Transcript Linguistics 001 - University of Pennsylvania

Linguistics 001
Pragmatics
Language in Context
Sentences
• In our initial discussion of meaning we
concentrated on two types of semantics:
– Lexical semantics: what individual words mean
– Compositional semantics: how the meanings of
larger objects are constructed out of the meaning
of the parts
• Remember that one idea was that a key part
of understanding meaning involved
determining the truth conditions for a
sentence
Pragmatics
• How to use language in contexts?
• Again, we will see how structural issues
arise in the use of language?
Context Matters
NJ Transit scope ambiguity:
All the doors won't open
Two scenarios, two readings:
1) Everyone has to move to the front because
the back carriage doesn't line up with the train.
2) A mechanical failure where all the doors are
jammed
Both readings are possible, but the context
favors picks one out
What is said and what is meant
• A discussion:
Oscar: How's Bert doing in his new job?
Ernie: He's making friends and he hasn't been
to prison yet.
• What is Ernie trying to convey that's not
in the text?
Pragmatics: Basic Distinctions
• One of the starting points for pragmatics
is the idea that people use language to
accomplish different types of acts
• These acts-- which are called speech
acts-- come in many different varieties,
depending on what particular act is
accomplished
Speech Acts
• Different types of speech acts:
– Asking for something
– Promising to do something
– Threatening to do something
– Ordering someone to do something
• Note that language is not the only
means by which these acts can be
accomplished
Direct vs. Indirect
• A basic distinction:
– Direct Speech Acts: The meaning is
more or less encoded in the literal meaning
of the utterance
– Indirect Speech Acts: The meaning that
is relevant is the speech act meaning, not
simply the literal meaning
Direct Speech Acts
• Types of Direct Speech Act, along with
sentence type:
Type
Assertion
Question
Order
Function
Sentence
convey meaning
declarative
John got an A on the test.
elicit information
interrogative
Did John get an A on the test?
affect others’ actions imperative
Get an A on the test!
Indirect Speech Acts
• Let’s consider a simple question:
Will the train be on time?
• An answer (e.g. “yes”) would give the
information that the person asking the
question is looking for
• But consider:
Do you know if the train will be on time?
• An answer “Yes, I know” here would be more or less
annoying; in the typical case, this is not a question
about the listener’s knowledge, but is instead asking
for the same information as the first. But indirectly….
Grice: Cooperation in
conversation
• H.P Grice's research involves
understanding how speaker’s meaningwhat a person uses the sentence to
mean- arises from sentence meaningthe literal form and meaning of the
sentence
• He developed a “grammar” of
appropriateness.
Basic Principles
• Grice’s program involves understanding
basic principles that get conversations
going
• Cooperative principle: "Make your
contribution to the conversation such as is required,
at the stage at which it occurs, by the accepted
purpose or direction of the exchange in which you are
engaged."
Cooperative Principle
• A non-linguistic example:
• Ernie is baking and asks “Do you have a
cup of sugar?”
• Bert passes him a cup of salt.
• This is uncooperative.
Specifics: Maxims
• Grice’s analysis involves specific
maxims that speakers follow in
respecting them
• The idea is that if speakers assume the
maxims to be operative, then they can
determine from what was literally said
what the speaker’s meaning is
The Maxims
• Quality: (tell the truth)
– Don’t say what you know to be false
– Don’t say things that you lack evidence for
• Quantity: (say as much as is necessary)
– Make the contribution as informative as the
circumstances demand
– Don’t be more informative than required
• Relevance: be relevant
The Nature of the Maxims
• Although the maxims have the form of
instructions, they are not
• Rather, they are observations--heuristic in
nature--that encode the assumptions that
speakers are using in actual discourse
situations
– This is no different from the study of other general
principles in language
– Consequently, one may wish to investigate their
broader dimensions: What happens to the brain
when these principles are violated? How do
children learn these, or are they learned at all?
Conversational Implicature
• Flouting a maxim provides information as
well. In this way Grice's work explains
why we can say the vague things we do
and still be understood.
• We can see how people follow these maxims
to deduce speaker’s meaning in simple
examples
Be Brief
Compare:
1) Miss Piggy sang Rainbow Connection
2) Miss Piggy produced a series of sounds
that corresponded closely with the score
of Rainbow Connection.
Be Relevant
• Consider another example; this one is a letter
of recommendation:
Dear Admissions Committee:
I am pleased to write on behalf of John Smith, who is
applying to your program. Smith has excellent
handwriting and is typically clean, and his kids are
very cute.
Sincerely,
Professor Throckmorton W. Bullfinch
• A reader of this letter would understand this
to be the best that Prof. Bullfinch can say
Be specific
• Finger or thumb?
• Square or rectangle?
• Compare: thought-thinked
Implicatures
• Notice that what is implied in these cases
is still somewhat weak. We can cancel
implicatures:
• Bert spent some of the summer in prison.
• In fact, Bert spent all of the summer in
prison.
Speaker beliefs and Common
Ground
• The 'happy' use of implicature requires some
common understanding between speakers.
– Some sort of mind-reading in effect
• Speakers build and test the common ground in
various ways.
• In fact, whether or not some sentences can
even be evaluated depends on the existence
of certain facts in the common ground.
Speaker bias & Common Ground
• At an interview, Bert might get asked either:
• 1) Are you a communist?
• 2) You're a communist? (rising intonation)
• The second form displays speaker bias.
– The speaker believes that Bert is a communist
but it is not in the common ground.
Presuppositions
• Some words have conditions on the common
ground that need to be fulfilled before we can
even think about what they mean.
• The has a uniqueness condition. When you
say the muppet, there is a presupposition
that you are referring to a particular muppet.
Presupposition Accommodation
• It was Cookie monster who ate the cookie.
• Presupposition: Someone ate the cookie.
• This imposes a condition onto the common ground.
However, even if no one previous mentioned the
eating of the cookie, the dialog will probably continue.
• The presupposition will be accommodated into the
hearer's beliefs and the common ground.
Presupposition Failure
It was the muppet with the weapon that did it!
• But which muppet am I referring to?
• We cannot accommodate this!
Implicature
Bert is evil and he lives on Sesame Street
Bert is evil but he lives on Sesame Street
• These two sentences are the same truth
conditionally but they clearly don't mean the
same thing.
• But carries some extra information as part of
its lexical entry - an implicature.
Flow of information
• One of the much studied areas in pragmatics
• Why are we supposed to “Avoid pronouns
and don’t start a sentence with it, this, or
that.”
– “He screwed up.”
– “Once upon a time and a very good time it was there was a
moocow coming down along the road and this moocow that
was coming down along the road met a nicens little boy
named baby tuckoo. His father told him that story: his father
looked at him through a glass: he had a hairy face.”
• Why do some writings flow “better”?
• Writing is an art, but part of it can be distilled
into a scientific form.
Side Note
• There are constraints on how to use
pronouns that apply in syntax
– John likes him.
– John thinks that Bill likes him
– These constraints are quite different from
what we discuss here (more when we talk
about child language syntax).
– They tend to be more absolute
An unnatural flow
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Terry really goofs sometimes.
Yesterday he called Tony at 6am to go sailing.
Tony was sick and furious at being woken up so ea
He told Terry to get lost and hung up.
Of course, he didn’t intend to upset Tony (he=Terry
A Natural Flow
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Terry really goofs sometimes.
Yesterday he called Tony at 6am to go sailing.
Tony was sick and furious at being woken up so ea
He told Terry to get lost and hung up.
Of course Terry didn’t intend to upset Tony.
Avoid Pronouns?
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Homer likes to drink.
In fact Homer drinks everyday.
And Homer often goes to Moe’s.
Homer is not a role model.
• Avoiding pronouns altogether can be
disturbing as well.
Basic Idea
• Each utterance consists of a topic, or the
center of the discourse
• Different entities (including pronouns) in
utterances follow a ranking order that
determines which is the center.
• The center of the discourse may shift from
one entity to another--we don’t have to talk
about the same thing forever--and there are
ways of making the transitions smooth.
(Syntactic) Subject > Object
• John met Bill at a party
• He was pleased. (“John” is preferred)
• John was seen by Bill.
• He was at the market. (“John” still
preferred, even though it’s the semantic
object but syntactic subject)
Transitions
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John called Bill this morning.
He told Bill to come over to play the new computer game.
He couldn’t hide his excitement.
[continuation]
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John called Bill this morning.
He told Bill to come over to play the new computer game.
But he was upset at John for calling so early.
[promotion]
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John called Bill this morning.
He told Bill to come over to play the new computer game.
The dog barked when the phone rang.
[shift]
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Continuation > Promotion > Shift in terms of naturalness
Midterm first then …