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Lecture Notes
Saeed, Chapter 7, ‘Context and Inference’
Linguistics 3430
Fall 2007
I. The Basic Idea
Reddy tells us that meaning isn’t 'right there in the words'. This chapter gives a lot of evidence in favor of Reddy's claim. It does this by showing that a lot of the meaning that we ‘get out of’ a linguistic expression is actually based on the inferences we make from the context and our reasoning about how something fits into the context.
II. But what is Context?
The speech scene. Speaker. Hearer. Time. Place. Location of speaker. Location of hearer. The culture. Scripts. Frames. Assumptions about rationality. Grice’s cooperative principle. Shared background that may be more ‘local’ than the cultural background. People we know, times in our shared history. The conversation or text thus far. Established referents. A. Deixis Person deixis me, you, we Place deixis here, there, bring. Time deixis Now, three years ago , tense, interjections like Oh my God! Social deixis Vous , tu , salut in French B. Deictic transfer ( style indirect libre ) He scrambled down into the narrow canyon. Now he had the perfect vantage point. Dateline: University of California, Berkeley. Here in the birthplace of the student revolution... A car thief usually abandons the car several miles away.
C. Referring Conventions Some forms of reference are understandable only in very specific contexts. A. Shorthands. I'll take the blue. Do you have any more larges? B. Metonymy. Using a related item to refer to something else. From the PBS series ‘Russia’s War’ in a segment concerning the performance of a Shostakovich symphony during the siege of Leningrad: The first violin was dead. The French horn was dying. The drum had died on the way there. D. Anaphora Some forms of reference require the speaker to recover identity from the prior conversational or narrative context. My mom is a dictionary writer. She works for Cambridge University Press. I work out, but my brother rarely does so. A: Did you find the key? B: No. But at least I tried. A: Do you have the report? B: No. But I have a summary. A: I’m getting a beer. B: Me too. E. Accessibility Definiteness. You can use a definite NP to refer to something that is accessible from a previously mentioned frame. You can also use a definite NP to refer to something that is mutually identifiable because of ‘intimate’ shared background. We ate at Le Central last night. The desserts were incredible. (restaurant frame) Honey, do you need the car? Filling in the gaps. Since we know about cultural frames, we can make inferences and elicit inferences from others. A: I’m starving, but I have no cash! B: There’s a muffin in my purse.
Opting out. I'd like to tell you more, but I really don't know anything more. OR I can expand on this, but it would take us very far afield of our topic. Violating. An apple with the label No cholesterol. Kid: I'm going to the candy store, Ma! [Child is going to play dice on street corner the way to the candy store.] These examples are not lies, but are deceptive. Exploiting. A speaker VIOLATES a maxim in an OBVIOUS way to imply something he or she would rather not say outright: A: Do you think that Chris should be admitted to the doctoral program? B: Well, he’s a super nice guy. Has a wide range of interests. Very helpful. A: How’s married life? B: Wonderful. Couldn’t be better. Like a dream come true. Better than I could have imagined. Have I said wonderful already? A: Did she sing at the game? B: She uttered a series of sounds that closely corresponded to the National Anthem. A: The Linguistics faculty are such a bunch of incompetent fools! B: Lovely weather today, isn’t it? A: How many kids did Angelina and Brad adopt? B: A dozen at last count. The Lexicon of Intentionally Ambiguous Recommendations (LIAR) Implicature is any meaning that does not count when we’re trying to determine whether the sentence is true or false.
Implicatures are conversational (inferred via the maxims) or conventional (encoded in the lexicon or grammar). Conversational implicatures are generalized (computed by the interpreter, on the supposition that the speaker is obeying the maxims) or particularized (computed by a hearer who is trying to reconcile two conflicting beliefs: (1) the speaker has flouted a maxim and (2) the speaker is cooperative). Conventional implicatures are detachable ; Generalized conversational implicatures are not. Conventional Implicature a. Pat’s from the South and she’s very open minded. b. Pat’s from the South but she’s very open minded. Generalized Conversational Implicature a. If you give me $50, I’ll wax your car. b. Give me $50 and I’ll wax your car. c. For $50, I’ll wax your car. d. Fifty dollars and I’ll wax you car. Generalized conversational implicatures are defeasible ; conventional implicatures are not. I was sick for a week, but I'm better now. ?? I’ve been sick for a week, but I'm better now.
Two Types of Quantity Inference
These are opposed but interacting factors: The Principle of Least Effort (the burden is on the interpreter to ‘read in’ as much as possible); The Force of Diversification (the burden is on the speaker to be maximally clear). QUANTITY 1. Model: Speaker wants to communicate a precise message. What is communicated is more definite than what is said. Failure to employ the stronger form indicates that the speaker was not in a position to employ it. Don’t read anything into the utterance. Reason by Q1: Some of my friends are Polish. If you've got a good excuse, she'll accept your homework late. She had a danish or a doughnut. It was
Car (vs. truck) Gay (vs. lesbian) Shoe (vs. boot, sandal, etc.) Cow (vs. bull) The speaker uses the form cow , when we know that there is a more specific word that refers to a subclass ( bull ). We infer, via quantity 1, that the speaker did not use the more specific form because it was not applicable, and therefore that the speaker is referring to the opposite subclass (female cows). Basic Narrowing (Q2-based): drink for ‘drink alcohol’, rectangle for ‘parallelogram that’s not a square’, number for ‘integer’, temperature for ‘fever’ F. Information Structure Information structure is the branch of linguistic pragmatics that asks: Why are there so many ways to describe the same situation? The answer is that different forms are appropriate for different situations. Active vs. Passive Police on Wednesday arrested one of the four men they believe responsible for last week’s attempted bombings of London’s mass transit system, the head of Britain's anti-terror police branch said. Yasin Hassan Omar, a 24-year-old Somali with British residency, was arrested early Wednesday morning in Birmingham, England’s second largest city. (cnn.com 7/27/05) The theory of information structure
- Propositions are structured for communicative purposes.
- They are divided into a focus part (the new information) and a presupposed part (the topic , or what’s under discussion).
- The grammar indicates (through word order or placement of accent) what the new information is: o Predicate Focus (Topic-Comment) : Context: Speaker looks in refrigerator and says: Harry ate the LEFTOVERS. (Focus is on the predicate.) o Argument Focus : Context 1: Who ate the leftovers? HARRY ate the leftovers. (Focus is the subject.) Context 2: What did Harry eat? Harry ate the LEFTOVERS. (Focus is on the object; this pattern looks identical to the topic-comment pattern.)
- In languages that don’t have moveable accent, a special construction is required for argument focus. Note French:
C’est Harry qui a mangé les restes. ‘It was Harry who ate the leftovers.’ C’est les restes qu’il a mangé. ’It was the leftovers that he ate.’ What is the most common information-structure pattern?
- The most common pattern is Topic-Comment.
- Subject focus is rare.
- Why? Across languages, subjects tend to be topics.
- That is, subjects tend to be the predictable arguments in clauses (you, me or someone who has already been mentioned).
- One manifestation of this preference is the prevalence of pronouns in subject position. In the Switchboard corpus of English conversation, 91 percent of subjects are pronouns.
- Here’s an example of a typical conversational turn (from the Fisher corpus). What are the forms of the subjects? I know a guy from Kuwait took a class with him uh in the History department and uh I’ve learned that uh he was deported for some reason. I have no idea what had happened and he looked like a nice guy. Well, probably because he was from that country. It was weird. Languages don’t like new participants in subject position, and so they use special grammatical constructions to keep them out of subject position or otherwise mark ‘new’ subjects as special: Context I. Woman slowly gets on bus, laden with grocery bags. Apologizing to disgruntled fellow passengers, she says: French Italian English Japanese J’ai ma voiture qui est en panne. Mi si è rotta la macchina. My CAR broke down. Kuruma ga koshoo-shi-ta. Context II. A friend asks to borrow the speaker’s car. Speaker responds: French Italian English Japanese Ma voiture, elle est en panne. Si è rotta. It broke DOWN. Kuruma wa koshoo-shi-ta.
