Semantics & Pragmatics PDF

SEMANTICS & PRAGMATICS Study sentence Study u4erance meaning and word meaning. U7erances meaning, not 2ed are expressions to context. iden2:ed only by their contexts. 4  Semantics is the study of the “toolkit” for meanin...

SEMANTICS & PRAGMATICS Study sentence Study u4erance meaning and word meaning. U7erances meaning, not 2ed are expressions to context. iden2:ed only by their contexts. 4  Semantics is the study of the “toolkit” for meaning: knowledge encoded in the vocabulary of the language and its patterns for building more elaborate meanings, up to the level of sentence meanings. 5 Pragmatics is concerned with the use of these tools in meaningful communication. 6 Pragmatics is about the interaction of semantic knowledge with our knowledge of the world, taking into account contexts of use. “Not so loud” 7 Three stages of interpretation: 1st stage: Literal meaning (Seman2c) its meaning is based on the seman2c informa2on that you know from your knowledge of English. The meaning can be recognized without wondering who might say or write the words, where or when. No considera2on of context is involved. “That was the last bus” 10 (That) is equated, at an earlier time (was is a past tense form), to either the final (last) or the most recent (last) bus. That meaning is available without wondering who might say or write the words, when or where. No consideration of context is involved. 11 Three stages of interpretation: 2nd stage: Explicature (Pragma2c) Goes beyond the literal meaning. It’s a basic interpreta2on of an u7erance, using contextual informa/on and world knowledge to work out what is being referred to and which way to understand ambiguous expressions. “That was the last bus” 12 Three stages of interpretation: 3rd stage: Implicature (Pragma2c) it goes further and looks for what is hinted at by an u7erance in its par2cular context. What the speaker means. “That was the last bus” 20 In working out an implicature, we go further and ask what is hinted at by an utterance in its particular context, what the sender’s “agenda” is. We would have to know more about the kind of relationship that Ann and Bess have, and about Charley and the look on the driver’s face, but if we had been participants in these exchanges we would have been able to judge fairly confidently whether Bess’s reply conveyed sympathy or a reprimand or an invitation to spend the night at her place, 21 about the literal meaning of the sentence in the example sentence because literal meaning is the foundation for explicature, on which implicatures are based, but it is important to note that it cannot be claimed that the sentence That was the last bus generally means ‘Spend the night at my place’ or ‘No’. 23 Three stages of interpretation: Each stage is built on the previous one and we need to develop theories of all three: literal meaning ― the semantics of sentences in the abstract: explicature ―the pragmatics of reference and disambiguation; and implicature ― the pragmatics of hints. 24 Types of Meaning Sender’s meaning is the meaning that the speaker or writer intends to convey (intended meaning) by means of an utterance. Sender’s meaning is something that addressees are continually having to make informed guesses about (interpretation). 25 Sender’s thoughts are private, but utterances are publicly observable. 28 Sentence meaning is “literal meaning”: the meanings agreed on by the users of language when used in isolation. That’s it. 32 Utterances are interpreted by people in a specific context and shared background knowledge between the sender and the addressee(s). That’s it. 33 Denote: mean, signify, represent, symbolize, indicate Denotation: The primary, literal or explicit meaning of a word 39 In early childhood our first words are learnt by processes of live demonstration, known as ostension. What about after early childhood? 40 These most rigorous varieties of semantics are called formal semantics because they use systems of formal logic to set out descriptions of meaning and theories of how the meanings of different sort of expressions are conducted from the meanings of smaller expressions. 45 In the second approach the central concept is sense: those aspects of the meaning of an expression that give it the denotation it has. Differences in sense therefore make for differences in denotation. That is why the term sense is used of clearly distinct meanings that an expression has. 47  Sense relations are semantic relationships between the senses of expressions. The ties between senses have a bearing on denotation because with words interconnected by well- defined sense relations, as a start in the network of relationships, can develop an understanding of the meanings (senses) in the rest of the system. 48 Reference is what speakers or writers do when they use expressions to pick out for their audience particular people (“my sister”) or things (“the Parthenon Marbles") or times (“2007”) or places (“that corner”) or events (“her birthday party”) or ideas (“the plan we were told about”) 50  Reference is a pragmatic act performed by senders and interpreted at the explicature stage. It has to be done and interpreted with regard to context. 52 Deictic expressions are words phrases and features of grammar that have to be interpreted in relation to the situation in which they are uttered, such as me ‘the sender of this utterance’ or here ‘the place where the sender is’. 54  Deixis is pervasive (universal, inescapable, prevalent) in languages, probably because, in indicating ‘when, ‘where’, ‘who’, ‘what’ and so on, it is very useful to start with the coordinates of the situation of utterance. There are different kinds of deixis, relating to: 55 Write down five deixis referring to time. Write down five deixis referring to place. Write down five deixis referring to participants, persons and other entities. Write down five deixis referring to discourse itself. 56 Time: now, soon, recently, ago, tomorrow, next week (adverbs of