PRAGMATICS Where are you going?

Out.
 The study of how language is
used with its situational context Maxim of Quality: each participant’s
 Distinct from grammar contribution should be truthful and
based on sufficient evidence
I. Implicature
“To be honest”
 Paul Grice pointed out that an
utterance can imply a proposition Violation:
(i.e., a statement) that is not part
Was she nice to you?
of the utterance and that does not
Yeah, she was about as nice
follow a necessary consequence
as Hitler.
of the utterance
o This is called an Maxim of Relation: states that each
implicature participant’s contribution should be
relevant to the subject of the
II. Conversational Maxims (Paul conversation
Grice)
“By the way”
 Also called Cooperation
Principles: the assumption that Violation:
participants in a conversation are
What time is it?
cooperating with each other Well, the paper’s already
 When a maxim is violated, we come.
draw an inference (i.e., an
implicature) which makes the Maxim of Manner: states that each
utterance conform to these participants contribution should be
maxims expressed in a reasonably clear fashion
o Flouting describes the (i.e., not vague, ambiguous, or
intentional violation of a excessively wordy)
maxim for the purpose of Violation:
conveying an unstated
proposition What is your name?
 Four conversational maxims: It’s K-A-T-H-R-Y-N R-I-L-
E-Y.
Maxim of Quantity: states that each
participants contribution to a III. Speech Acts
conversation should be no more or less  Influenced by British philosopher
informative than required John Austin who expressed that
“To sum it up”, “Long story short” an utterance can be used to
perform an act
Violation:  Three (3) facets of a speech event:
 o Locutionary Act: the act of  Declaration: used to change the
saying something (what is status of some entity (appointing,
said) naming, resigning, baptizing,
o Illocutionary Act: the act surrendering, arresting) (ex.
of doing something (what You’re fired)
is done)
o Perlocutionary Act: the V. Felicity Conditions (John
effect of the utterance of Austin)
the hearer  Austin realized that context was
an important factor in the valid
IV. Classification of performance of an illocutionary
Illocutionary Acts (John act
Searle, 1976) 1. The participants and
 Representative: describes some circumstances must be
state of affairs (stating, asserting, appropriate
denying, confessing, admitting, 2. Must be executed completely
notifying, concluding, predicting) and correctly by all
(ex. I have five toes on one foot.) participants
 Directive: used to try to get the 3. The participants must have
hearer to do something the appropriate intentions
(requesting, ordering, forbidding,  These are called felicity
warning, advising, suggesting, conditions, which help account
insisting, recommending) (ex. Get for the relationship between
me a soda) specific illocutionary acts within
 Question: used to get the hearer the same category
to provide information (asking,
inquiring) (ex. What is your VI. Explicit vs Nonexplicit
name?) Illocutionary Acts (John
 Commissive: used to commit the Austin)
speaker to do something  English contains a set of verbs
(promising, vowing, which name the illocutionary
volunteering, offering, force of the verb
guaranteeing, pledging, betting)  Consider the following:
(ex. I’ll help you move tomorrow) I confess that I stole the family
 Expressive: used to express jewels
emotional state (apologizing, I warn you to stop teasing your
thanking, congratulating, sister
condoling, welcoming, deploring, May I inquire where you got that
objecting) (ex. I’m sorry for being gun?
an asshole) I promise I’ll come to your birthday.
  These are called performative Expressive Declarative
verbs, which make the Declaration Declarative
statements explicit when used in
their performative sense
 Direct speech acts may come
 For a performative verb to have
across as abrupt or rude so, for
its performative sense, it must:
reasons of politeness, to mitigate,
o Be positive (wrong: I can’t
or soften such speech acts, one
bring the beans)
may phrase these acts indirectly
o Be present tense (wrong: I
 Indirect Illocutionary Acts:
promised I would bring the
when syntactic form does not
beans)
match the illocutionary force of
o Have a first-person agent
the statement
(wrong: Bob promises to
bring the beans) SUMMARY
o Refer to a specific event
(wrong: I promise people
things from time to time) Illocutionary
 Not all verbs are performative Acts
(ex. Know; I know the cube root of
125)
o To determine if a verb is a
performative, it must: a) Non
Explicit
describe a voluntary act; b) explicit
only be performed with
words; and c) be used with
the performative indicator
‘hereby’ Direct Indirect
VII. Direct vs Indirect
Illocutionary Acts
 Direct Illocutionary Acts: when
syntactic form matches the
illocutionary force of the
statement

Illocutionary Act Syntactic Form

Directive Imperative
Yes-No Question Yes-No
Interrogative
Wh-Question Wh-Interrogative
Expressive Exclamatory
Representative Declarative
VIII. Expressed vs Implied I could Indirect Implied
Locutionary Acts sure use
the notes
 the locutionary act is concerned
from
with the propositional content of Friday
the utterance, which can be either
expressed directly or implied via
implicature IX. Literal vs Nonliteral
 the propositional content is Locutionary Acts
expressed if the utterance  A locutionary act can be either
actually expresses the literal or nonliteral, depending
illocutionary act involved (ex. I upon whether the speaker
warn you to stop smoking) actually means what is said or
 the propositional content is not.
implied if the utterance does not  Nonliteral Illocutionary Acts are
express the propositional content those for which a literal
of the illocutionary act involved interpretation is either impossible
(ex. I warn you that cigarette or absurd within the context of
smoking is bad) the utterance
Utterance Illocutionary Locutionary  To spot nonliteral illocutionary
Lend me Direct Expressed acts, notice how they typically
your notes flout the maxim of quality
from (involve someone saying
Friday
something that is blatantly false
Could you Indirect Expressed under the circumstances); often
lend me (but not always) utilize sarcasm
your notes
from
Friday?
 Speech Acts

Locutionary Illocutionary

Expressed Implied Literal Nonliteral Explicit Nonexplicit

Indirect Direct

SEMANTICS Lexical Ambiguity: if a word has more

than one sense (fly the insect; fly the
I. Contributors
zipper; fly the verb)
 Linguistics: contributed
primarily to the study of core * French History Teacher is not lexically
meaning or sense of individual ambiguous, but rather syntactically
words ambiguous as none of the words
 Philosophy: contributed individually have more than one sense,
primarily to the study of meaning but the phrase itself can be taken a
of sentences (reference and truth number of ways (American History
conditions) teacher vs American History teacher)

Synonymy: if words have the same

II. Lexical decomposition
values for all semantic features (small,
 Examines the sense of the word
tiny, little, miniscule)
in terms of semantic features
* no absolute synonyms; does not
Man Woman Mare
[adult] + + + capture differences in connotations;
[male] + - - may differ in register or level of
[human] + + - formality

Hyponymy: Also known as inclusion.

III. Sense A hyponym is word that contains the
 Speaker-sense: the speaker’s meaning of a more general word,
intention in producing some known as the superordinate. The hyponym
linguistic expression (pragmatics) contains all features of the superordinate
 Linguistic-sense: the meaning of plus additional feature values. (chicken
a linguistic expression as part of a [+animal]; rooster [+animal] [+male]
language [+adult])
 Sense properties and relations:
Overlap: two words overlap in o To check: If X is ___ Y,
meaning if they have the same value for then Y is ___ X.
some (but not all) semantic features that o If the frame is above the
constitute their meaning (sister, niece, television, then the
mother) television is below the
frame
* unlike in hyponymy, there is no general
o If Sally is Paul’s wife, then
word in the set, but rather words (that all
Paul is Sally’s husband.
share some semantic features); think
venn diagrams
IV. Reference
Antonymy: when the meanings of two  Speaker-reference: what the
words differ in the value for a single speaker is referring to by using
semantic feature (dead vs alive; above vs some linguistic expression
below; aromatic vs smelly; husband vs wife) (pragmatics)
 Linguistic-reference: the
 Binary: pairs that exhaust all
systematic denotation of some
linguistic possibilities along some
linguistic expression as part of a
dimension; if it isn’t one, then it’s
language
the other—no in between;
 Referent: the entity that is
either/or
referred to by the referring
o Ex. Dead or alive
expression (‘that boy looks like an
o To check: If X is ___, then
asshole,’ you say, pointing at the
it is not ___.
mirror. The referring expression:
o If my dog is alive, then it
that boy. The referent: the person
isn’t dead.
reflected in the mirror.
 Gradable: pairs that describe
 Extension: the set of all potential
opposite ends of a continuous
referents for a referring
dimension; there is an in
expression (the extension of dog is
between; the words may describe
the set of all entities, past,
opposite ends of a spectrum
present, and future, that could
o Ex. Aromatic or smelly
systematically be referred to by
o To check: X is very ___.
the expression dog; basically, the
o This flower is very
extension of dog is the set of all
aromatic.
dogs.
 Converse: pairs that describe the
 Prototype: a typical member of
relationship between two items
the extension of a referring
from opposite perspectives
expression (sunflower would be a
o Ex. Husband and wife; above
prototype for flower [in the
and below
States]; sampaguita would not be
 Stereotype: a list of Analytic Sentences: are necessarily true
characteristics describing a simply by virtue of the words in them;
prototype (cat: with a tail, four legs, we need not ‘check’ the real world to
meows, has fur, eats fish) verify the truth of the sentence; “true by
 Types of Linguistic-Reference: definition”; aka linguistic truths; (ex. A
o Coreference: two circle has no corners.)
linguistic expressions that
Contradictory Sentences: the opposite
refer to the same real-
of analytic sentences; are necessarily
world entity are said to be
false by virtue of the words in them; we
coreferential (Jay Leno is
need not ‘check’ the real world to
the host of The Tonight
disprove the statement; aka linguistic
Show)
falsities; (ex. A circle has five sides.)
o Anaphora: a linguistic
expression that refers to Synthetic Sentences: may be true or
another linguistic false depending upon how the world is;
expression are not true or false because of the
words that comprise them, but because
* coreference deals with the
they do or do not accurately describe
relation of a linguistic
some state of affairs the world; aka
expression to some entity in
empirical truths or falsities; (ex. Neil has
the real world, past, present,
a 3.6 grade-point average.)
or future; anaphora deals
with the relation between two  Types of Truth…Between
linguistic expressions Sentences:

o Deixis: has one meaning Entailment: a proposition that follows

but can refer to different necessarily from another sentence;
entities depending on the typically unidirectional (wherein
speaker and his or her sentence (a) entails sentence (b), but not
spatial and temporal vise versa)
orientation
o To check, the truth of sentence (a)
V. Truth Conditions
ensures the truth of sentence (b),
 Two categories:
and the falsity of (b) ensures the
o The Study of Different Types
falsity of (a)
of Truth Embodied in
Individual Sentences a. Martina aced chemistry
o The Study of Different Types b. Martina passed chemistry
of Truth Relations That Hold o Check: Marina did not pass
Between Sentences chemistry (negation of 2nd
 Types of Truth…Individual sentence) therefore Marina did not
Sentences:
 ace chemistry (negation of 1st proposition it expresses, You will take me
sentence). out to dinner.)

* entailment is also occasionally Factive Verbs: Brown’s presentation

bidirectional wherein both sentences demonstrates that the new system is
entail each other; this is called superior (presupposes that the system is
paraphrase, wherein both sentences superior, which is assumed to be true)
basically mean the exact same thing
* other factive verbs and verb phrases:
c. Bernie gave his dog a acknowledge, be aware, bear in mind,
biscuit demonstrate, grasp, note, make clear,
d. Bernie gave a biscuit to his prove, regret, resent, show, take into
dog consideration, take into account

Presupposition: a proposition that must Implicative Verbs: You failed to enclose

be assumed to be true in order to judge your check (presupposes that there was a
the truth or falsity of another sentence check to enclose)

o To check, use constancy under

negation, if sentence (a)
presupposes sentence (b), then
the falsification of sentence (a)
still presupposes sentence (b)
a. Annie’s dog gave birth.
b. Annie has a dog.
o Check: Annie’s dog did not give
birth (negation of 1st statement)
still presupposes that Annie has a
dog (2nd statement remains
constant).

 Presupposition Triggers:
structures or words that
assume, or presuppose, the
truth of the proposition
expressed in a sentence or the
speaker’s attitude about it

Wh-questions: When will you take me out

to dinner? (presupposes the truth of the