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Introduction to Pragmatics
Summer 2016
Tuesday 2:30--4:00pm @ 2321.HS 3H
INSTRUCTOR
Todor Koev (Todor.Koev@uni-duesseldorf.de)
What is semantics?
Semantics = the study of linguistic meaning
More precisely: Semantics is linguistic meaning that ...
o is literal
o is conventional / lexically encoded
o is not context-dependent / is robust
o decides between truth and falsity
o can be looked up in a dictionary
o …
Semantics is about linguistic meaning that is invariant / robust
across different uses.
Textbook semantics
Semantics is about sentences and their truth conditions.
Semantics is compositional:
(1) UK is in trouble 1 iff UK in trouble
UK in trouble { | is in trouble}x x
“The UK is in trouble” is true if and only if the United
Kingdom is one of the things in the world that are in trouble.
Truth conditions should hold no matter when and how a particular
sentence is used.
Pragmatics
Pragmatics = the study of linguistic meaning as arising in context
One way to read this definition:
“Pragmatics is the study of linguistic acts and the contexts in
which they are performed.” (Robert Stalnaker)
Sentences do not exist in a vacuum. They are tools of
communication.
“Linguistic acts” or speech acts are about how sentences are used
in context.
Today: We will investigate the types and properties of speech acts.
Warm-up: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LgmpbXIGpcc
Speech acts
Main idea: Speaking is doing things. Uttering a sentence is
performing a communicative act.
The “meaning” of an utterance then has two components:
o semantic content: what is expressed by the sentence
o communicative act: what the utterance does, an action
More precisely:
o descriptive/propositional content: The information expressed
by the sentence.
o illocutionary force: The effect the utterance has on the context.
Example:
(2) illocutionary descriptive content
force
“Are you happy?” Question(you are happy)
Speech acts vs. sentence types
Speech act (pragmatics): What the speaker does with her
utterance.
Sentence type (syntax): A grammatical construction that is
conventionally used to perform a given speech act.
Although there are strong correlations between sentence type and
speech act, there is no one-to-one correspondence.
speech act sentence type example
assertion declarative “John is here.”
question interrogative “Are you hungry?”
command/request imperative “Close the door.”
performative first person present tense S “I thank you.”
Indirect speech acts
Indirect speech acts: Speech acts which involve a mismatch
between illocutionary force and grammatical form.
(3) I am a little cold. (a declarative sentence)
a. Assertion: a statement about the speaker’s physical state.
I am a little cold.
b. Question: an inquiry about the heating in the room
Is the heating on?
c. Request: a request to crank up the heating
Please crank up the heating.
In (3b)/(3c), a declarative sentence is used to express a question/a
request. These are indirect speech acts.
Assertion informally
Assertion: An attempt to add fresh information to the context
(=the agreed-upon information).
o “Fresh” information: Asserting discourse-old information is
usually unacceptable.
(4) Melanie is rich. She lives in Beverly Hills. #She is rich.
Q: What type of content is discourse-old?
o An “attempt” to add information: Asserted content can be rejected
by the hearer.
(5) A: Melanie is rich. B: No, she is actually very poor.
Assertion involves a process of negotiation of information between
speakers. Only accepted information enters the context.
Assertion formally
Asserted content, if accepted, reduces the possible ways in which
the world can be.
More formally: An act of assertion removes from the context the
possible worlds in which the asserted content is false.
Example (using the semantics from the slides on Presupposition
Projection):
1 2 3{ , , }c w w w 1 3 4Germany won { , , }w w w
(6) Germany wonc
Germany wonc
1 2 3 1 3 4{ , , } { , , }w w w w w w
1 3{ , }w w
Questions informally Questions try to obtain information from the hearer.
Two types of questions in language:
o Yes-No questions/Polar questions: Introduce two alternatives
and can be answered with a simple “Yes” or “No”.
(7) Q: Are you coming to the party? A: Yes./No.
o Content questions/Wh-questions: Ask for specific information
and typically introduce several alternatives/there are several
answers possible.
(8) Q: Who is coming to the party? A: Matt and Jessica.
Answers need not be exhaustive: in (8), Kevin and Laura could be
coming to the party as well.
Q: Why would (8A) usually be understood as exhaustive?
Questions formally
Questions introduce alternatives, i.e. possible answers.
The meaning of a question can be stated as the set of its possible
answers.
(9) Are you coming to the party?
{ I am coming to the party , I am not coming to the party }
(10) Who is coming to the party?
{ Matt is coming to the party , Jessica is coming to the party ,...}
Important: Questions denote sets of sentence meanings. They are
then correctly predicted to not be true or false.
(11) Q: Who passed the exam? A: #That’s not true.
Questions in context
What is the effect a question has on the context?
The context is split into different cells (=sets of worlds), each of
which represents one possible answer to that question.
Intuitive idea:
(12) Who is coming to the party? Context
No one
Matt
Jessica
Matt and Jessica
…
Q: Is “No one” really a good answer to “Who is coming to the
party”?
Commands/Requests
Commands/Requests are similar to questions in that they ask the
hearer to do something.
Unlike questions, they expect physical actions, not information.
Examples:
(13) Please close the door.
(14) Get out!
(15) Give me your money!
Interestingly, imperative sentences lack subjects crosslinguistically.
This suggests that imperatives may denote properties, not
propositions, e.g. in (13) the property of closing the door.
Commands/Requests formally
Semantically, imperative sentences denote properties.
(16) get out { | gets out}x x
Pragmatically: imperatives ask the hearer to see to it that she fits the
property described by the utterance.
The “hearer”? Imperatives must then have an indexical component.
(17) Get out! ( ) should ensure that ( ) get outc c chearer hearer
Imperatives and Yes-No questions create two alternatives.
However:
o Alternatives for imperatives are physical actions, not answers.
o Imperatives “prefer” the positive alternative, i.e. the speaker
wants the hearer to follow the request/command.
Performatives
A performative utterance is one which self-verifies itself.
Examples:
(18) I apologize for what I have done.
(19) I promise to never again make snide remarks about
sauerkraut.
The speaker is describing what her utterance is actually doing.
The action performed is an apology/promise. The sentence is
describing the action the utterance is performing.
Such sentences, if sincerely uttered, are then always true.
All utterances are performative (because they are actions), so such
speech acts are “performative” in the narrow sense of the word.
Performatives: grammar
Performative utterances are expressed by first person present tense
sentences.
If they lack these grammatical features, they typically lose their
performative force.
(20) I apologize for what I have done. (performative)
(21) I apologized for what I have done. (assertion)
(22) John apologizes for what he has done. (performative?)
Exceptions: missing subject and tense marking.
(23) Thank you, Gwen. (performative)
(24) Sorry. (performative)
Performatives: Hereby test
How can be test whether an utterance is a performative?
One empirical diagnostic is the Hereby Test: a performative
sentence should be able to include hereby in it.
(25) I hereby apologize for what I have done.
(26) #I hereby apologized for what I have done.
(27) ?John hereby apologizes for what he has done.
hereby “by means of this”
Q1: What type of expression is hereby, given its meaning?
Q2: Given your answer to Q1, what is this telling you about the
semantics of performatives?
Performatives: semantics
Performative sentences describe the event of their own utterance.
They explicitly say what type of event that is: an apology, a
promise, a baptism, etc.
Performative utterances are then self-referring, in fact self-verifying.
Approximate semantics, where utterance(c) = the utterance of
speech context c):
(28) I thank you for your attention 1c
iff
utterance(c) is an event of the speaker thanking the hearer for
their attention
So: hereby = “by means of this utterance”.
The Performative Hypothesis
Performative utterances are prefixed by a declaration of what the
speaker is doing with the sentence.
(29) I warn you, don’t make me mad!
(30) I bet you 100 Euros Ronaldo will score a goal.
(31) I now pronounce you husband and wife.
The Performative Hypothesis (PH) says that such prefixes are
silently present in the syntax of all sentences.
(32) I’m cold is really: I tell you that I’m cold.
(33) Sit down! is really: I command you to sit down.
(34) I’ll study for the AP exam is really: I promise you to study for
the AP exam.
Supporting evidence: reflexives
Reflexive pronouns: myself, yourself, themselves, …
Reflexive pronouns need to be preceded by an NP of the same
gender/number or else the sentence is ungrammatical (*).
(35) I / *You have made a cake for myself.
(36) You / *I have made a cake for yourself.
Certain sentence types (e.g. imperatives) can host first/second
person reflexives without antecedents. This is explained by the PH
since the invisible performative prefix has I and you in it.
(37) Behave yourself! (what is actually said)
(38) I am telling you to behave yourself! (the full structure)
Contradicting evidence
Meanings don’t match. (39) means something very different from (40). One can be true and
the other false.
(39) I’m cold.
(40) I tell you that I’m cold.
The PH is clearly false.
But it brings up a question: Is illocutionary force part of the
grammar or is it only a matter of pragmatics?
Summary
We have looked at how sentences are used in discourse.
We distinguished between the descriptive/propositional content of
the sentence (intuitively, the semantics) and the illocutionary force
(intuitively, the effect on the context).
We discussed a sample of speech acts: assertions, questions,
commands/requests, and performatives.
We saw that performative utterances offer a window into what
speech acts do and the way they interact with the descriptive
content of the sentence.
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