Vii Language in use

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Vii Language in use
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Contents

• 8.0 Introduction
• 8.1 Speech Act Theory
• 8.2 The Theory of Conversational Implicature
• 8.3 Post-Gricean Development

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8.0 Introduction

• You are beautiful without glasses.
• Speakers meaning, utterance meaning, contextual
  meaning, whose interpretation depends more on who
  the speaker of the sentence is, who the hearer
  is, when and where the sentence is used., namely,
  it depends on context.
• Pragmatics the study of lg in use.
• Pragmatics meaning-semantics

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8.1 Speech act theory

• John Langshaw Austin How to Do Things with Words
  (1962).
• Could you pass me the salt?
• --Yes, I can.
• --Sure, of course.
• Is the speaker speaking or doing things, to be
  more exact?

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8.1.1 Performatives and constatives

• Performatives sentences which do not describe
  things and cannot be said true or false, the
  utterance of which is the doing of things.
• --I name this ship the Queen Elizabeth
• --I bequeath my watch to my brother.
• --I bet you sixpence it will rain tomorrow.
• --I promise to come tomorrow.
• --I apologize.
• --I declare the meeting open.
• Constative the description of what someone is
  doing.
• --I pour the liquid into the tube.
• I am now sitting in front of you and lecturing on
  Pragmatics.

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Felicity conditions for performatives

• A. (i) there must be a relevant conventional
  procedure, and
• (ii) the relevant participants and
  circumstances must be appropriate.
• B. the procedure ,must be executed (i)correctly
  and (ii) completely.
• C. very often, (i) the relevant people must have
  the requisite thoughts, feelings and intentions,
  and (ii) must follow it up with actions as
  specified.

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• Austin soon realized that condition only apply to
  some cases.
• There are cases which do not need such
  conventional procedures
• --instead of saying I promise. we can also say
• I give my word for it. or You have my word.
• The so-called constative can also be
  infelicitous.
• --?????????????
• is exactly as infelicitous as saying
• ??????10??? When you have no money at all

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Separating performative from constative on
grammatical and lexical criteria.

• Typical Performative
• -- First person singular subject
• --Simple present tense
• --Indicative mood
• --Active voice
• --Performative verbs
• But there are counterexamples
• --You did it.(I find you guilty)
• --Pedestrians are warned to keep off the grass.
• --Thank you.
• Therefore, there is no clear line between
  performative and constative, which led Austin to
  abandon this distinction

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8.1.2 A theory of illocutionary act

• As Austin abandoned the distinction between
  performative and constative, he made a fresh
  start from the ground up and began to explore in
  what sense to say sth is to do sth, and came up
  with three acts, namely, locutionary act,
  illocutionary act, and perlocutionary act.

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Locutionary act(????)

• When we speak, we move our vocal organs and
  produce a number of sound, organized in a certain
  way and with a certain meaning. This act is
  called locutionary act.
• Hello!
• What did he do?

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Illocutionary act(?????)

• In performing a locutionary act, we shall also be
  performing some other act, such as asking a
  question or giving confirmation. That is, when we
  speak, we not only produced some units of lg with
  certain meanings, but also make clear our purpose
  in producing them, the way we intend them to be
  understood, or they also have certain forces.
  This is illocutionary act.
• What does he mean by greeting?
• Therefore, there is a force carried with the
  locutionary act, namely, the illocutionary force,
  which is equivalent to the speakers meaning,
  contextual meaning, or extra meaning.

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perlocutionary act(????)

• There is always some consequential effects of a
  locution upon the hearer. That is, by telling sb
  sth, we are changing the hearers opinions or
  ideas, or influencing them in one way or another.
  This is what we cal perlocutionary act.
• Perlocutionary act may not necessarily be the
  intended effect of the hearer.
• ????????
• ??????????

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8.2 The Theory of Conversational Implicature

• Herbert Paul Grice the proponent of the theory
  of conversational implicature

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8.2.1 The cooperative principle

• Grice noticed that in daily conversation people
  do not usually say things directly but tend to
  imply them.
• ?????
• Then he explored the question how people manage
  to convey implicature, which is not explicitly
  expressed.

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Cooperative principle

• There is regularity in conversation.
• Make your conversational contribution such as is
  required, at the stage at which it occurs, by the
  accepted purpose or direction of the talk
  exchange in which you are engaged. (Grice
  197545)
• To specify the CP further, Grice introduced four
  stages of maxims as follows.

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Four maxims

• Quantity
• Quality
• Relation
• Manner

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QUANTITY

• 1. Make your contribution as informative as is
  required (for the current purpose of the
  exchange)
• 2. Do not make your contribution more informative
  than is required
• --Where did John go?
• --To the library.

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QUALITY

• Try to make your contribution one that is true.
• 1. Do not say what you believe to be false.
• 2. Do not say that for which you lack adequate
  evidence.
• --He is a brave person.
• --Do you know where the National Library is?
• --Yes.

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RELATION

• Be relevant
• --Mary is really an annoying person.
• --I totally agree. She is also troublesome.

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MANNER

• Be perspicuous.
• Avoid obscurity of expression.
• Avoid ambiguity.
• Be brief
  
• Be orderly
• --Would you like a cup of coffee?
• --Yes, please.
• --Thank you, but I prefer a cup of tea.

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8.2.2 Violation of the Maxims

• People do not always follow the maxims. Sometimes
  they will violate them.
• However, although the speaker may violate some
  maxims, on a deeper level, the CP is still
  upheld.
• QUANTITY
• QUALITY
• RELATION
• MANNER

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Violation of Quantity

• --Where did John go?
• --To the library. At least he said so when he
  left the room
• It implies that the second speaker is not sure if
  John went to the library or not.

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Violation of Quantity

• He is made of iron.
• The speaker implies that he is very brave or very
  cold

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Violation of Relation

• --?????????????
• --????,??
• The speaker implies that the conversation may not
  be continued.

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Violation of Manner

• I veto I-C-E C-R-E-A-M-S. (ambiguity)
• ?????????? (prolixity)

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8.2.3 Characteristics of implicature

• Calculability
• Cancellability (defeasibility)
• Non-detachability
• Non-conventionality

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Calculability

• Implicatures are calculable, that is, they can be
  calculated on the basis of some previous
  information.
• -????????
• -???????

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Cancellability (defeasibility)

• As the presence of a conversational implicature
  relies on a number of factors, if any of the
  factors changes, the implicature will also
  change.
• --John has three cows.(2,3,4)
• --John has three cows, if not more.(2,3,4)
• --John has at least three cow.
• --John has only three cows.

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Non-detachability

• It means that a conversational implicature is
  attached to the semantic content of what is said,
  not to the linguistic form.Therefore, it is
  possible to use a synonym and keep the
  implicature intact.An implicature will not be
  detached, separated from the utterance as a
  whole, even though the specific words may be
  changed.
• --John is a genius.
• --John is a mental prodigy.
• --John is an enormously intellect.
• --John is a big brain.
• --John is an idiot.

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Non-conventionality

• Conversational implicature cannot be decided by
  the semantic meaning of the individual word.
• --John is a genius.
• --John is a mental prodigy.
• --John is an enormously intellect.

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implicature vs. entailment

• --John has three cows.
• --John has some cows.
• --John has some animals.
• --John has something.
• --Entailment is part of the conventional meaning,
  but there is no way to work out an entailment on
  the basis of the CP and the context.
• --Entailment is constant in all contexts and is
  determinate, while implicature is indeterminate,
  which varies with context.

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Conversational implicature

• It is a type of implied meaning, which is deduced
  on the basis of the conventional meaning of words
  together with the context, under the guidance of
  the CP and its maxims.

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8.3 Post-Gricean Development

• 1. Relevance theory (Sperber and Wilson)
• 2. The Q- and R-principles (Laurence Horn)
• 3. The Q-, I-, and M-principles (Stephen Levinson)

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8.3.1 Relevance theory

• Dan Sperber Deirdre Wilson (1986) Relevance
  Communication and Cognition
• Principle of relevance Every act of ostensive
  communication communicates the presumption of its
  own optimal relevance.
• Communication is not simply a matter of encoding
  and decoding, it also involves inference. But
  inference has only to do with the hearers.
• Ostensive communication For the speakers side,
  communication can be seen as an act of making
  clear one intention to express something. This
  is the ostensive act.

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• Every utterance comes with a presumption of the
  best balance of effort against effect. The
  effects achievable will never be less than is
  needed to make it worth processing.and the
  efforts required will never be more than is
  needed to achieve these effects. In comparison to
  the effects achieved, the efforts needed is
  always the smallest.
• That is to say, of all the interpretation of the
  stimulus which confirm the presumption, it is the
  first interpretation to occur to the addressee
  that is the one the communicator intended to
  convey.
• --John has a big cat.
• --John has a tiger.
• --John is a bachelor.
• --John holds a bachelors degree.

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8.3.2 The Q- and R-principles

• Laurence Horn,1984 Towards a New Taxonomy for
  Pragmatic Inference Q-based and R-based
  Implicature.
• 1988 Pragmatic Theory
• Principle of Least Effort (George Kinsley Zipf)
• --The force of unification speakers economy,
  one word for all meanings
• --The force of diversification hearers economy,
  every meaning is clearly expressed.

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• Hearers economy
• --QUANTITY 1 Make your contribution as
  informative as is required (for the current
  purpose of the exchange)
• --MANNER Be perspicuous.
• Avoid obscurity of expression. 2. Avoid
  ambiguity.
• Speakers economy
• --Quantity 2 Do not make your contribution more
  informative than is required
• --QUALITY Try to make your contribution one that
  is true.
• 1. Do not say what you believe to be false.
• 2. Do not say that for which you lack adequate
  evidence.
• --RELATION Be relevant
• --MANNER Be perspicuous.
• 3. Be brief
  4. Be orderly

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• The Q-principle (hearer-based)
• --MAKE YOUR CONTRIBUTION SUFFICIENT (cf. Quantity
  1)
• --SAY AS MUCH AS YOU CAN (given R)
• The R-principle (speaker-based)
• --MAKE YOUR CONTRIBUTION NECESSARY (cf. Quantity
  2, Relation, Manner)
• --SAY NO MORE THAN YOU MUST (given Q)

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• Q-principle
• --Some of my friends are linguists.
• --Not all of my friends are linguists.
• R-principle(infer more)
• --Do you have some money?
• 1988
• Q-based principle a hearer-based economy for the
  maximization of informational content concerned
  with the content (the speaker supplies the
  sufficient information)
• R-based principle a speaker-based economy for
  the minimization of formconcerned with the form
  (the speaker uses the minimal form, so that the
  hearer is entitled to infer that the speaker
  means more than he says)

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Some further investigation

• The unmarked form is used for a stereotypical,
  unmarked situation (via R-principle), while the
  marked counterpart is used for the situation left
  over (via Q-principle).
• --Black Bart killed the sheriff.
• --Black Bart caused the sheriff to die.
• --Lee stopped the car.
• --Lee caused the car to stop.
• Therefore, the use of a marked (relatively
  complex and/or prolix) expression when a
  corresponding unmarked (simpler, less effortful)
  alternate expression is available tends to be
  interpreted as conveying a marked message (ne
  which the unmarked alternative would not or could
  not have conveyed)

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8.3.3 The Q-, I- and M-principles

• Pragmatics and the Grammar of Anaphor A Partial
  Pragmatic Reduction of Binding and Control
  Phenomena (1987)
• Contrast between semantic minimization and
  expression minimization
• Semantic / content minimization is equivalent to
  semantic generality. The more general terms are
  more minimal in meaning, while the more specific
  terms are more maximal in meaning.
• That is, to stop a car means to stop a car in a
  typical way, while to cause the car to stop means
  to stop the car in a rather not normal way.

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• Semantic minimization has to do with the
  I-principle, expression minimization has to do
  with the M-principle.
• Heuristics (2000)
• Heuristic 1 what isnt said, isnt.(Q-Heuristic)
• Heuristic 2 what is simply described is
  stereotypically exemplified.(I-Heuristic)
• Heuristic 3 whats said in an abnormal way,
  isnt normal or Marked message indicates marked
  situation.(M-Heuristic)

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• Q-heuristics (Grice quantity 1)
• Scalar implicatures
• --Some of the boys came.
• --Not all the boys came.
• ltall, somegt
• Clausal implicature
• --If eating eggs is bad for you, you should give
  up omelets
• --Eating eggs may be bad for you, or it may not
  be bad for you.
• --Since eating eggs is bad for you, you should
  give up omelets.
• lt(since p, q), (if p, q)gt

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• I-Heuristic one need not say what can be taken
  for granted.
• --John turned the key and the engine started.
• --John unpacked the picnic. The beer was warm.
• M-Heuristics what is said simply, briefly, in an
  unmarked way picks up the stereotypical
  interpretation if in contrast a marked
  expression is used, it is suggested that the
  stereotypical interpretation should be avoided.
• --Bill stopped the car.
• --Bill caused the car to stop.

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Summary

• Speech Act Theory
• --Performative-constative
  --Felicitous condition
• --Locutionary/illocutionary/perlocutionary acts
• The Theory of Conversational Implicature
• --Cooperative Principle (Quality, Quantity,
  Relation,Manner)
• --Violation of maxims
• --Characteristics of implicature
• Post-Gricean Development
• --Relevance theory
• --Q-and R-principles
• --Q-, I- and M-principles

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