Jessica Gledhill
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Pragmatics

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Jessica Gledhill
Created by Jessica Gledhill almost 10 years ago
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PragmaticsIntro:Lecture 14The study of those aspectswhich do not seem tocome directly from thecompositional semanticsContext-dependentmeaningNon-literalInferredmeaningMeaning minus semanticsGrice:Lecture 14KEY PROPOSALCO-OPERATIVEPRINCIPLEMAXIMS &FLOUTSDistinction betweenwhat is SAID (encodeddirectly) and what isIMPLICATED (meaningderived)Verbal communicationis OSTENSIVEOstensive communication isINTENDED in order toco-operate with theprincipleQUALITY: Make your contribution true, donot say what you believe to be false, orwhat you lack evidence forQUANTITY: Give as muchinformation as is required & makecontributions efficientlyinformativeRELEVANCE: Make yourcontributions relevantMANNER: Avoid ambiguityand obscurity, and beorderly and precise.Sperber & Wilson's Relevance Theory:Lectures 16-18Implicatures:Lectures 14, 15 & 21Presuppositions:Lectures 19-21CONVENTIONALCONVERSATIONALSCALARCRITIQUE OF GRICEPROPOSALCOGNITIVELY PLAUSIBLETHEORYPRINCIPLES OF RELEVANCESocial theory of communication:pragmatic reasoning is derivedthrough social functionFlout: Also similar forrelevance, speaker ispurposefully being ambiguous.Examples include literary styleand euphemismsFlout: Speaker is not trying to make a truthfulcontribution. Examples include IRONY, SARCASM,and UNCERTAIN responsesFlout: Speaker does not give the rightamount of information. Examples includeSHORT REFERENCES and UNINFORMATIVEresponsesFloutsFlouts are intentional violations ofmaxims, and assuming Co-operativePrinciple is being obeyed, the hearerassumes the speaker had a good reason toviolate.When a flout is heard, it isassumed the speaker is trying tocommunicate something that is notdirectly encoded, and this is aconversational implicatureFromspeaker-orientedperspectiveInferences drawn on the basis ofthe assumption of co-operationPart of the inferred meaning,NOT the encoded meaningNot truth-conditional meaning,and so speakers can distancethemselves from them. Thismeans that they are CANCELLABLE.Meaning derived from theinferences of floutsSubset of inferencesCommitting oneself to X being the case,without actually saying something thatwould be false if the implicatures wasfalseDistinguishesbetween what thespeaker iscommitted to andwhat is actuallytrueDescribe thenon-truth-conditional aspects ofthe meaning of certain lexicalitemsExamples include theCOUNTER-EXPECTUAL aspect of 'but'in 'She is poor but honest' and theSEQUENTIAL aspect of 'and'Explicatures:Lecture 18Stipulative & notembedded in apsychologically plausibletheory of mindThe calculation of 'whatis said' does not involvepragmatic inferencingNo criteria foridentifying themaxims, and essentialconcepts are leftundefinedAnalyse the maxims underRelevance alone, intending tocommunicate shows what wehave to say is relevant andtherefore worth theprocessing effortCognitive theory thatconsiders brain activityas the key element inderiving implicaturesMust model the role ofcontext and the role ofintention recognitionBased on Fodor (1983), the theoryshould be COMPUTATIONAL,SYMBOLIC, MODULAR & REALISTEffects of co-operativeprinciple deduced fromgeneral cognitive pressuresto derive useful stimulusfrom the environmentContinue to work --> Sufficient pay offreceived. Work=processing info bypragmatic inferencing, Pay off ='positive cognitive effects' & set ofimplicatures. No pay off = effortwasted = Stimuli considered notrelevantINFERENTIAL model of communication =linguistic info is only one source ofevidence for determining the interpretation;other stimuli & info can also play a roleHearer-orientedperspectiveLexical Ambiguity &Reference Assignment:Lecture 16 & 20Yields "positivecognitive effects"True contextualimplications(additional truepropositions)Warrantedstrengthening(propositions thatcome withstrengths)Revisions ofexistingpropositions(changed withincoming new info)1. "Human cognition tends tobe geared to themaximisation of relevance"Human cognition is efficient because ofevolution. Evidence includes face recognitionand identifying speech sounds. It's possiblethat this relates to specific brain modules.2. "Every act of overtcommunication conveysa presumption of itsown optimal relevance"The idea that what wehave to say is relevantand worth processing.Instance where context isimportant for communicationAmbiguous lexical items with doublemeanings need to be modulated by thecontext in order for us to process thecorrect meaning. This is ultimately amatter of REFERENCE ASSIGNMENT.Pragmatics is required to enrich theproposition and fill in the contentSperber & Wilson use the term'explicatures' to distinguish whatis said from what is merelyencoded.Used to describe the proposition whichis explicitly communicated by a givenutterance - the proposition we arriveat once the context fills in the gap inthe encoded messageDevelopments of logicalforms which correspond to'what is said' in a RTframeworkPragmatic processes involved in derivingexplicatures include: disambiguation,saturation (reference assignment), freeenrichment (adding unarticulatedconstituents) and 'ad hoc conceptconstruction' (narrowing meaning)Carston (2002): 'Whatthe speaker meant'Situations where explicatedmeaning is important include:sequential and, where the ideaof 'and then' is meantTRIGGERSKEY PROPERTIESNot truth-conditional: thepropositions do not need tobe true to be presupposedBackgrounded: Not the mainpoint of a proposition, but it isassumed in the background.Evidence: it's very hard to pickout presuppositions & object tothem in discourse. Thisdistinguishes them fromconventional implicatures.Projective: Preservedunder negation and otheroperators, which do NOTpreserve entailment.Pluggable: Some predicates plugpresuppositions, meaning they stopthem being attributed to the speaker,by projecting them out of theembedded clause.Uncancellable:Presuppositions seem tobe cancellable, butnegation is difficultRequire dynamic accommodation:Presuppositions impose a demand upon thehearer to modify their context model,especially if they weren't aware of the 'shared'assumption.ASPECTUAL TRIGGERS:aspectual predicates like'continue'/'stop', attitudepredicates like'regret'/'know'ANTI-UNIQUENESS TRIGGERS:indefinite articlesEXISTENTIAL TRIGGERS:definite determiners,demonstratives, propernames, pronouns,quantifiersEXCLUSIVE TRIGGERS:words like 'only'FACTIVE TRIGGERS:cleftsSCALAR TRIGGERS:words like 'even', implythe likelyhoodIMPLICATIVE TRIGGERS:words like 'fail'/'manage'imply there was anattemptEVIDENTIAL TRIGGERS:Modal 'must' impliesthere is a lack of directevidenceTriggers can consist ofpresupposition triggers, whichindicates the overlapAdditive particleslike 'too'DiscourseparticlesImplicativeverbs like'fail'/'manage'IntonationalcontoursAntecedent of aconditionalYes/no questionsUnder apossibilityadverbUnder abeliefpredicateFAILUREStalnaker (1974) modelled theshared set of presuppositions asTHE COMMON GROUND -presuppositions as pre-conditionson common ground updatesAssertions: 'proposals toupdate the common ground'Presuppositions: 'conditions which needto be met for updates to the commonground to work'Conditions for accommodation arewhen we don't want to make a fuss/don'tnecessarily care (SOCIAL ASSUMPTION)Presuppositions can sometimesbe INFORMATIVE - possessivesgive rise to the form 'X has Y'The situation where an expression whichgives rise to a presupposition is used in asituation where it is not met.Example includes a failure to satisfythe UNIQUENESS PRESUPPOSITION inwhich definites seem to give rise toWe tend to make an effort to rectify the failure &satisfy the presupposition conditions by consideringwhat the unique proposition could refer toFilling in process primarilyinvolves associating parts ofgrammatical representationwith entities in contextExample includes assigning reference topronouns, Some pronouns are referential,such as 'Every boy thinks he is nice'. This isknown as a BOUND pronoun, and it hasVARIABLE REFERENCEANAPHORADeep: pronouns can befilled in by anythingSurface: ellipsis must be filledin by a linguistic antecedentExample: 'some' implies 'not all'This part of the meaninggoes beyond what is directlyencoded, so it providesadditional meaningHorn Scales (1972)Exclusivity ImplicatureHorn proposes the Gricean analysis that scalarimplicatures are proposed on the basis ofco-operation and is avoiding violating as manymaxims as possibleSentences with disjunction of 'or', the truth tablestates that both p+q could be true, but this meaningis different to what we usually assign to or. Weusually assume that both is not an option for 'or'Set of scale alternatives given byconventional meaning of scalaritems.<all, most, many, some>If the scalar item appears in the scope of negation,or other downward-entailing environment, thescale REVERSES, so we use lower scale alternativesBelieves that individuals will differ in theirassessment of the scale relations becausethey are lexically definedDouble click this nodeto edit the textClick and drag this buttonto create a new node