Review%20Exercises

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Review Exercises

• 1) Do the COMPONENTIAL analysis (not the
  compositional one) of the following words
• hen b) rooster
• Componential analysis
• 2) Does A entail B?
• 1) A I eat bananas every morning.
• B I eat fruit every morning.
• 2) A Campbell's soup has 1/3 less salt.
• B Other brands have 1/3 more salt.
• Implicatures/Entailments

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Semantic Decomposition

• woman
• human
• female
• adult
• man
• human
• - female
• adult

• girl
• human
• female
• - adult
• boy
• human
• - female
• - adult

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Entailment and Implicatures

• Sentence A entails B if whenever A is true, B
  must be true as well. (e.g. Mary eats banana
  ENTAILS Mary eats fruit) Semantic implication
• A implicates B if
• 1- A does NOT entail B, AND
• 2- Speaker is warranted in assuming B is true
  based on both the meaning of A conversation
  rules (e.g Not everyone will come IMPLICATES
  someone will come)
• Pragmatic implication

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Conflict With Language in Advertising

• Old question how truthful advertisers ought to
  be?
• Are they responsible for what their claims entail
  only or also for what they implicate?
• e.g. ABC filters remove bacteria from your
  drinking water
• Are we to JUST understand what that sentenece
  literally conveys its entailment (it removes AT
  LEAST one tiny bacteria from drinking water)?
  
• OR,
• Are we to believe (as the advertiser may intend
  us to) that if we use ABC filters, our drinking
  water will be free of bacteria, which is not
  really entailed but IMPLICATED?

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ANSWER to OLD QUESTION

• Because implicatures are crucial to language
  (seen in the hard entailment-implicature
  distinction), its only right that advertisers
  be responsible for both entailments and
  implicatures of their claims (p. 236).
• HOWEVER, in reality this isnt always true, since
  advertisers are often responsible just for
  entailments.
• Consequence advertising often formulates claims
  that implicate a lot but entail a little.
• They often use many techniques for this purpose.

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Pragmatics

• The Study of the Contribution of Context to
  Meaning
• Or
• The Study of Language Use

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Common Questions in Pragmatics

• How do people use language within a context?
• Why do they use language in particular ways?
• How do non-linguistic factors affect language use
  to perform different functions?
• time
• place
• social relation between interactants
• SUMMARY what is the intention of utterances
  within a context ? (SPEECH ACTS)

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SPEECH ACTS Human acts performed simply by
using language

• We use language, for example, for
• asking or giving information,
• making requests,
• complimenting,
• describing elements,
• apologizing, etc.
• This is a (not comprehensive) list of speech
  acts.
• (There are many other speech acts).

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3 Common Speech Acts

• Assertion (gives info),
• Question (asks for information), and
• Orders/Requests (has others do or be something).
• These deserve special mention because (often)
  there are specific syntactic structures for
  marking them.
• Assertion is (often) through declarative
  sentences,
• questions through interrogatives, and
• orders/requests through imperatives.

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Main Categories of Speech Acts

• Direct performed by a clear syntactic form
• Example an interrogative S simply for asking for
  info.
  ( a direct act can also be done performatively)
• Performative the utterance itself is the very
  act
• Example I pronounce you husband and wife
• (2 conditions in 1st person in present tense
  -hereby test)
• Indirect
• Indirect speech Acts rely on Felicity
  Conditions to be interpreted

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Felicity Conditions

• Why is it that I promise Ill tell Mom if you
  hit me is NOT a promise, but a threat?
• (It appears to be a promise due to the
  performative verb Promise)
• - It does not match the Normal Expectations
  for the promise Speech Act.
• What are those Normal Expectations?
• Felicity Conditions!!
• Conditions That Must Be Satisfied If a Speech Act
  Is to Be Performed Appropriately, Correctly, and
  Happily.

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Felicity Conditions for promises (for example)

• 1) Speaker (S) offers to do an action (A) for
  hearer (H)
• 2) S believes A is beneficial to H
• 3) H wants A
• 4) S is able/entitled/willing to do A
• 5) A has not taken place
• The previous sentence as a promise is
  infelicitous because condition 3 (and probably
  2) is missing. As a threat,
  however, it is felicitous
• (do you see why?)

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Indirect Speech Acts

• The actual intention or what the speaker really
  means is different from what she appears to be
  doing with the sentence itself.
• The actual intention or meaning does NOT match
  the sentence form (interrogative, imperatives,
  etc.)
• These do not match the normal, usual and more
  logical/semantic ways to perform such acts.
• For example, a person can perform a request
  (which normally requires an imperative sentence)
  via a question (with an interrogative sentence).

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Identifying indirect speech acts

• Ex. How are you?
• 1) Determine, by considering context and normal
  conversation behavior, what the real intended
  meaning is? Ask WHAT IS SHE REALLY DOING?
• 2) Do you see any performative V? If so, it is
  direct.
• 3) If no, does the intended meaning match the
  typical sentence form? If yes, then it is direct.
• 4) Are there any felicity conditions violated for
  the speech act of the intended meaning? If no,
  direct.
• 5) Consider the final effect in the hearer/s,
  which can corroborate or not what the real
  intended meaning is.