Summary of pragmatics
form Oxford book
Let's know first what is pragmatics:-
· Pragmatics: is the systematic study of meaning
by virtue of, dependent on, the use of language.
-
The central topics of pragmatics include implicature,
presuspposition, speech acts, and deixis.
· It's
philosophers: Charles Morris, Rudolf Carnap, and Charles Peirce.
· Morris and
Peirce presented a threefold divisions into syntax, semantics, and pragmatics
with semiotics..
* One of the reasons for
including pragmatics in an integrated linguistic
Theory is:
·
Linguistic underdeterminacy: "linguistic underdeterminacy thesis."
It is widely accepted that there is a huge gap between
the meaning of a
sentence and the messages actually conveyed by the
uttering of that sen-
tence. In other words, the linguistically encoded
meaning of a sentence
radicallyجذريا))
underdetermines the proposition the speaker expresses when he or
she utters that sentence.
-
All this indicates that certain linguistic phenomena
can
be handled naturally only by recourse to extralinguistic, pragmatic
factors
such as context, real-world knowledge, and inference.
* 1.3. Some basic notions in semantics and pragmatics
* 1.3.1. Sentence, utterance, proposition
- A sentence is a well-formed string of words put together
according
to the grammatical rules of a language. As a unit of the language system, it
is an abstract entity or construct defined within a theory of grammar.
- Sentence-meaning, then, refers to those aspects of meaning that
are
ascribed to a sentence in the abstract, that is, a sentence independent
of
its realization in any concrete form. The study of sentence-meaning nor-
mally belongs to semantics.
-
Utterance is the use of a particular piece of language—be
it a word, a
phrase, a sentence, or a sequence of sentences—by a
particular
speaker on a particular occasion.
-
Utterance-meaning, or speaker-meaning
(as it is often called), then, is definable as what a speaker intends to convey
by making an utterance. The study of utterance-meaning
normally falls
under pragmatics.
-
Finally, there is the notion of a proposition. A proposition is
what is
expressed by a
sentence when that sentence is used to make a statement,
that is, to
say something, true or false, about some state of affairs in the
external
world. Put the other way round, a sentence, when uttered to make
a statement,
is said to convey a proposition.
-
The propositional content of a sentence is that part of its
meaning which
can be reduced
to a proposition.
-different
(types of) sentences may share the same propositional con-
tent, even
though they differ in other aspects of meaning.
-
On the other hand, the same sentence can be used to convey different
propositions on different occasions.
-
Propositions may be true or false (to be discussed below), may be
known,
believed, or
doubted, may be asserted or denied, and may be held constant
under paraphrase and translation.
1.3.2.
Context
referring to
any relevant
features of
the dynamic setting or environment in which a linguistic unit is
systematically
used.
Furthermore,
context can be seen as composed of three different sources—a view known as the ‘geographic’
division of
Context.
1.
In the first place, there is the physical context, which refers to the
physical setting of the utterance.
2.
The second type is the linguistic context, which refers to the
surrounding utterances in the same discourse. "the elliptical construction"
3.
the general knowledge context. "Other terms include
background, common-sense, encyclopaedic knowledge, and real-world knowledge
context."
-
Common ground: a set of
background assumptions shared by the speaker and the addressee.
-
Clark, who distinguished communal from personal common ground. The
former refers to the set of background assumptions shared by members of a
community, and the latter to the body of background knowledge two members of a
community share from their past experience of each other
1.3.3. Truth
value, truth condition, entailment
-
The notion of truth value is associated with that of
proposition, and the notion of truth condition is linked to that of
sentence.
-
on a particular occasion, a proposition has a definite truth value,
thatis,itis either true or false. Itis trueif and onlyifit corresponds to some
state of affairs that obtains on that occasion, and it is false if and only if
it does not. This is known variously as the ‘corresponding’, ‘realistic’, or
‘simple’ theory of truth.
-
On the other hand, while a sentence, outside particular uses, does not
have a truth value, it does have truth conditions.
-
What, then, are truth conditions? They are the conditions that
the world must meet for the sentence to be true.
-
formula for a theory of truth in:
S is true if
and only if p,
-
Entailment
A proposition (or sentence expressing a proposition) p
entails a proposition
(or sentence expressing a proposition) q if and only if
the truth of p guarantees the truth of q.
- for p to
entail q, whenever p is true, q is also true.
a. The guerrillas killed the American ambassador.
b. The American ambassador died.
- Note finally that one of the most important
properties of an entailment is
that it is not defeasible, that is, an entailment
cannot disappear in any
linguistic or non-linguistic context. This is why it
must be seen as semantic
in nature. In fact, a number of other semantic
relations such as equivalence
and contradiction can also be defined in terms of
entailment.
