Appunti pragmatica linguistica inglese

SPERBER AND WILSON

Complain Grice centered on the speaker.

Hearer acquires centrality

Theory based on human cognition.

Eliminations of all maxims. Main principle of Relevance:

1. Communicative principle: every act of ostensive communication conveys a presumption of its own optimal relevance.
2. Cognitive principle: all human cognition tends to be geared to the maximization of relevance.

Communication is ostensive-inferential.

Relevance measured basing itself on positive cognitive effects. We should enrich our knowledge about the world.

No calculations of implicatures.

Context is more relevant. No implicatures but contextual implications (information derived by utterance+context).

Intended meaning = literal sentence + background assumptions.

• Contextual assumptions implicated premises
• Contextual implications implicated conclusions, Grice implicatures.

Path of least effort. The speaker stops when enough positive cognitive effects are reached.

Maximum relevance reached in 3 cases:

1. ...

The contextual implication support or strengthen an existing assumption2. If the implicated conclusions serve to contradict or rule out an existingassumption3. Contextual implications interact with existing assumptions to produce a newconcusion.

Other 2 principles:

1. a. Other things being equal, the greater the positive cognitive effects achievedby processing an input, the greater the relevance of the input to theindividual at that time
2. b. Other things being equal, the greater the processing effort expended, thelower the relevance of the input to the individual at that time.

Balance between cost and benefit

Gricean’s –view two staged model: semantics provide the truth-conditional meaning and then hearer infersthe implicature from the context.–Relevance literal meaning has something pragmatic. In order to understand literal meaning we have todisambiguate the actual meaning of all the words.

Notion of explicature (combination of the literal sentence meaning with all the

(disambiguations) and implicature (consequence of explicature + literal meaning). Semantic meaning must be enriched, and then implicatures can be derived.

- Enrichment process through which we make more precise the meaning originally expressed. Loosening.

- Non-natural meaning divided between what is encoded and what must be inferred. Explicature is part of truth-conditional meaning.

- Three-fold stage: semantics, explicatures, implicatures.

- Conceptual meaning words that can contribute to the truth conditional meaning. Content words.

- Procedural meaning they say to the hearer how they should process the utterance. Functions words.

- I'm just reporting someone else's words. Interpretative - Descriptive what I say is my belief.

REFERENCE - Referring expression is a linguistic expression used to refer to some entity in the world.

- Sense literal meaning, invariant.

- Reference linguistic strategy that the speaker selects to pick out that entity, can

vary–Referent thing referred to–One is deixis phenomenon of using a linguistic expression to point to some contextually available speaker’s origo discourse entity. It depends on context and on the–Indexical expression lexical items that lack a semantic meaning, they acquire it depending on the context. Personal deixis, spatial deixis (proximal and distal), temporal deixis, discourse deixis (refers to some content in the discourse).–Definite are known information, designate a unique entity.–Indefinite designate new information.

PRINCEInferable information. –Cognitive accessibility how familiar or not our addressee is expected to be with the referent.

GUNDEL ET AL.6 cognitive statuses. Givenness hierarchy:1) In focus. Topic of conversation; if the referent relates to the topic of the preceding sentence; it refers to the higher level topic.2) Activated. If it is something in the immediate spatio-temporal context and is activated by a gesture or eyegaze;

If the referent is a proposition, a fact or a speech act:

1. Familiar. If mentioned at any time previously in the discourse; if the referent is assumed to be known because of its cultural or encyclopedic knowledge shared in common.
2. Uniquely identifiable. Even though I'm introducing it for the first time, I'm providing a description.
3. Referential. Introduction of a referent which will be talked about later on.
4. Type identifiable. I only need to know what my referent looks like in reality.
5. Anaphora first the referring expression, and then the anaphora. One expression is interpreted as being coreferential with another expression.
6. Anaphora resolution how the hearer understands what is the antecedent of the anaphora, and what is the coreferential item.
7. Cataphora when precedes the referring expression

PRESUPPOSITIONS

FREGE

If we predicate something about something, the first something has to exist in the first place.

One property is that it survives negation. Constancy

Under negation. If a sentence a) presupposes proposition b), then it follows that in all situations where A is true, B is true. However, it is also true that in all situations where A is false, B continues to hold true. If a presupposition is false, the sentence that contains the presupposition cannot have a truth value. - doesn't survive negation.

Entailments

Other cases where presuppositions are kept: suspension (if).

Presuppositions can be cancelled. - Presuppositions triggers expressions that give rise to presuppositions:

1. Definite and (some) indefinite descriptions
2. Factive verbs
3. Change-of-state verbs
4. Iteratives
5. Cleft sentences: it-clefts, wh-clefts, inverted wh-clefts
6. Comparative sentences
7. Questions.

LOFTUS AND ZANNI

Experiment. Claiming for the existence of presuppositions can also affect people's beliefs. - The projection problem if it is in all cases that a presupposition carried by an embedded expression is kept or there are cases in which it is

not true.–Holes linguistic expressions and operators that allow the presupposition of their component to pass through the larger expression (ex. verb realize)– all verbs that express speaker’s attitude towards some proposition.
Prepositional-attitude verb the presupposition of the main clause may vanish from the larger embedding sentence (ex. verb think).–Plugs expressions that prevent the passing of the presupposition.–Filters connectors, expressions or linguistic operators that allow certain presuppositions to pass to the larger sentence.
Another property of presuppositions: defeasibility.
STALNAKER –Common ground knowledge shared by the speaker and hearer
Presuppositions don’t arise when the content on the prior utterance updates informationally the content for the understanding of the second utterance. When this is not the case, the presupposition actually arise.
SPEECH ACT THEORY
AUSTIN
Every utterance is an act that involves both some intentions by

The speaker and the recognition of those intentions. Not all statements can be reduced to truth conditional semantics. - Constatives declarative utterances that express some state of affairs - Performatives used to perform an act. They cannot be true or false but felicitous or non-felicitous. The subject must be the first person pronoun I; the verb must describe the action performed; must be in the present tense; sentence must be in its declarative form. - insertion of "hereby".

Test to understand if utterance performative or not. Not all performative acts must be performed in a performative manner. Explicit performatives and implicit performatives. - Both constatives and performatives are used to perform the illocutionary act the intention of the speaker. ROSS - the performative hypothesis every speech act can have a performative underlying structure. All sentences can indeed be analyzable with truth-conditional semantics. Soon abandoned. The utterance on the

one hand, and its underlying structure containing the performative verb, don’t share the same meaning.–BOER AND LYCAN performadox.

FELICITY CONDITIONS

Depend on the contextual appropriateness of the conditions of the speech act. If just one of the conditions fail to hold, the speech act fails.

AUSTIN

1. there must exist an accepted conventional procedure having a certain conventional effect, that procedure to include the uttering of certain words by certain persons in certain circumstances.
2. the particular persons and circumstances in a given case must be appropriate for the invocation of the particular procedure invoked.

B

1. the procedure must be executed by all participants both correctly and
2. completely.

T

1. where, as often, the procedure is designed for use by persons having certain thoughts or feelings, or for the inauguration of certain consequential conduct on the part of any participants, then a person participating in and so invoking the procedure must in fact have

those thoughts or feelings, and the participants must intend so to conduct themselves, and further T.2. must actually so conduct themselves subsequently.

Conditions A and B from the gamma conditions. If one of the conditions in A or B is violated the speech act doesn't go through. If gamma conditions violated, the act is an abuse, the pragmatic act go through. misfire, – In every speech act 3 statements: – the verbal component of what I'm saying, the linguistic one

1. Locutionary act –
2. Illocutionary act the intention behind the locutionary act–
3. Perlocutionary act the effect that is brought about on the hearer

The same locutionary act can have multiple illocutionary acts and different perlocutionary acts.

SEARLE Refinement of speech act theory. Just 5 felicity conditions:

1. The utterance must predicate some future A of the S. propositional content rule
2. H would like S to do A, and S knows it. Preparatory condition
3. It should not be obvious to both that S

will do A in the normal course of events. Preparatory condition

1. S must intend to do the A. sincerity rule
2. The utterance of P count as S's taking on an obligation to do A.

5) essential rule We can have 5 kinds of speech act:

• Assertives statements and reporting
• Directives requesting and suggesting
• Commissives promising, offering, threatening
• Expressives complimenting, thanking, apologizing
• Declarations declaring, naming

Direct speech act when the locutionary act a