pragmatics

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• Lecture 2

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The scope of pragmatics
Background The term pragmatics stems from
the philospher Charles Morris (1938), who was
actually interested in semiotics (or semiotic).
Morris distinguished three branches of study
within semiotics syntactics (or syntax), the
study of the formal relation of signs to one
another, semantics, the study of the relations
of signs to the objects to which signs are
applicable, and pragmatics, the study of the
relation of signs to interpreters (19386).

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background

• According to Morris (197124), each branch of
  semiotics can be further divided into pure
  studies and descriptive studies. The former was
  concerned with the elaboration of the relevant
  metalanguage and the latter applied the
  metalanguage to the description of specific signs
  and their usages.

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background

• With his particular behavioristic theory of
  semiotics, Morris defined the scope of pragmatics
  as follows 
• It is a sufficiently accurate
  characterization of pragmatics to say that it
  deals with the biotic aspects of semiosis, that
  is, with all the psychological, biological, and
  sociological phenomena which occur in the
  functioning of signs.(Morris,1938108)

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background

• Levinson(19832) holds that this scope of
  pragmatics is very much wider than the work that
  currently goes on under the rubric of linguistic
  pragmatics, for it would include what is now
  known as psycholinguistics, sociolinguistics,
  neurolinguistics and much besides. The term
  pragmatics have long been used in two different
  ways. On the one hand, the broad use intended by
  Morris has been retain, dealing mainly with
  matters as diverse as the psychopathology of
  communication and the evolution of symbol
  systems.

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background

• On the other hand, and especially within
  analytical philosophy, the term pragmatics was
  subject to a successive narrowing of scope.
• If in an investigation explicit reference is made
  to the speaker, or to put it in more general
  terms, to the user of the language, then we
  assign it the investigation to the field of
  pragmatics...If we abstract from the user of the
  language and analyze only the expressions and
  their designata, we are in the field of
  semantics. And, finally, if we abstract from the
  designata also and analyze only the relations
  between the expressions, we are in (logical)
  syntax.

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background

• The idea that pragmatics was the study of aspects
  of language that required reference to the users
  of the language then led to a very natural,
  further restriction of the term in analytical
  philosophy. For there is one aspect of natural
  languages that indubitably requires such
  reference, namely the study of deitic or
  indexical words like the pronouns I and you.

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background

• For example,
• I am Zhang Xiao, Zhang Xiao is a girl,
  therefore I am a girl.
• If the first two premises are true and the
  speaker of the conclusion is the same speaker as
  the speaker of the first premise, then we say the
  statement is necessarily true. Bar-Hillel (1954)
  therefore took the view that pragmatics is the
  study of languages, both natural and artificial,
  that contain indexical or deictic terms.

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background

• In the late 1960s, an implicit version of
  Carnaps definition--- investigations requiring
  reference to the users of a language---was
  adopted within linguistics. At the same time,
  there was a keen interst shown by linguists in
  philosophers attempts to grapple with problems
  of meaning, sometimes from the point of view of
  the users of the language. During this period,
  the scope of pragmatics was implicitly
  restricted.

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background

• Levinson (1983) considers a set of possible
  definition of pragmatics. One possible definition
  goes as follows Pragmatics is the study of
  those principles that will account for why a
  certain set of sentences are anomalous, or not
  possible utterances. (Levinson, 19836) e.g.
• (1) ??Come there please!
• (2) ??Aristotle was Greek, but I dont
  believe it

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background

• (3) ??Johns children are hippies, and he has
  no children
• (4) ??I order you not to obey this order
• (5) ??I hereby sing
• (6) ??As everyone knows, the earth please
  revolves around the sun

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Background

• The explanation of these anomalies might be
  provided by pointing out that there are no, or at
  least no ordinary, contexts in which they could
  be appropriately used. Although an approach of
  this sort may be quite a good way to illustrate
  the kind of principles that pragmatics is
  concerned with, it will hardly do as an explicit
  definition of the field, because the set of
  pragmatic anomalies are presupposed, rather than
  explained. One can possibly imagine contexts in
  which the alleged anomalies are quite usable.
  This problem will recur when we consider the
  concept of appropriateness of an utterance.

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Background

• Another kind of definition would be that
  pragmatics is the study of language from a
  functional perspective, that is, that it explains
  facets of linguistic structure by reference to
  non-linguistic pressures and causes. But such a
  definition would fail to distinguish linguistic
  pragmatics from many other disciplines interested
  in functional approaches to language, including
  psycholinguistics and sociolinguitstics. Such a
  definition confuses the motives for studying
  pragmatics with the goals or general shape of a
  theory.

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Background

• One quite restricted scope for pragmatics that
  has been proposed is that pragmatics should be
  concerned solely with the description of
  linguistic structure. Or, to use Chomskys
  distinction between competence and performance,
  pragmatics is concerned solely with performance
  principles of language use. Thus Katz Fodor
  (1963) suggested that a theory of pragmatics
  would essentially be concerned with the
  disambiguation of sentences by the contexts in
  which they were uttered.

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Background

• One could claim that grammar is concerned with
  the context-free assignment of meaning to
  linguistic forms, while pragmatics is concerned
  with the further interpretation of those forms in
  context, as Katz (197719) notes 
• Grammars are theories about the structure
  of sentence types... Pragmatics theories, in
  contrast, do nothing to explicate the structure
  of linguistic constructions or grammatical
  properties and relations... They explicate the
  reasoning of speakers and hearers in working out
  the correlation in a context of a sentence taken
  with a proposition. In this respect, a pragmatic
  theory is part of performance.

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Background

• It seems that the term pragmatics covers both
  context-dependent aspects of language structure
  and principles of language usage and
  understanding that have nothing or little to do
  with linguistic structure. But this should not be
  taken to imply that pragmatics is concerned with
  quite disparate and unrelated aspects of
  language rather pragmatists are specifically
  interested in the inter-relation of language
  structure and principles of language usage.

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Background

• If we have a definition that is specifically
  aimed at capturing the concern of pragmatists
  with features of language structure. It might go
  as follows
• Pragmatics is the study of those relations
  between language and context that are
  grammaticalized, or encoded in the structure of a
  language.

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Background

• Levinson (1983) gives some other definitions of
  the field
• Pragmatics is the study of all those aspects
  of meaning not captured in a semantic theory.
• Pragmatics is the study of the relations
  between language and context that basic to an
  account of language understanding.
• Pragmatics is the study of the ability of
  language users to pair sentences with the
  contexts in which they would appropriate.
• Pragmatics is the study of the deixis,
  implicature, presupposition, speech acts, and
  aspects of discourse structure.

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the role of pragmatics

• The need for a pragmatic component in an
  integrated theory of linguistic ability can be
  argued for in various ways. One way is to
  consider the relation of the pragmatics-semantics-
  syntax trichotomy to the competence-performance
  dichotomy proposed by Chomsky. In Chomskys view,
  grammars are models of competence, where
  competence is knowledge of a language idealized
  away from irregularity or error and variation to
  this, Katz influentially added idealization away
  from context.

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the role of pragmatics

• On such a view, insofar as pragmatics is
  concerned with context, it can be claimed that by
  definition pragmatics is not part of competence
  and thus not within the scope of grammatical
  descriptions. But suppose now we require that
  adequate grammatical descriptions include
  specifications of the meaning of every word in a
  language, and such a requirement has normally
  been assumed, then we find words whose
  meaning-specifications can only be given by
  reference to contexts of usage.

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the role of pragmatics

• For example, the meaning of words like well, oh
  and anyway in English cannot be explicated simply
  by statements of context-independent content
  rather one has to refer to pragmatic concepts
  like relevance, implicature, or discourse
  structure. So either grammars must make reference
  to pragmatic information, or they cannot include
  full lexical description of a language.

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Current interests in Pragmatics

• Pragmatic principles of language usage can be
  shown systematically to read in to utterances
  more than they conventionally or literally mean.
  Such regularly superimposed implications can then
  become quite hard to disentangle from sentence or
  literal meaning in order to put them apart, the
  theorist has to construct or observe contexts in
  which the usual pragmatic implications do not
  hold.

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Current interests in Pragmatics

• For example, it seems perfectly natural to claim
  that the quantifier some in the following means
  some and not all
• Some ten cent pieces are rejected by this
  vending machine.
• But suppose I am trying to use the machine, and I
  try coin after coin unsuccessfully, and I utter
  the above sentence I might then very well
  communicate
• Some, and perhaps all, ten cent pieces are
  rejected by this vending machine.

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Current interests in Pragmatics

• Pragmatists also realized that there is a very
  substantial gap between current linguistic
  theories of language and accounts of linguistic
  communication. When linguists talk of the goal of
  linguistic theory as being the construction of an
  account of a sound-meaning correspondence for the
  infinite set of sentences in any language, one
  might perhaps infer that such a theory would give
  an account of at least the essential of how we
  communicate using language.

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Current interests in Pragmatics

• There is a substantial gap between a semantic
  theory and a complete theory of linguistic
  communication. Where are we to account for the
  hints, implicit purposes, assumptions, social
  attitudes and so on that are effectively
  communicated by the use of language? For example,
  in the following extracts from recorded
  conversations, the responses to an utterance
  indicate that for participants the utterance
  carried the implications indicated in brackets

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Current interests in Pragmatics

• (1) A I could eat the whole of that cake
  implication I compliment you on the cake
• B Oh thanks
• (2) A Do you have coffee to go?
  Implication Sell me coffee to go if you can
• B Cream and sugar?
• (3) A Hi John
• B Howre you doing?
• A Say, whatre you doing Implication
  Ive got a suggestion about what we might do
  together
• B Well, were going out. Why?
• A Oh I was just going to say come out ...

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Understanding and Using Language

• P Whats your name by the way
• S Stephen
• P You havent asked my name back
• S Whats your name
• P Its Pat

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Understanding and Using Language

• Appropriacy
• I think you could go in now you know
• Are we all here
• Non-literal or indirect meaning
• Right, shall we begin
• Inference
• Im a man. (a woman colleague says)
• Female toilet on floor above (a sign on the door
  of the gentlemens toilet)

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Understanding and Using Language

• Indeterminacy (utterances are underdetermined)
• Im a man
• I really like your new haircut
• Are you here Peter
• Context
• Im tired (say at night or in the morning)
• Relevance
• I suppose today its especially important to be
  thinking carefully about what our students say to
  us

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Understanding and Using Language

• Misfires (misfires are important because they
  tell us that there are expected norms for talk by
  showing us the effect when the norm is not
  achieved.)
• Will you have some more chocolate
• I didnt even have any to begin with

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Pragmatics in China

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• ????????1988?
• ????????1989?
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Pragmatics in China

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• 1989???????????

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Pragmatics in the World

• Relevance theory (1986)
• ????

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End of Lecture