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UNIT 2: THE SEMANTICS-PRAGMATICS INTERFACE, Resúmenes de Filología

Universidad Complutense de Madrid (UCM)Filología
Prof. Carmen Maíz Arevalo

UNIT 2: THE SEMANTICS-PRAGMATICS INTERFACE + PRÁCTICAS

Tipo: Resúmenes

2021/2022

Subido el 09/05/2022

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UNIT 2: THE SEMANTICS-PRAGMATICS INTERFACE !
2.1. DEIXIS !
•Types of deixis !
2.2. Presupposition !
Introduction
• What is the common aspect that links pragmatics and semantics? !
Meaning !
• Semantics–meaning is derived from linguistic knowledge (i.e. from the words
themselves) !
– Conventional, lexical meaning (as found in dictionaries) !
– Based on truth-conditions (literal meaning, logical forms) !
• Pragmatics–meaning is derived from linguistic knowledge but also other aspects such
as context (in its wider sense) !
– Based on non-truth-functional conditions (implicature) !
•She got lucky !
• Imagine the following conversation: !
A: What’s your mother like? !
B: She is a woman and she is married to my father. !
• Why is it so odd? !
How often are we literal?
• A father is trying to get his 3 year old daughter to stop lifting her dress up and showing
her new underwear to their guests !
FATHER: We don’t DO that !
DAUGHTER: I KNOW Daddy, you don’t wear dresses !
Another example#
• A 3 year old comes in the front door !
MOM: Darling, please, wipe your feet !
He removes his shoes and socks and carefully wipes his feet on the doormat. !
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UNIT 2: THE SEMANTICS-PRAGMATICS INTERFACE

2.1. DEIXIS

• Types of deixis

2.2. Presupposition

Introduction

  • What is the common aspect that links pragmatics and semantics? Meaning
  • Semantics–meaning is derived from linguistic knowledge (i.e. from the words themselves)
  • Conventional, lexical meaning (as found in dictionaries)
  • Based on truth-conditions (literal meaning, logical forms)
  • Pragmatics–meaning is derived from linguistic knowledge but also other aspects such as context (in its wider sense)
  • Based on non-truth-functional conditions (implicature)
  • She got lucky
  • Imagine the following conversation: A: What’s your mother like? B: She is a woman and she is married to my father.
  • Why is it so odd? How often are we literal?
  • A father is trying to get his 3 year old daughter to stop lifting her dress up and showing her new underwear to their guests FATHER: We don’t DO that DAUGHTER: I KNOW Daddy, you don’t wear dresses Another example
  • A 3 year old comes in the front door MOM: Darling, please, wipe your feet He removes his shoes and socks and carefully wipes his feet on the doormat.

The question is...

  • Can we really separate meaning from meaning in context?
  • Most often, the boundary between Semantics and Pragmatics is blurry but...
  • In some cases, this is totally impossible, which is why there is a clear connection between both areas
  • E.g. indexical expressions (aka deictics)
    • I am speaking right now In fact...
  • Although we can study meaning and language indendently from its context, we need to look at pragmatic meanings to really understand what is going on A: See you! B: Ok, when? And we need to “enrich” the message
  • “semantic analysis takes us only part of the way towards the recovery of utterance meaning and pragmatic enrichment completes this process. In other words, the logical form becomes enriched” (Jaszczolt, 2010: p. 460) Examples
  • Sorry I’m late. My car broke down.
  • (Oh, so she’s got a car…)
  • I talked to my husband about it.
  • (Oh, so she’s married then) What does AND “mean” in these utterances? She got married and got pregnant She got pregnant and got married She’s got a boy and a girl The kid dropped the glass and it broke

2.2 DEIXIS

  • The term “deixis” comes from the Greek word for pointing and refers to a particular way in which certain linguistic expressions (“deictics” or “indexicals”) are dependent on the context in which they are produced or interpreted.
  • (^) As far as is known all languages have 1st^ and 2nd^ person pronouns but not all have 3 rd person pronouns (e.g. Macedonian)
  • Other languages distinguish between inclusive and exclusive first-person plural pronouns – those that do and do not include their audience.
  • For example, Tok Pisin has seven first-person pronouns according to number (singular, dual, trial, plural) and clusivity, such as mitripela ("they two and I") and yumitripela ("you two and I"). Examples "Always forgive your enemies; nothing annoys them so much." (Oscar Wilde) "From the moment I picked up your book until I laid it down, I was convulsed with laughter. Some day I intend reading it." (Groucho Marx) " I stopped believing in Santa Claus when my mother took me to see him in a department store, and he asked for my autograph." (Shirley Temple) " I got kicked out of ballet class because I pulled a groin muscle. It wasn't mine ." (Rita Rudner) TIME DEIXIS
  • “now”, “tomorrow”, “ten years ago”, “this week”, “this November”, etc. take the speaker’s location in time at the time of the utterance.
  • However, the most pervasive aspect of temporal deixis is “tense”.
  • The grammatical categories ( tenses ) are a mixture of deictic time distinctions and aspect , often hard to distinguish.
  • Some languages (e.g. Chinese or Malay) have no tenses as such.

SPATIAL DEIXIS

  • Deictic adverbs like “here” (including speaker) and “there” (remote from the speaker) are the most direct examples of spatial deixis.
  • Other spatial deictics are “this” and “that” (some languages have a three-way distinction, e.g. Latin or Spanish or even a seven-way, e.g. Malagasy.
  • Spatial deixis is also frequently encoded in verbal roots or affixes, with a typical basic distinction between “motion towards speaker” (e.g. come ) and “motion away from speaker” (e.g. go ) DISCOURSE DEIXIS
  • In a spoken or written discourse, it is frequent to refer to earlier or forthcoming segments of the discourse (e.g. “in the previous/next paragraph”)
  • Since a discourse unfolds in time, it is natural to use temporal deictic terms (“next”) although spatial terms are also frequent (“in this chapter”) SOCIAL DEIXIS
  • This includes “honorifics”, frequent in most languages of the world
  • Honorifics are not exactly personal deictics since they involve a separate dimension: they encode the speaker’s social relationship to another person (usually the addressee but not always), on a dimension of rank.
  • There are two main kinds of honorifics:
  • Entailment is a semantic relation: it holds no matter what the facts of the world happen to be (it holds in all possible worlds). Examples a. Mary broke the window ||- The window broke b. Sue and Fred went to the party ||- Sue went to the party WHAT IS PRESUPPOSITION?
  • Because of the principles of communicative economy and clarity, when we talk much is unsaid or taken for granted. For example:
  • “All John’s children are wise” presupposes that
  • “John has children”
  • “John has more than one child”
  • Intuitively and pre-theoretically, presuppositions could be therefore defined as “background assumptions” Presupposition can be informally defined as an inference or proposition whose truth is taken for granted in the utterance of a sentence. [...] This background assumption will remain in force when the sentence that contains it is negated. Presupposition is usually generated by the use of particular lexical items and/or linguistic constructions (i.e. presupposition triggers) (Huang, 2007: 65) (my emphasis) PROPERTIES OF PRESUPPOSITION
  • As opposed to entailment, presuppositions have these characteristics:
  • They remain constant under negation (entailments don’t)

E.g. “My car has not broken down” => I have a car E.g. “John’s daughter is not really naughty” => John has a daughter Remember these examples of entailment? Mary broke the window ||- The window broke Mary didn’t break the window ||- The window broke Sue and Fred went to the party ||- Sue went to the party Sue and Fred didn’t go to the party ||- Sue went to the party MORE PROPERTIES OF PRESUPPOSITION

  • Defeasibility or cancellability: Presuppositions (unlike semantic entailments) are cancellable, e.g., if they are inconsistent with background knowledge
    • Sue cried before she finished her thesis. → Sue finished her thesis.
    • Sue died before she finished her thesis ≠ Sue finished her thesis.
  • In our background knowledge (cultural knowledge), we know that people do not do things after they die. The presupposition is therefore abandoned in this co-text. PRESUPPOSITION TRIGGERS
  • Presuppositions seem to be tied to particular words –or aspects of surface structure. These linguistic items that generate presuppositions are called presupposition - triggers (Levinson, 1983: 179)
  • Levinson (1983: 181-185) lists 31 presupposition- triggers, from factive verbs (e.g. know, regret, realise, etc) to change-of-state verbs (e.g. stop, arrive), cleft sentences, iteratives (e.g. again) etc.
  • Presuppositions are implications that are often felt to be in the background — to be assumed by the speaker to be already known to the addressee (we also talk about “presupposition accommodation” or “pragmatic enrichment”) E.g. “My car has broken down” => I have a car E.g. “John’s daughter is really naughty” => John has a daughter It has long since been observed that presuppositions may have informative uses (Karttunnen 1974, Stalnaker 1974). In other words, when an utterance contains a presupposition that still may not be included among the beliefs shared by the interlocutors. In particular, it may be new information for the listener, who will "accommodate" the presupposition by adding it to the shared background beliefs (Lewis 1979) e.g. A: Are you going to lunch? B: No, I’ve got to pick up my sister. B presupposes that s/he has a sister, this information may be shared by both interlocutors (mutual knowledge) or not, in this case, A would accommodate it as part of his background knowledge. More examples
  • e.g. “We regret that children cannot accompany their parents to the commencement exercises.” (Gauker, 1998) →The point is to inform parents that children cannot come. →Parents have to accommodate this new piece of information into their background knowledge. →By putting it that way, the speaker acknowledges that this news might be disappointing to some interlocutors.
  • Such informative uses of presuppositions are also frequent with persuasive purposes (e.g. in the press, in advertisements, political speeches, etc.)
  • The manipulation by the speaker/writer of these linguistic devices has both textual and pragmatic relevance. It is more difficult to question something that is communicated only implicitly (via presuppositions) than openly.

Examples

  • e.g. Political discourse and the press “The moral and civil unity of the nation is also rooted in and held fast by, religious life and belonging to the Catholic Church” (Romano Prodi, 9/9/97) => “Romano Prodi basically said that we are united because we are Catholics.” ( La Stampa , 9/9/97)
  • e.g. Advertising “Carlsberg, possibly the best beer in the world” “L’Oreal, because you are worth it” TO CONCLUDE Presuppositions are “the result of complex interactions between semantics and pragmatics.” (Levinson, 1983: 225)