Pragmatics

    So far we have examined the semantics grammatical affixes, as well as of words and set phrases (a branch of linguistics known as lexical semantics).  Go over #1 A, B, C on p 167. And #4, p 169.

    The semantic term for word is lexeme.  Meaning can also be studied on the level of entire utterances.  Sometimes these phrases have special meanings not deducible from their parts. A useful term is listeme, which means any meaningful unit--morpheme, word, compound or idiomatic phrase which has a non-deducible meaning. Proper nouns are special types of listemes in that each of their uses constitutes a separate listeme.

    Usually, the meaning of phrases and utterances are deducible from their constituent parts. The study of regular patterns of meaning on the level of entire phrases, sentences and utterances is known as discourse analysis, or pragmatics.

Truth value of statements

    Statements are said to be ambiguous if they have two possible and contradictory meanings: I saw her duck.  The drill was boring.  If the two contradictory meanings produce humor, the statement is called a pun, or a play on words.

    Statements are said to be vague if they have a virtually unlimited range of meanings.  Examples are deictic statements taken out of context:  She went there.  He did it.  Vague statements usually contain deictic elements with no clear antecedent.  John and Bill were there.  Did you see him?

    Statements and phrases can also be caracterized by the property of redundancy, saying the same thing twice:  a baby puppy, a female tigress, The professor is a professor.  Redundant statements are said to be analytically true, or true based solely on the lack of contradiction in the definition of the words.      Go over #7 on p. 171.

    Linguistic contradiction characterizes a statement which cannot be true based simply on knowlege of the meaning of words:  The unmarried woman is married to a bachelor; or the pregnant boy.   Such a statement is said to be analytically false, or false by simple definition.  Contradictions used deliberately create irony.  Sometimes, intonation implies irony:  as when one says, That's just great to mean the opposite, or bad to mean really good.   Go over #8, p. 171.

    Phrases with words that directly contradict one another's basic meaning are called oxymorons: colorless green ideas, sleep furiously; a loud silence.  Some oxymorons have acquired definite meanings nonetheless: unemployed worker, dry ice, awfully good.  

    Statements which do not include linguistic contradiction may be said to be empirically true or false.  The truth value of such a statement as President Chester A. Arthur was shot in 1881  may be unknown to people not versed in US history and must be checked based upon extralinguistic knowledge.  In reality it turns out to be false, but it is not nonsense in the linguistic sense since presidents can and do get shot.  On the other hand, some sentences seem contradictory when actually they are not: The evening star is the morning star. (In the real world, these are two different names for the planet Venus.) 

    Statements which are absurd in terms of real world logic are said to be nonsense.  Sometimes nonsense is evident simply on the basis of linguistic contradiction:  My grandfather is pregnant.  Sometimes nonsense is evident to anyone with the most minimal knowledge of the world:  We ate wholly mammoth meat for lunch. 

    Some statements are simply uninterpretable:  Twas brillig and the slithy toves did gyre and gimble in the wabe.  This is a no-sense statement; it cannot be given a truth value at all because the individual words have no regularly accepted meaning. In a nonsense statement, by contrast, we know what the individual words mean, and therefore can see that they don't add up to any logically acceptable meaning:  It was sunny and the slimy eels flew around in the thick clouds.

Information structure (new vs. old information) in an utterance

    Discourse analysis also involves the study of how sentences and utterances are interconnected in a text or conversation.

    Some sentences contain an obvious presupposition, a piece of background knowledge implied by the statement.  The sentence My cat got lost again  presupposes what two facts other than the truth of the statement as a whole?   Presupposition may also be called implication or entailment.  Information structure thus involves presentation of some new information (the comment) about old information (the shared context, or topic).  In the sentences below the comment (new information is underlined:

It was my cat that got lost.   (= What got lost was my cat.)

What happened to my cat was that it got lost. (=Getting lost is what happened to my cat.)

More often than not, instead of special topic or comment phrases, intonation marks the comment:

My CAT got lost. (not my dog)

My cat GOT LOST. (That's what happened to the poor thing.)

Some languages, such as Russian, use word order to express the same thing (in Russian the new information normally goes at the end of the sentence, even if it is expressed by the sentence subject.  Thus, a Russian would say something like:

Got lost my cat (for My CAT got lost,not my dog.)

My cat got lost (for My cat GOT LOST. That's what happened to the poor thing).

Still other languages use discourse particles to mark the topic or comment.  Japanese places the topicalizing particla "wa" after the old information.

Discourse Functions

    Signs used in speech have various functions relative to the speech act, called discourse functions.  There are three main types: 

    1.) Napoleon died on the island of St. Helena, in 1821.

The function of a sign in speech is said to be denotative (objective, referential) if the meaningful elements of the utterance are completely definable apart from any particular speech act:  Napoleon, died, St. Helena, in 1821.  The reference of denotative signs is essentially the same regardless of who is talking.  Denotative signs tend to be the easiest to learn and are the first to be acquired by children.

    2) The old codger kicked the bucket. Sometimes words mark some particular attitude or point of view expressed by the speaker in addition to the topic of conversation.  Such subjective elements of meaning are said to be connotative (affective or stylistic).  Connotations are implications about the way the speaker feels about the topic being expressed: codger, kicked the bucket.  Some words are inherently connotative:  kick the bucket.  Others may acquire a connotative meaning in some contexts:  to fleece a sheep vs. to fleece a person.  Many words are denotative and connotative at the same time to some degree:  codger (odd, excentric man + speaker's attitude of joking disrespect)kicked the bucket (died + the speaker's flippant attitude).  Intonation or special grammatical means may also be either denotative or connotative (Give examples of question intonation vs. sarcastic intonation).

    3) They were here yesterday.

    Speech signs may show yet a third type of linguistic function. A function of a sign is said to be deictic (after the Greek word to point) if its referent shifts, or varies, depending upon the time, place or participants of each individual speech act.  Pronouns, adverbs of place like here, there; or such words as yesterday, my, our, the, this, that  are deictic signs because they have no definite referent outside of specific speech acts.  Tenses in English are also for the most part deictic.  The referents of deictic elements of languages changes from speech act to speech act.  One type of deixis, called anaphora, involves pointing to something expressed previously in the same conversation or text.  He, she, it are anaphoric pronouns; they require an antecedent in the previous context.  Pronouns such as I or you are also deictic but not anaphoric.  Specialists in child language acquisition have noticed that children tend to acquire the deictic elements of language later than the denotative elements--probably because these elements involve a higher degree of abstraction than simple denotative elements.

Addendum------

topic (center of attention) /comment (givenness)--marking of new vs. old information.  Intonation and various types of fronting, including cleft sentences (It was Bill who), right or left dislocation (John, he finished already; or He did it, that John.)

contrast--   Did John come.   No Bill (rather than John) did.

definiteness-- whether or not a noun phrase is identifiable. (Use of articles)

referentiality-- whether or not a noun phrase has a referent.

singular referring expressions--  The Eiffel tower, articles and deictic pronouns.

general referring expressions-- oak, elm, tree, (cf. Basque)

coreferentiality--  reflexive pronouns

Performative speech acts-- pronouncing the sentence is tantamount to an action--  Use "hereby".  act performed by saying something.  I pronounce, I declare, order, promise.

Concepts may be encoded grammatically or lexically

--Languages differ in terms of what meanings are expressed as separate concepts, by using separate words and which are expressed grammatically, by using bound or function morphemes elements of meaning which are expressed in various languages according to patterns.

 The boy hit the ball (once vs. many times) (hard vs. lightly) (first action in a series or second)  lexical vs. grammatical expression.  Anything can be expressed lexically-- by putting enough explanatory words together.  Certain concepts must be expressed because they are included in the words themselves.

   Jakobson-- languages differ not in terms of what they can express, but in terms of what they must express.