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PRAGMATICS 2
CH. 4. PRESUPPOSITION AND
ENTAILMENT
– something the speaker
assumes to be the case when making an
utterance.
Who has presuppositions?
Speakers do;
Did you buy that awful cheese? (presupposes:
that cheese is awful)
– something that follows logically
from what is asserted in the utterance.
Who has entailments?
Sentences do;
She has two dogs (entails: she has two animals)
PRESUPPOSITION
Her son is clever.
She has a son.
(= p)
(= q)
p>>q.
(p presupposes q)
Her son is clever presupposes She has a
son. It is an inference the listener draws.
What happens under negation?
Her son is not clever
Her son is not clever
She has a son
=p
=q
The presupposition remains constant (= true)
She still has a son.
Try this:
Everybody knows that she is guilty.
(= she is guilty)
Everybody doesn’t know that she is
guilty.
(= she is guilty)
TYPES OF PRESUPPOSITION
Presupposition are generally
they become actual when intended to be
so by the speaker within a specific
utterance. The types are:
 Existential presupposition
 Factive presupposition
 Lexical presupposition
 Structural presupposition
 Non-factive presupposition
 Counterfactual presupposition
we
commit ourselves to the
existence of something
what
can be treated as a fact
my family, the bus, her
brother, the trees outside
they know where he is, I’m
glad that they managed
; using
one word the speaker can
act as if another
meaning/word is
understood
We managed to catch the
pig, He stopped calling
them (’manage’ contains
’try’. ’Stop’ contains
’having done’)
part of
the structure contains
information treated as already
known
; the
assumption that certain
information is not true
Why was he left alone?
(=He was left alone)
When did they buy the house?
(=They did buy the house)
He pretends that he can’t walk
(=He can walk), I dreamt that I
bought a horse (= I didn’t buy
a horse)
Counterfactual presupposition; certain
information is the
opposite of true
If you had helped, I would
have managed in time.
(=You didn’t help me)
THE PROJECTION PROBLEM
Some presuppositions don’t survive when they
are part of a more complex structure.
Entailments are more powerful than
presuppositions and can also cancel existential
presuppositions.
The King of France is bald.
(presupposes a
king)
The King of France doesn’t exist.
ORDERED ENTAILMENTS
Entailment ( ) is a logical concept (= ie has more
to do with sentence meaning than speaker
meaning):
I ate three apples
I ate something
I ate one apple
I ate two apples
these are background entailments
The foreground entailments are signalled by
intonation:
I ate THREE apples
or
The ‘it-cleft’construction:
It was three apples I ate
Summary: presupposition and
entailment
are inferences about what is
assumed in an utterance rather than directly
asserted.
are closely linked to the
words and grammatical structures that are
actually used in the utterance and our
knowledge of how to interpret them.
can be drawn even with little
or no surrounding text.
All sentences have a number of
–
other sentences are automatically true if the
original one is true.
can be drawn solely on our
knowledge about the semantic relationship in
a language.
CH. 5. COOPERATION AND
IMPLICATURE
Obvious statements – tautologies - can say a lot.
- What’s your step mother like?
- Well, she’s a woman and she is married to my father.
They contain an implicature – additional conveyed
meaning.
How do we interpret implicatures?
THE COOPERATIVE PRINCIPLE (GRICE
1975)
Make your contribution such as is required by the present
direction of the conversation.
MAXIMS
Quantity
1) Make your contribution as informative as is required (for the current purpose).
2) Do not make your contribution more
informative than required.
Quality
Try to make your contribution one that is
true.
1) Do not say what you believe to be
false.
2) Do not say that for which you lack adequate information.
Relation
Be relevant.
Manner
Be perspicuous.
1) Avoid obscurity of expression.
2) Avoid ambiguity.
3) Be brief.
4) Be orderly.
We are careful to observe these maxims and
signal when we do not by using
The quality maxim:
As far as I know
The quantity maxim:
To cut a long story short
The relation maxim:
by the way, anyway
The manner maxim:
I don’t know if this makes
sense
Speakers communicate meaning via implicatures
and listeners recognize this meaning by using
inferences which assume that the speaker wants to
make sense.
No special knowledge is required in the context to
understand the additional conveyed meaning, eg.
I saw a dog chasing a cat. (Not my dog or cat)
Choosing from a scale: some, all, most
Some dogs are ugly (=not all)
Sometimes, always
We sometimes eat sushi (=not always)
Used in specific contexts, draws on assumed
knowledge:
Is John back yet?
The pub is still open.
OR
Humorous answers: Is the Pope Catholic?
These are not based on the cooperative
principle or maxims. They are associated with
specific words eg. but, yet
She felt sick, but went out for a walk.
Ch. 6 SPEECH ACTS AND EVENTS
How to do things with words; apologizing, complaining,
complimenting, promising.
In a SPEECH EVENT (a set of circumstances in which
people interact in some conventional way to arrive at
some outcome), the circumstances give the
interpretation; praise or complaint.
Speech act = an action performed by
the use of a n utterance
SPEECH ACT (components)
Locutionary
illocutionary
perlocutionary
locutionary act: the basic act of utterance, a
meaningful linguistic expression
illocutionary act: what the utterance is
intended as, what it counts as (promise, threat)
perlocutionary act: the actual effect of the
utterance.
It could be worked out by applying the
Illocutionary Force Indicating Device (IFID)
I Vp you that … Vp = performative verb
I promise/threaten/insist/ that I will play the
bagpipes for you.
Mostly, however, no performative verb is used.
Other IFIDS are word order (question word
order) stress, and intonation.
Will I play…
I WILL play
An alternative way of working out the
illocutionary force involves felicity conditions.
There are certain expected or appropriate
circumstances for the performance of a speech
act to be recognised as intended;
FELICITY CONDITIONS
General conditions
Content conditions
Preparatory conditions
Sincerity conditions
Essential conditions
the participants understand
the language used
eg. a promise or a warning
must refer to a future event
specific requirements need to
be fulfilled for success, eg.
promise: 1) the event will not
take place without me 2) is
beneficial to hearer
speaker intends to carry out
action
the utterance commits the
speaker, adds an obligation
THE PERFORMATIVE HYPOTHESIS = the assumption that
underlying every utterance is a clause containing a
performative verb:
Pass me the salt! = I hereby order/request of you to pass
me the salt.
[implicit perform.]
[explicit performative]
However, the two above are not equivalents, the second
one being much ‘harsher’, or having a different impact.
Another problem can be the difficulty of identifying
performative verbs for all utterances, as in
You bloody moron! ?I hereby insult you that
you are a bloody moron.
We don’t know how many performative verbs
there are in any language. Instead we can
classify types of speech acts.
There are five types of general function:
DECLARATIONS
By being uttered they
change the world; You’re fired! The speaker has to
have a special institutional role. The speaker
changes the world by using words.
REPRESENTATIVES
state what the speaker
believes or not; statements of fact, conclusions,
descriptions: I have a cat. Paris is the capital of
France. The speaker makes the words fit the world.
EXPRESSIVES
State what the speaker feels,
express psychological states, such as pleasure, pain,
joy; Sorry! Bravo! The speaker makes the words fit
the world.
DIRECTIVES
Express what the speaker wants;
orders commands, requests, suggestions: Hand me
the towel! Could you pass me the butter? The
speaker wants to change the world by using words.
COMMISSIVES
Commit the speaker
him/herself to some future action; promise,
threat, refusal: I’ll buy you lunch. I’ll wring your
neck! The speaker intends to change the world
by using words.
SPEECH ACTS are actions performed by the use of
an utterance to communicate. They can be DIRECT
or INDIRECT
DIRECT = direct relationship between a structure
and a function; Give me the salt!
INDIRECT = indirect relationship between a
structure and a function; Can you pass me the salt?