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.

Announcements

Assignment #4 is due today.

Reading for next time: “Coherence relations”