falsely made, forged, altered, or counterfeitedShall be fined
under this title or imprisoned not more than ten years, or both.
(18 USC &2314 (2001) Slide 38 The US Supreme Court agreed that
Moskal could be punished under this law, but Justice Scalia
dissented for two reasons based on the meaning of the phrase
falsely made. One reason had to do with the historical meaning of
the phrase falsely made in legal documents and the other had to do
with its ordinary meaning. Slide 39 Justice Scalia showed that in
the 100 years up to 1939, when the statute was written, legal
documents had used falsely made to mean forged or counterfeit Thus,
it seems that the meaning of this crucial phrase had changed, at
least within the world of law, between the time the law was written
and the time it was applied to Moskal Slide 40 Scalias other
argument was that the phrase falsely made, in its ordinary meaning,
includes only things that are counterfeit, not real documents that
are made to contain false information Solan concluded that Scalias
ordinary meaning argument is wrong He shows that falsely made
typically means made to include false information as in (When
falsely made, this accusation (child abuse) can be enormously
destructive Slide 41 In other words, a falsely made accusation
means that the accusation contained false information, and Solan
assumes by analogy that a falsely made car title would be a car
title containing false information Slide 42 Do you agree with
Justice Scalia or the majority? How convincing do you find Scalias
historical argument? Do you think that Solan is correct that
falsely made means the same thing when applied to an accusation and
when applied to a document? Is a falsely made car title a
counterfeit car title or a car title containing false information?
Slide 43 What do you think of Solans strategy of looking at a
database of newspaper columns to determine the ordinary meaning of
a controversial phrase? Slide 44 Two main branches: lexical
semantics and compositional semantics Lexical semantics: Meaning of
words Compositional semantics focuses on the process of building up
more complex meanings from simpler ones Slide 45 The study of
meaning in use Provides tools to help us understand the meaning in
a given social context, including the effect that language has on
those involved in the speech situation Semantics the study of
meaning outside of its contextualized use with a focus on the
literal meaning of words and phrases Slide 46 We often think that
the role of language is to explain, inform, describe, and say sth
about the world Language also used to do things, such as promise,
bet, request, threaten, warn, apologize, swear (in court), etc.
Slide 47 J.L. Austin, How to do Things with Words (1955) "It was
for too long the assumption of philosophers that the business of a
'statement' can only be to 'describe' some state of affairs, or to
'state some fact', which it must do either truly or falsely.
Wittgenstein: Don't ask for the meaning, ask for the use." -
language as a vehicle for social activity Slide 48 Austin
questioned the truth value of statements, a view which centered on
the conditions of an utterance that can be declared true or false
Austin examined performatives: sentences that are used to do
things, rather than declare or state sth Slide 49 Performatives: I
now pronounce you man and wife Only certain people in certain
conditions can do this kind of pronouncing; if the conditions are
right, then a change has taken place through the uttering the words
Slide 50 A) I promise to visit tomorrow B) She promised to visit
tomorrow Sentences which perform actions performatives (A); other
sentences (B) constatives A good test of whether a sentence is a
performative is whether you can insert the word hereby before the
verb (I hereby promise; *I hereby walk) Slide 51 Make a list of
performative utterances What conditions must be present for the new
state of affairs to come about? Slide 52 Speech acts which in
themselves constitute an action: illocutinary force Illocutionary
force - ability of the utterance to carry out an act Slide 53
Austin pointed out that even constatives perform actions of a sort;
B performs the action of reporting The distinction between
performatives and constatives may not be as important as the idea
that all sentences can be used to perform actions Slide 54
Locutionary act: the act of saying sth Illocutionary act: the act
of doing sth by saying sth Perlocutionary act: the act of achieving
sth by saying sth Slide 55 Scenario 1:(in an elevator, 3 people, A
and B know each other, C is smoking: A (to B): Ahem, did I ever
tell you that I am allergic to cigarette smoke? Scenario 2: (A is
filling in a form for a dating service): A (writing on form): I am
allergic to cigarette smoke Slide 56 John Searle: direct ad
indirect speech acts "In indirect speech acts the speaker
communicates to the hearer more than he actually says by way of
relying on their mutually shared background information, both
linguistic and nonlinguistic, together with the general powers of
rationality and inference on the part of the hearer Slide 57 There
are speech acts which are so fundamental to communication that they
are captured through the mood of our utterance: Indicative mood:
giving information Interrogative mood: request for information
Imperative mood: command to do sth Slide 58 The mood of each
utterance signals its illocutionary force Context key in explaining
what people are trying to do with the language they use Slide 59 1.
Would you mind handing me the salt? 2. Go ahead, try it. See where
thatll get you! 3. Honey, the phones ringing! 4. I have always
wanted to have a pair of earrings just like those. 5. Im sure I
must look awful. Slide 60 Imagine you overhear the following
conversation: A: Are John and Mary back together again? B: I saw a
red Porche parked outside 1128 Green Street last nightand it was
still there this morning! Slide 61 In order to help us understand
how context works in deciphering meaning in a given situation, we
an look to Grices Cooperative Principle, which explains how people
act in conversation: Make your conversational contribution such as
is required, at the stage at which it occurs, by the accepted
purpose or direction of the talk exchange in which you are engaged
Slide 62 Grice is not telling us what to do, but rather providing
an explanation for how we behave in communicative situations ad how
we assume other people behave Slide 63 In the exchange above, we
might assume that Bs response is providing A with the information
requested. We can make the connection between the question and the
answer by relying on presupposition: B presupposes that A also
knows the following: John has a red Porche Mary lives at 1128 Green
Street Slide 64 Cooperative Principle: Quantity Relevance Quality
Manner Slide 65 Quantity: Maxim 1. Make your contribution as
informative as is required Maxim 2. Do not make your contribution
more informative than is required. Slide 66 Relevance: Maxim 1. Be
relevant. Slide 67 Quality: Maxim 1: Do not say what you believe to
be false. Maxim 2. Do not say that for which you lack adequate
evidence. Slide 68 Manner: Maxim 1: Avoid obscurity of expression.
Maxim 2. Avoid ambiguity. Maxim 3. Be brief. Maxim 4. Be orderly.
Slide 69 When we break any of the sub-principles, we create an
instance of conversational implicature: A: I heard you did well on
the exam B: Yes, and pigs fly. Flouting the maxim of quality, as I
am telling an obvious untruth Slide 70 Observing the maxims
Violating one or more maxims (e.g. lying) Opting out (e.g. refusing
to answer a direct question) Not fulfilling one maxim because of a
clash with another Flouting a maxim in order to make a
conversational implicature Slide 71 1. The speaker deliberately
flouts a conversational maxim to convey additional meaning not
expressed literally, e.g. a speaker responds to the question: How
did you like the guest speaker? with the following utterance: Well,
Im sure he was speaking English. If the speaker is assumed to be
following the cooperative principle in spite of flouting the Maxim
of Quantity, the utterance must have an additional nonliteral
meaning, such as: The content of the speech was confusing. Slide 72
2. The speakers desire to fulfil two conflicting maxims results in
his flouting one maxim to invoke the other, e.g. when he responds
to the question Where is John? by saying: Hes either in the
cafeteria or in his office The Maxim of Manner and the Maxim of
Quality are in conflict: a cooperative speaker doesnt want to be
ambiguous but also doesnt want to give false information by giving
a specific answer in spite of his uncertaity. By flouting the Maxim
of Manner, he invokes the Maxim of Quality Slide 73 A. Hows your
work coming along? B. It sure is sunny outside. Slide 74 words and
phrases that cannot be fully understood without additional
contextual information Words are deictic if their semantic meaning
is fixed but their denotational meaning varies depending on time
and/or place. Words or phrases that require contextual information
to convey any meaning e.g., English pronouns deictic Slide 75 Slide
76 Person Place Time Slide 77 grammatical persons involved in an
utterance: (1) those directly involved (e.g. the speaker, the
addressee), (2) those not directly involved (e.g. overhearersthose
who hear the utterance but who are not being directly addressed)
(3) those mentioned in the utterance Slide 78 Locations may be
either those of the speaker and addressee or those of persons or
objects being referred to. The most salient English examples are
the adverbshere and there and the demonstratives this and that,
e.g.: I enjoy living in this city Here is where we will place the
statue She was sitting over there Slide 79 Time, or temporal,
deixis concerns itself with the various times involved in and
referred to in an utterance. This includes time adverbs, e.g.
"now", "then", "soon", etc. and also different tenses Example:
tomorrow denotes the consecutive next day after every day. The
"tomorrow" of a day last year was a different day from the
"tomorrow" of a day next week. Time adverbs can be relative to the
time when an utterance is made (Fillmore: "encoding time", or ET)
or when the utterance is heard (Fillmores "decoding time", or DT):
e.g. It is raining now, but I hope when you read this it will be
sunny Slide 80 Discourse Social Slide 81 concerns the social
information that is encoded within various expressions, such as
relative social status and familiarity. Two major forms of it are
the so-called TV distinctions and honorifics. TV distinctions,
named for the Latin tu and vos - the name given to the phenomenon
when a language has two different second-person pronouns. The
varying usage of these pronouns indicates something about
formality, familiarity, and/or solidarity between the interactants,
e.g. the T form might be used when speaking to a friend or social
equal, whereas the V form would be used speaking to a stranger or
social superior - common in European languages Slide 82 Discourse
deixis, also referred to as text deixis, refers to the use of
expressions within an utterance to refer to parts of the discourse
that contains the utterance including the utterance itself: e.g.
This is a great story Slide 83 . An anaphoric reference refers to
something within a text that has been previously identified, e.g.
"Susan dropped the plate. It shattered loudly" the word "it" refers
to the phrase "the plate". A cataphoric reference refers to
something within a text that has not yet been identified, e.g. in
"He was very cold. David promptly put on his coat" the identity of
the "he" is unknown until the individual is also referred to as
"David". Slide 84 A. Do you see that baby girl over there? She is
cute. When a word or phrase picks up its meaning from some other
piece of language nearby, the relationship between the two anaphora
A word which gets its meaning in this way an anaphor, and the piece
of language which gives the anaphor its meaning its antecedent
Slide 85 Presupposition - when a speakers choice of words shows
that he is taking sth for granted E.g.: John stopped crying at noon
makes sense if it is assumed that John was crying just before noon.
Slide 86 an implicit assumption about the world or background
belief relating to an utterance whose truth is taken for granted,
e.g.: Jane no longer writes fiction. Presupposition: Jane once
wrote fiction. Have you stopped eating meat? Presupposition: you
had once eaten meat. Have you talked to Hans? Presupposition: Hans
exists. Slide 87 A presupposition must be mutually known or assumed
by the speaker and addressee for the utterance to be considered
appropriate in context. Slide 88 Presuppositions often understood
in terms of the notion of common ground The common ground a set of
propositions which the participants in a conversation mutually
assume The common ground - a major part of the context of use, and
helps us make explicit the role of presupposition Slide 89
Indexicality and presupposition aspects of pragmatics which have to
do with the relationship between context of use and semantic
meaning Slide 90 Cultural assumptions can be crucial in determining
speakers meaning Example: if two Chinese people are looking at the
dessert display in a French restaurant, and one says to the other,
That tart is not too sweet, she intends this comment as praise of
the tart. She might intend to implicate that her dinner partner
should order the tart. This meaning arises, in part, from the fact
that it is common knowledge among Chinese people that most of them
find western desserts too sweet. Among some other groups, the same
comment could be interpreted as a criticism, rather than a
compliment Slide 91 The cultural specificity of the speakers
meaning is not a fact about the Chinese language The implicature
could arise regardless of the language they are speaking Slide 92
Pragmatics about how the context of use contributes to meaning,
both semantic meaning and speakers meaning Core topics:
indexicality, presupposition, implicature, speech acts
