Introduction to Pragmatics

Transcription

1 Introduction to Pragmatics Summer 2016 Tuesday 2321.HS 3H INSTRUCTOR Todor Koev (Todor.Koev@uni-duesseldorf.de)

2 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.

3 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 { x x is in trouble} 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.

4 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:

5 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) Are you happy? Question(you are happy) illocutionary force descriptive content

6 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.

7 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.

8 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.

9 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): c { w1, w2, w 3} Germany won { w1, w3, w 4} (6) c Germany won c Germany won { w1, w2, w3} { w1, w3, w 4} { w, w } 1 3

10 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?

11 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.

12 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?

13 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.

14 Commands/Requests formally Semantically, imperative sentences denote properties. (16) get out { x x gets out} 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! c hearer( c) should ensure that hearer( c) get out 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.

15 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.

16 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)

17 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?

18 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 c 1 iff utterance(c) is an event of the speaker thanking the hearer for their attention So: hereby = by means of this utterance.

19 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.

20 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)

21 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?

22 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.

23 Announcements Assignment #4 is due today. Reading for next time: Coherence relations