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Pragmatics
We
have defined semantics as the study of meaning.
Given
this definition, we may be tempted to think that once we understand the
semantics of a language, we completely understand that language.
However,
meaning involves more than just the semantic interpretation of an utterance.
Pragmatics
To
fully understand the meaning of a sentence, we must also understand the context
in which it was uttered.
Consider
the word ball.
If
we say, "He kicked the ball into the net," we may visualize a round,
black and white soccer ball.
If
we say, "She dribbled the ball down the court," we may visualize a
basketball.
Pragmatics
Given
another sentence, "She putted the ball in from two feet away," we
would visualize another ball, a golf ball.
In
these examples, the word ball is understood in different ways depending
on what type of action is associated with it.
Pragmatics
Whatever
understood meaning is common to ball in all these contexts would be
part of the word’s core meaning.
If
we think of enough types of balls, we can come up with an invariant core
meaning of ball that will allow speakers to refer to any ball in any
context.
Pragmatics
Nevertheless,
even though we can discover a word’s invariant core, we normally
understand more than that.
It
is the context that fills in the details and allows full understanding
– such as the usual color of a soccer ball, the size of a basketball, or the
weight of a golf ball.
Pragmatics
The
study of the contribution of context to meaning is often called pragmatics.
The
next question to ask, then, is "What is context?"
Is
it simply the reality that fills in meaningful details missed by a theory such
as the invariant core theory?
Pragmatics
The
short answer is no.
The
long answer is . . . .
Context
can be divided into four subparts of which reality is but the first.
This
aspect of context can be called the physical context; that is, where
the conversation takes place, what objects are present, and what actions are
taking place.
Pragmatics
Second,
we have an epistemic context; this is background knowledge shared by
the speakers and hearers.
Third,
we have a linguistic context; this is utterances previous to the
utterance under consideration.
Finally,
we have a social context; this is the social relationship and setting
of the speakers and hearers.
Pragmatics
As
an example, let’s look at how context helps people interpret a sarcastic
remark.
Suppose
that two people, talking loudly, walk into an individual study section of the
library (physical context). They sit down, still talking loudly, but no one
says anything to them.
Pragmatics
After
about five minutes, a person across the table from them says, "Talk a
little louder, won’t you? I missed what you just said."
The
hearers will (normally) interpret this utterance as a request for them to be
quiet, despite the fact that literally the speaker requests them to talk
louder (just the opposite).
Pragmatics
Certain
contextual facts help to signal that this is a request for silence:
The
utterance interrupts their conversation and breaks the silence between them
and others (linguistic context);
The
request is made in a sarcastic tone (linguistic context);
People
don’t usually talk to strangers (epistemic context);
Pragmatics
Libraries
are quiet places (epistemic context);
And
they are in the library (physical context).
From
these observations, the hearers should conclude that the utterance is a
request for silence.
Thus,
pragmatics does more than fill in the details.
Pragmatics
Pragmatics
concerns itself with how people use language within a context and why they use
language in particular ways.
Let’s
begin to look at these different sections of pragmatics by looking at the linguistic
context.
A
big chunk of that is through word order.
Pragmatics
Although
we didn’t look at it very closely, there are many different typological
orders to language.
English
is determinedly an SVO language;
Japanese,
on the other hand, is SOV.
Pragmatics
There
are other languages without such a rigid word order, however.
In
Tojolabal, for example, all six possible word orders are found.
SVO
is found slightly more than other orders, with VOS second.
However,
the differences are statistically insignificant, so it is hard to determine a
basic word order.
Pragmatics
From
a typological point of view there are two ways that languages can utilize the
linear arrangement of its parts:
For
grammatical purposes,
And
for pragmatic purposes.
Pragmatics
English
is a language in which basic grammatical relations are signaled by word order
and has thus been dubbed a grammatical word order language.
Specifically,
it is a language in which there must (normally) be a noun phrase immediately
preceding the verb in main clauses and that noun phrase is the subject.
Pragmatics
What
is important for our discussion, however, is that variations on this are
marked varieties (that is, they stick out as being not normal in some way).
Here,
English seems to be following the principles of Communicative Dynamism,
which was set down by a group of linguists known as the Prague School.
Pragmatics
Firbas
defines CD as "the relative extent to which the element contributes to
the development of the communication, to which, as it were, it pushes the
communications forward.
CD
is explicitly dependent upon context in terms of two things:
Pragmatics
Theme:
which are elements with the lowest amount of CD, also often called ‘shared’
or ‘known’ or ‘old’ information
and
Rheme: which are elements with the greatest amount of CD, often called ‘new’
information.
Pragmatics
In
English, the subject tends to be the theme or topic in the unmarked order, and
topics tend to be given or known information from the context.
The
comment, on the other hand, tends to be the rheme, or to be new information.
Pragmatics
Thus,
since the subject is placed at the beginning of the sentence, with the
predicate after, CD puts known information before unknown information.
Variations
on this basic word order in English are considered marked forms and are used
for various reasons.
Pragmatics
Passive
is one of these. Passives allow an action to be mentioned without calling
attention to, or mentioning, the agent.
In
English, the subject position left vacant by the demoted or unmentioned agent
must be filled by another noun phrase, since English verbs must be preceded by
subjects.
Pragmatics
This
phrase ‘becomes’ the subject of the sentence.
As
we know, the new grammatical subject need not be the semantic subject.
Pragmatics
Inversions
seem to serve a similar grammatical and pragmatic function. These
constructions effect two kinds of changes in constituent order.
Grammatically,
they place the subject after all or part of the Verb Phrase, and, in many
cases, they put something else in the position normally filled by subjects.
Pragmatics
Pragmatically,
a speaker may choose to do one or both of these things for a variety of
reasons.
Some
good examples of such inversions come from the world of sports broadcasting:
‘Stealing
the ball is Michael Jordan’
‘Coming
off the bench is Kobe Bryant’
Pragmatics
Here,
the inversion is not so much for the TV audience’s benefit as it is for the
sportscaster’s benefit.
He
or she has to describe the action quickly: if he or she takes too much time on
a play, a second or third play may have been made by the time he finishes, and
it will be too late for him or her to report them.
Pragmatics
Postponing
reference to the name of the player to the end of the sentence allows him to
begin describing what is directly observable – the ball being stolen,
someone coming off the bench – while in real time remembering or figuring
out who the players are.
Pragmatics
Other
variations on word order cannot be described in terms of their preserving the
structure of the basic word order of sentence.
One
of these variations is called topicalization.
In
English, topicalization is a leftward movement where an item is moved to a
pre-subject position, such as in:
‘Scrambled
eggs, I can’t stand to look at in the morning.’
Pragmatics
One
of the functions of topicalization is to serve as a contrastive element
bearing a strong stress.
Thus,
in the following pair . . .
‘I
can eat muffins every morning’
‘Muffins,
I can eat every morning’
.
. .the stress on the topicalization shows that muffins are in contrast with
other food items.
Pragmatics
Other
languages, such as Chinese, while they seem to have a basic word order, are
not so rigid as English.
In
these languages, however, the principle seems to be the same:
The
known information tends to be placed sentence-initially and the new
information sentence-finally.
The
initial noun in a topicalized sentence must be known information.
Pragmatics
In
Chinese, there seems to be an added constraint, however. Chinese normally
marks definiteness through the use of a demonstrative, such as
in:
Zhei
ben shu
this
classifier book
‘This
book’
Pragmatics
Which
contrasts with an indefinite like the following, which includes a
numeral but no classifier:
yi
ben shu
one
classifier book
‘One
book’
Pragmatics
Nouns
which lack definite modifiers, however, can still be shown to be definite by
putting them at the beginning of the sentence, or topicalizing them, as in the
following contrastive pair:
Wo
mei gei ta shu
I
NEG give s/he book
‘I
didn’t give her a (or any) book’
Pragmatics
shu
wo mei gei ta
book
I NEG give s/he
‘I
didn’t give her the book(s)’
Thus,
in Chinese, topics are always known information and are always definite.
Pragmatics
This
doesn’t mean that Chinese can’t use inversion to stress something,
however.
Here’s
an example from my brother-in-law, which shows that using the same three words
in three different orders says three different things:
Pragmatics
The
first thing to keep in mind is that Chinese does not require an explicit
subject if that subject is understood through context.
In
these examples, the subject, wo (I), is omitted, but understood.
Next,
you must know three Chinese words:
Pragmatics
bu
which
means ‘not’
pa
which means ‘fear, to be afraid of’
la
which means
‘spicy, as in spicy food’
Pragmatics
Next,
you should understand that in China, the farther west you go, the more they
like spicy food.
Thus,
people in Jiangxi Province might say:
bu
pa la
Pragmatics
Traveling
west to Hunan Province, however, you might here:
la
bu pa
Pragmatics
If
you keep going west to Sichuan Province, however, you are more likely to hear
this:
pa
bu la
Pragmatics
Many
other languages have what we could call free word order.
In
other words, several languages, such as Cayuga, Ngandi, and Coos allow all of
the various permutations of Subject, Verb, and Object.
These
languages seem to use word order for strictly pragmatic reasons, rather than
grammatical reasons.
Pragmatics
These
languages are known as pragmatic word order languages. In these
languages, new information tends to precede old information.
This
principle of new before old seems to predict the order of constituents in a
large majority of clauses.
Pragmatics
In
some instances, both constituents are equally given or new.
The
constituent conveying the principle information of the utterance appears
first.
Another
reason for placement is topic shift.
Topic
shift represents a new topic, a new point of view.
Pragmatics
A
shift in topic can thus be considered sufficiently important to appear early
in a sentence.
Another
reason is contrast. Important contrasts are not limited to new topics.
Any
constituent representing a focus of contrast is generally considered
sufficiently important to occur early in the clause.
Pragmatics
Therefore,
word order in these languages is based on pragmatic considerations, on the
relative newsworthiness of the constituents in the discourse.
An
element may be newsworthy because it represents significant new information,
because it introduces a new topic, or because it points out a significant
contrast.
Pragmatics
Speech
Acts
Just
as people can perform physical acts, such as hitting a baseball, they can also
perform mental acts, such as imagining hitting a baseball.
People
can also perform another kind of act simply by using language; these acts are
called speech acts.
Pragmatics
We
use language to do an extraordinarily wide range of activities.
We
use it to convey information, request information, give orders, make requests,
make threats, give warnings, make bets, give advice, and so on, as the
following sentences suggest:
Pragmatics
(1)
John Jones has bad breath.
(2)
Who ate my porridge?
(3)
Shut up.
(4)
Please scratch my nose.
(5)
Do that again, and I’ll punch your lights out.
(6)
There is a gremlin in the back seat of your car.
(7)
Five bucks says that the Vikes will beat the Pack this Saturday.
(8)
You ought to go to class at least once a quarter.
Pragmatics
There
can be little doubt that it is our ability to do things with language – to
perform speech acts – that makes language useful to us.
In
fact, with language we can do things that would otherwise be impossible.
Consider
(4), a request for a hearer to scratch the speaker’s nose.
Pragmatics
If
we did not have language, how would this request be made?
We
could imagine the speaker taking the hearer’s hand and rubbing his nose with
it, but would this action have the same force as a spoken request?
Probably
not.
Pragmatics
How
would the hearer know that the speaker meant "scratch" and not
"rub"?
How
would the hearer know that this action was a request and not an order?
The
action itself could not convey the politeness of the word "please",
a major difference between requests and orders.
Pragmatics
In
(6), we could warn the speaker that a gremlin is in the back seat of his car
by pointing at it, but how could we give the advice in (8) without words?
It
would certainly be difficult.
We
use language for all sorts of things.
Pragmatics
Some
of these uses seem to be of greater linguistic importance than the others
because the language makes available special syntactic structures for marking
them.
For
direct speech acts we have a declarative sentence type, which is dedicated to
assertions, an interrogative sentence type which is dedicated to questions,
and an imperative sentence type which is dedicated to orders and requests.
Pragmatics
In
addition to these direct speech acts, however, we can also make indirect
speech acts.
a. The
garbage isn’t out yet.
b. Could
you take out the garbage?
c. Would
you mind taking out the garbage?
d.
I would like for you to take out the garbage.
Pragmatics
Typically,
with an indirect speech act, what the speaker actually means is different from
what she or he literally says.
Pragmatics
As
a further component of pragmatics, we can look at the notion of entailment.
If
a sentence X entails another sentence Y, then whenever X is true Y must also
be true.
Stated
in another way, there is no situation where X is true and Y is false.
Pragmatics
For
example, sentence (1) entails sentence (2):
(1)
Ian drives a Corvette.
(2)
Ian drives a car.
However,
(2) does not entail (1).
This
is true because all Corvettes are cars, but not all cars are Corvettes.
Pragmatics
As
a final component of pragmatics, we can look at the notion of implicature.
A
sentence X implicates a sentence Y if (i) X does not entail Y and (ii) the
speaker is warranted in believing Y is true based on the meaning of X and
Grice’s Maxims of Conversation.
Pragmatics
Thus,
(3) implicates (4):
(3)
Not everyone is going to come.
(4)
Someone is going to come.
In
order to demonstrate that (3) implicates (4) we need to first show that (3)
does not entail (4).
Pragmatics
We
can do this by pointing out that (3) would still be true for the possible
situation in which no one is going to come.
In
this situation (3) is true while (4) is false.
Next,
we need to show that upon hearing (3) a speaker is warranted in believing
sentence (4).
Pragmatics
The
first part of Grice’s Maxim of Quantity states: make your contribution as
informative as is required.
Assuming
that the speaker of (3) is following this maxim, the more informative claim
"no one is going to come" was not used because it was not known to
be true.
Thus,
the hearer of (3) is justified in believing that (4) is true.
Pragmatics
One
field that exploits the difference between entailment and implicature is the
field of advertising.
Much
of the art of advertising revolves around formulating claims that implicate a
lot but entail little.
One
of the favorite ways of doing this is to leave out the than clause or
prepositional phrases in the comparative construction.
Pragmatics
For
example, Campbell’s Soup may claim that its soups have "one third less
salt."
The
appropriate question to ask is? "one third less salt that what?"
Pragmatics
By
Grice’s Maxim of Relevance, which simply says, "be relevant," the
audience is inclined to fill out the comparative with the most likely choices,
such as "one third less salt than it used to have" or "one
third less salt than its competitor’s soups."
However,
neither of these claims is entailed by the slogan.
Pragmatics
All
that is entailed is that their soups have one-third less salt than something.
Maybe
the Great Salt Lake?
Sound
too far fetched?
Consider
this Ford advertising campaign from the 1970’s.
Pragmatics
"The
new Ford LTD is 700 percent quieter."
Turns
out that they meant was the inside was 700 percent quieter than the outside.
Another
way to implicate a lot and entail a little is to qualify very strong claims
with modal auxiliaries (might, could) or adverbs.
Pragmatics
"Our
newest model may be one of the most powerful cars in the world."
But
then again, it may not be.
"It
could save you up to 15% on insurance."
"Leaves
clothes virtually static-free."
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