COMPETENCE AND PERFORMANCE.

In LINGUISTICS, the distinction between a person's knowledge of language

(competence) and use of it (performance). Performance contains slips of the
tongue and false starts, and represents only a small sample of possible
utterances: I own two-thirds of an emu is a good English sentence, but is
unlikely to occur in any collected sample. The terms were proposed by Noam
CHOMSKY in Aspects of the Theory of Syntax, when he stressed the need for
a GENERATIVE GRAMMAR that mirrors a speaker's competence and captures
the creative aspect of linguistic ability. In Knowledge of Language (1986),
Chomsky replaced the terms with I-language (internalized language) and Elanguage (externalized language). A similar dichotomy, LANGUE and PAROLE,
was proposed by Ferdinand de Saussure (1915), who stressed the social
aspects of langue, regarding it as shared knowledge, whereas Chomsky
stressed the individual nature of competence
GRAMATICALLITY
In theoretical linguistics, a speaker's judgement on the well-formedness of a linguistic utterance
called a grammaticality judgement is based on whether the sentence is produced and
interpreted in accordance with the rules and constraints of the relevant grammar. If the rules and
constraints of the particular language are followed then the sentence is considered to be
grammatical. In contrast, an ungrammatical sentence is one that violates the rules of the given
language.
Linguists use grammaticality judgements to investigate the syntactic structure of sentences.
Generative linguists are largely of the opinion that for native speakers of natural languages,
grammaticality is a matter of linguistic intuition, and reflects the innate linguistic competence of
speakers. Therefore, generative linguistics attempts to predict grammaticality judgements
exhaustively. On the other hand, for linguists who stress the role of social learning, in contrast to
innate knowledge of language, such as Hopper 1987 there has been a gradual abandonment of
talk about grammaticality in favour of acceptability.[1
Background
The concept of grammaticality is closely tied to generative grammar, which has the goal of
generating all and only the well-formed sentences in a given language.[2]
Criteria that determine grammaticality
According to Chomsky, a speaker's grammaticality judgement is based on two factors:
1. A speaker's linguistic competence, which is the knowledge that they have of their
language, allows them to easily judge whether a sentence is grammatical or
ungrammatical based on intuitive introspection. For this reason, such judgements are
sometimes called introspective grammaticality judgements.
1

2. The context in which the sentence was uttered.

Criteria that don't determine grammaticality
In his study of grammaticality in the 1950s, Chomsky identified three criteria which cannot be
used to determine whether or not a sentence is grammatical.[3]
1. Whether or not the sentence is included in a corpus
2. Whether or not the sentence is meaningful
3. Whether or not the sentence is statistically probable
To illustrate this point, Chomsky created the nonsensical sentence in (1), which does not occur in
any corpus, is not meaningful, and is not statistically probable. However, the form of this
sentence is judged to be grammatical by many native speakers of English. Such grammaticality
judgements reflect the fact that the structure of sentence (1) obeys the rules of English grammar.
This can be seen by comparing sentence (1) with sentence (2). Both sentences have the same
structure, and both are grammatically well-formed.

Tree structure of "Colourless green ideas sleep furiously"

(1) Colorless green ideas
sleep furiously. (Chomsky 1957: 17)
(2) Harmless young children sleep quietly.
A grammatical string is not necessarily meaningful, as exemplified by Chomskys famous
sentence Colorless green ideas sleep furiously. However, language speakers can still
understand nonsensical string by natural intonation and that speakers are able to recall them more
easily than ungrammatical sentences. It is also suggested that speakers are supposed to have
intuitions about grammaticality, which is determined by their competence on that language.[4]

Acceptability is different from grammaticality.

Grammaticality versus acceptability
2

Acceptability is the extent to which:

1. a sentence is produced by the grammatical rules of that language;
2. that sentence is considered permissible by speaker and hearer.
On the other hand, grammaticality is the extent to which a string of language conforms with a
set of given rules.[4]
It is assumed that a native speakers grammar generates grammatical strings and that the
speaker also has the ability to judge whether this string is acceptable in that language. In
practice, the two notions are frequently confounded and speakers are typically asked to give their
grammaticality judgements instead of acceptability judgements.[4] Lyons 1968 defines
grammaticality as "that part of the acceptability of utterances which can be accounted for in
terms of the rules", a criterion that complements acceptability for semantic soundness.[5]
Grammaticality is defined by what a particular grammar can have as its output, while
acceptability is speaker-oriented and depends upon what speakers will consider appropriate.
X-bar theory
X-bar theory is a theory of syntactic category formation. It embodies two independent claims:
one, that phrases may contain intermediate constituents projected from a head X; and two, that
this system of projected constituency may be common to more than one category (e.g., N, V, A,
P, etc.).
The letter X is used to signify an arbitrary lexical category (part of speech); when analyzing a
specific utterance, specific categories are assigned. Thus, the X may become an N for noun, a V
for verb, an A for adjective, or a P for preposition.
The term X-bar is derived from the notation representing this structure. Certain structures are
represented by X (an X with a bar over it). Because this may be difficult to typeset, this is often
written as X, using the prime symbol or with superscript numerals as exponents, e.g., X1. In
English, however, this is still read as "X bar". The notation XP stands for X Phrase, and is at the
equivalent level of X-bar-bar (X with a double overbar), written X or X2, usually read aloud as
X double bar.
X-bar theory was first proposed by Noam Chomsky (1970),[1] building on Zellig Harris's 1951
(ch. 6) approach to categories,[2] and further developed by Ray Jackendoff (1977).[3] X-bar theory
was incorporated into both transformational and nontransformational theories of syntax,
including GB, GPSG, LFG, and HPSG. Recent work in the Minimalist Program has largely
abandoned X-bar schemata in favor of Bare Phrase Structure approaches.
Core concepts
There are three "syntax assembly" rules which form the basis of X-bar theory. These rules can be
expressed in English, as immediate dominance rules for natural language (useful for example for
3

programmers in the field of NLPnatural language processing), or visually as parse trees. All
three representations are presented below.
1. An X Phrase consists of an optional specifier and an X-bar, in any order:
XP (specifier), X
XP
XP
/ \
or
/ \
spec
X'
X' spec
2. One kind of X-bar consists of an X-bar and an adjunct, in either order:
(X X, adjunct)
Not all XPs contain Xs with adjuncts, so this rewrite rule is "optional".
X'
/ \
X'

X'
/ \

or
adjunct

adjunct

X'

3. Another kind of X-bar consists of an X (the head of the phrase) and any number of
complements (possibly zero), in any order:
X X, (complement...)
X'
/ \
or
X
complement

X'
/ \
complement

(a head-first and a head-final example showing one complement)

How the rules combine
The following diagram illustrates one way the rules might be combined to form a generic XP
structure. Because the rules are recursive, there is an infinite number of possible structures that
could be generated, including smaller trees that omit optional parts, structures with multiple
complements, and additional layers of XPs and Xs of various types.
XP
/ \
spec X'
/ \
X' adjunct
/ \
X
complement
|
head
4

Because all of the rules allow combination in any order, the left-right position of the branches at
any point may be reversed from what is shown in the example. However, in any given language,
usually only one handedness for each rule is observed. The above example maps naturally onto
the left-to-right phrase order used in English.
Note that a complement-containing X' may be distinguished from an adjunct-containing X' by
the fact that the complement has an X (head) as a sibling, whereas an adjunct has X-bar as a
sibling.
Michael Halliday
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
For other people named Michael Halliday, see Michael Halliday
(disambiguation).
Michael Halliday

M. A. K. Halliday
Born

13 April 1925 (age 91)

Leeds, Yorkshire, England

Residen
Australia
ce
National
English
ity
Fields Linguistics
Known f Systemic functional linguistics
5

or
Influenc Wang Li, J.R. Firth, Benjamin Lee
es
Whorf
Ruqaiya Hasan, C.M.I.M.
Influenc
Matthiessen, J.R. Martin, Norman
ed
Fairclough
Spouse Ruqaiya Hasan
Michael Alexander Kirkwood Halliday (often M. A. K. Halliday; born 13 April 1925) is a
British-born Australian linguist who developed the internationally influential systemic functional
linguistic model of language. His grammatical descriptions go by the name of systemic
functional grammar (SFG).[1] Halliday describes language as a semiotic system, "not in the sense
of a system of signs, but a systemic resource for meaning".[2] For Halliday, language is a
"meaning potential"; by extension, he defines linguistics as the study of "how people exchange
meanings by 'languaging'".[3] Halliday describes himself as a generalist, meaning that he has tried
"to look at language from every possible vantage point", and has described his work as
"wander[ing] the highways and byways of language".[4] However, he has claimed that "to the
extent that I favoured any one angle, it was the social: language as the creature and creator of
human society".[5]
Contents

1 Biography
2 Linguistic theory and description

3 Studies of grammar
o

3.1 Fundamental categories

3.2 Grammar as systemic

3.3 Grammar as functional

4 Language in society

5 Studies in child language development

6 Selected works

7 See also

8 References

9 Sources and external links

Biography
6

Halliday was born and raised in England. His fascination for language was nurtured by his
parents: his mother, Winifred, had studied French, and his father, Wilfred, was a dialectologist, a
dialect poet, and an English teacher with a love for grammar and Elizabethan drama.[6] In 1942,
Halliday volunteered for the national services' foreign language training course. He was selected
to study Chinese on the strength of his success in being able to differentiate tones. After 18
months' training, he spent a year in India working with the Chinese Intelligence Unit doing
counter-intelligence work. In 1945 he was brought back to London to teach Chinese.[7] He took a
BA Honours degree in Modern Chinese Language and Literature (Mandarin) through the
University of London. This was an external degree, with his studies conducted in China. He then
lived for three years in China, where he studied under Luo Changpei at Peking University and
under Wang Li at Lingnan University,[8] before returning to take a PhD in Chinese Linguistics at
Cambridge under the supervision of Gustav Hallam and then J. R. Firth.[9] Having taught
languages for 13 years, he changed his field of specialisation to linguistics,[10] and developed
systemic functional linguistics, including systemic functional grammar, elaborating on the
foundations laid by his British teacher J. R. Firth and a group of European linguists of the early
20th century, the Prague school. His seminal paper on this model was published in 1961.
Halliday's first academic position was Assistant Lecturer in Chinese, at Cambridge University,
from 1954 to 1958. In 1958 he moved to Edinburgh, where he was Lecturer in General
Linguistics until 1960, and then Reader from 1960 to 1963. From 1963 to 1965, he was the
director of the Communication Research Center at University College, London. During 1964, he
was also Linguistic Society of America Professor, at Indiana University. From 1965 to 1971, he
was Professor of Linguistics at UCL. In 197273 he was Fellow, Center for Advanced Study in
the Behavioural Sciences, at Stanford, and in 197374 Professor of Linguistics at the University
of Illinois. In 1974 he briefly moved back to Britain as Professor of Language and Linguistics at
Essex University. In 1976 he moved to Australia as Foundation Professor of Linguistics at the
University of Sydney, where he remained until he retired in 1987.[11]
Halliday has worked in various regions of language study, both theoretical and applied, and has
been especially concerned with applying the understanding of the basic principles of language to
the theory and practices of education.[12] He received the status of Emeritus Professor of the
University of Sydney and Macquarie University, Sydney, in 1987. He has honorary doctorates
from University of Birmingham (1987), York University (1988), the University of Athens (1995),
Macquarie University (1996), and Lingnan University (1999).[13]
Linguistic theory and description

The grammar of experience: the cover of An Introduction to Functional

Grammar, 2nd ed. (1994), by M.A.K. Halliday, showing the types of process
as they have evolved in English grammar[14]
Halliday is notable for his grammatical theory and descriptions, outlined in his book An
Introduction to Functional Grammar, first published in 1985. A revised edition was published in
1994, and then a third, in which he collaborated with Christian Matthiessen, in 2004. But
Hallidays conception of grammar or "lexicogrammar" (a term he coined to argue that lexis and
grammar are part of the same phenomenon) is based on a more general theory of language as a
social semiotic resource, or a meaning potential (see systemic functional linguistics). Halliday
follows Hjelmslev and Firth in distinguishing theoretical from descriptive categories in
linguistics.[15] He argues that theoretical categories, and their inter-relations, construe an abstract
model of language...they are interlocking and mutally defining.[15] The theoretical architecture
derives from work on the description of natural discourse, and as such no very clear line is
drawn between (theoretical) linguistics and applied linguistics.[16] Thus, the theory is
continually evolving as it is brought to bear on solving problems of a research or practical
nature.[15] Halliday contrasts theoretical categories with descriptive categories, defined as
"categories set up in the description of particular languages".[15] His descriptive work has been
focused on English and Chinese.
Halliday rejects explicitly the claims about language associated with the generative tradition.
Language, he argues, "cannot be equated with 'the set of all grammatical sentences', whether that
set is conceived of as finite or infinite".[17] He rejects the use of formal logic in linguistic theories
as "irrelevant to the understanding of language" and the use of such approaches as "disastrous for
linguistics".[18] On Chomsky specifically, he writes that "imaginary problems were created by the
whole series of dichotomies that Chomsky introduced, or took over unproblematized: not only
syntax/semantics but also grammar/lexis, language/thought, competence/performance. Once
8

these dichotomies had been set up, the problem arose of locating and maintaining the boundaries
between them."[18]
Studies of grammar
Fundamental categories
Halliday's first major work on the subject of grammar was "Categories of the theory of
grammar", published in the journal Word in 1961.[19] In this paper, he argued for four
"fundamental categories" for the theory of grammar: unit, structure, class, and system. These
categories, he argued, are "of the highest order of abstraction", but he defended them as those
necessary to "make possible a coherent account of what grammar is and of its place in
language"[20] In articulating the category unit, Halliday proposed the notion of a rank scale. The
units of grammar formed a "hierarchy", a scale from "largest" to "smallest" which he proposed
as: "sentence", "clause", "group/phrase", "word" and "morpheme".[21] Halliday defined structure
as "likeness between events in successivity" and as "an arrangement of elements ordered in
places'.[22] Halliday rejects a view of structure as "strings of classes, such as nominal group +
verbalgroup + nominal group", among which there is just a kind of mechanical solidarity"
describing it instead as "configurations of functions, where the solidarity is organic".[23]
Grammar as systemic
Halliday's early paper shows that the notion of "system" has been part of his theory from its
origins. Halliday explains this preoccupation in the following way: "It seemed to me that
explanations of linguistic phenomena needed to be sought in relationships among systems rather
than among structures in what I once called "deep paradigms" since these were essentially
where speakers made their choices".[24] Halliday's "systemic grammar" is a semiotic account of
grammar, because of this orientation to choice. Every linguistic act involves choice, and choices
are made on many scales. Systemic grammars draw on system networks as their primary
representation tool as a consequence. For instance, a major clause must display some structure
that is the formal realization of a choice from the system of "voice", i.e. it must be either
"middle" or "effective", where "effective" leads to the further choice of "operative" (otherwise
known as 'active') or "receptive" (otherwise known as "passive").
Grammar as functional
Halliday's grammar is not just systemic, but systemic functional. He argues that the explanation
of how language works "needed to be grounded in a functional analysis, since language had
evolved in the process of carrying out certain critical functions as human beings interacted with
their ... 'eco-social' environment".[24] Halliday's early grammatical descriptions of English, called
"Notes on Transitivity and Theme in English Parts 13"[25] include reference to "four
components in the grammar of English representing four functions that the language as a
communication system is required to carry out: the experiential, the logical, the discoursal and
the speech functional or interpersonal".[26] The "discoursal" function was renamed the "textual
function".[27] In this discussion of functions of language, Halliday draws on the work of Bhler
9

and Malinowski. Halliday's notion of language functions, or "metafunctions", became part of his
general linguistic theory.
Language in society
The final volume of Halliday's 10 volumes of Collected Papers is called Language in society,
reflecting his theoretical and methodological connection to language as first and foremost
concerned with "acts of meaning". This volume contains many of his early papers, in which he
argues for a deep connection between language and social structure. Halliday argues that
language does not merely to reflect social structure. For instance, he writes:
... if we say that linguistic structure "reflects" social structure, we are really assigning to language
a role that is too passive ... Rather we should say that linguistic structure is the realization of
social structure, actively symbolizing it in a process of mutual creativity. Because it stands as a
metaphor for society, language has the property of not only transmitting the social order but also
maintaining and potentially modifying it. (This is undoubtedly the explanation of the violent
attitudes that under certain social conditions come to be held by one group towards the speech of
others.)[28]
Studies in child language development
In enumerating his claims about the trajectory of children's language development, Halliday
eschews the metaphor of "acquisition", in which language is considered a static product which
the child takes on when sufficient exposure to natural language enables "parameter setting". By
contrast, for Halliday what the child develops is a "meaning potential". Learning language is
Learning how to mean, the name of his well-known early study of a child's language
development.[29]
Halliday (1975) identifies seven functions that language has for children in their early years. For
Halliday, children are motivated to develop language because it serves certain purposes or
functions for them. The first four functions help the child to satisfy physical, emotional and
social needs. Halliday calls them instrumental, regulatory, interactional, and personal functions.

Instrumental: This is when the child uses language to express their

needs (e.g. "Want juice")
Regulatory: This is where language is used to tell others what to do
(e.g. "Go away")

Interactional: Here language is used to make contact with others and

form relationships (e.g. "Love you, Mummy")

Personal: This is the use of language to express feelings, opinions,

and individual identity (e.g. "Me good girl")

The next three functions are heuristic, imaginative, and representational, all helping the child to
come to terms with his or her environment.
10

Heuristic: This is when language is used to gain knowledge about the

environment (e.g. 'What is the tractor doing?')
Imaginative: Here language is used to tell stories and jokes, and to
create an imaginary environment.
Representational: The use of language to convey facts and
information.

According to Halliday, as the child moves into the mother tongue, these functions give way to
the generalized "metafunctions" of language. In this process, in between the two levels of the
simple protolanguage system (the "expression" and "content" pairing of the Saussure's sign), an
additional level of content is inserted. Instead of one level of content, there are now two:
lexicogrammar and semantics. The "expression" plane also now consists of two levels: phonetics
and phonology.[30]
Halliday's followers see his work as representing a competing viewpoint to the formalist
approach of Noam Chomsky. Halliday's stated concern is with "naturally occurring language in
actual contexts of use" in a large typological range of languages. Critics of Chomsky often
characterise his work, by contrast, as focused on English with Platonic idealization, a
characterization which Chomskyans reject (see Universal Grammar).
Clauses and sentences
from English Grammar Today
What is a clause?
A clause is the basic unit of grammar. A clause must contain a verb. Typically a clause is made
up of a subject, a verb phrase and, sometimes, a complement:
Ive eaten.
The sale starts at 9 am.
I didnt sleep well last night.
Are you listening to the radio?
See also:

Clauses

What is a sentence?

11

A sentence is a unit of grammar. It must contain at least one main clause. It can contain more
than one clause. In writing, a sentence typically begins with a capital letter and ends with a full
stop:
She spoke to me. (one clause)
I looked at her and she smiled at me. (two main clauses connected by and)
We didnt go to the show because there werent any tickets left. (a main clause and a subordinate
clause connected by because)
In everyday speaking, it is often difficult to identify sentences. We speak in small stretches of
language, sometimes just single words or phrases. We dont always speak in complete sentences,
and we often complete each others sentences:
Right.
Lets go.
A:
What are those flowers?
B:
Which ones?
A:
The pink ones over there.
A:
Did I tell you Im going to do a course in um
B:
Computing?
A:
No, business studies.
Sentence Structure (Part 1) - Basic Clause Structure
The Building Blocks of English Sentences
12

These articles give you all the information you need about sentence
structure in English writing. The following is important information about
sentence patterns and the rules for proper sentence construction in English
writing.
Enjoy your reading and start writing good effective sentences.
Getting into Sentences
Consider this question: Which one of the following is a good sentence ?
1) Birds fly.
2) Those beautiful small red-blue African birds, which we saw at the zoo last
week, actually fly around the world every year looking for a mate.
Actually, from a pure grammatical perspective, these sentences are both
valid as they contain the basic elements required by grammar. Still, when it
comes to good writing, sentence (2) is by far much more interesting to the
reader than the laconic short sentence (1). It is important to know the
various sentence elements (subjects, predicates, phrases, clauses) that can
make your writing accurate and grammatically correct but also more
interesting and appealing to your readers.
What is a Sentence?
A sentence is basically a group of words which are tied together and convey
an idea, event or description. The words in an English sentence have a
certain order and rules regarding ways to either expand or shorten it. The
boundaries of a sentence are easily recognized, as it begins with a capital
letter and ends with a terminal punctuation mark (period, question mark or
exclamation point). It is important for English writers to know the language of
sentence grammar terms in order to be able to analyze and develop their
writing.
The four main sections regarding English sentence structure are:
1.
2.
3.
4.

Basic Clause Structure

Phrase
Clause Types
The 4 Sentence Types

13

Sentence Structure in English Writing

1. Basic Clause Structure
Right or Wrong ?
In the park a young boy yesterday a black snake bit.
Wrong !The reader of the above sentence may not understand who or what
bit what or who. In order to make sure that it is a snake who bit a young boy,
the words have to be placed in a certain order, which in English is usually
fixed. In addition, phrases describing place and time, also adhere to a certain
order. The correct sentence is therefore:
A black snake bit a young boy in the park yesterday.
If you want to know more, read the grammar rules for basic clause
structure below.
If you are ready to read other sentence structure topics, click here for the
index.
The Grammar Rules for Basic Clause Structure in English
Before we begin our review of the rules, you should know that sentences can
be defined according to their purpose:
1) A declarative sentence
-can make a positive statement
Some birds fly south in winter.
-can make a negative statement
These birds do not fly south in winter.
2) An interrogative sentence asks a question
Do these birds fly south in winter ?
3) An imperative sentence gives a command
Fly south this winter !
4) An exclamatory sentence expresses a strong feeling
Oh ! I just love these cute birds !
5) A subjunctive sentence can convey a condition, wish, or preference
which are contrary to fact or reality.
I wish these beautiful birds didn't fly south this winter (but in reality they
14

will).
1. A basic sentence is composed of at least one independent clause. A
clause is composed of a minimum of a subject and a predicate. Without one
of these elements, the clause is ungrammatical.
2. A subject of a clause is an entity such as a person, a place, an object, or
an abstract concept, which acts, is described or is acted upon. The subject
usually answers the question Who/What is the sentence about?
The subject in the "right or wrong" example is "a black snake."
The lion roared.
[The subjects acts]
The lion is beautiful.
[The subject is described]
The lion was hunted.
[The subject is acted upon]
3. A simple subject is the word or group of words acting as a subject. A
complete subject is the simple subject and its modifiers. A compound
subject consists of two or more nouns or pronouns, linked by either and or
or. A complete compound subject includes the compound subject and its
modifiers.
The lion roared.
[The lion = simple subject]
The big lion roared.
[The big lion = complete subject]
The lion and the lioness roared.
[The lion and the lioness = compound subject]
The big strong lion and the beautiful lioness roared.
[The big strong lion and the beautiful lioness = complete compound subject]
4. The subject usually precedes the predicate but not always.
The lions ran off.
[subject precedes predicate]
Off ran the lions.
[predicate precedes subject]
15

Under the tree lay a pride of lions.

[predicate precedes subject]
Why did the lions run ?
[predicate element precedes subject in questions]
5. A predicate of a clause gives information on the subject, either
describing it or identifying the action it performs or that is performed upon it
(its predicament). The predicate contains the verb in the sentence and
objects that are affected by the subject's actions. It usually answers the
question What happens/ is described?
The predicate in the "right or wrong" example is bit a young boy in the park
yesterday, the verb is bit, the (direct) object in the above example is a
young boy.
The lion roared.
[The predicate tells what the subject does]
The lion is beautiful.
[The predicate describes the subject]
The lion was hunted.
[The predicate tells what was done to the subject]
6. A simple predicate consists of only the verb. A complete predicate
consists of the verb and its modifiers. A compound predicate consists of
two or more verbs with or without objects, or a verb with one object or more,
linked by either and or or. A complete compound subject includes the
compound predicate and its modifiers.
The lion roared.
[roared = simple predicate]
The lion roared loudly.
[roared loudly = complete predicate]
The lion roared and growled at the foxes.
[roared and growled at the foxes = compound subject]
The lion roared and growled at the small foxes loudly.
[roared and growled at the small foxes loudly = complete compound subject]
7. A direct object is a noun, pronoun or group of words acting as a noun
16

that receives the action of a transitive verb without a linking preposition. A

direct object answers the question whom? Or what?
The teacher read the story.
[the story = direct object]
8. An indirect object is a noun, pronoun or a group of words acting as a
noun that answers the question to whom/what ? or for whom/what ? the
action expressed by a transitive verb was done.
The teacher read the story to the students.
[the story = direct object, to the students = indirect object]
9. In sentences where the indirect object follows the word to or for, always
put the direct object before the indirect object. If the indirect object does not
follow to or for, put the indirect object before the direct object.
Yes: The teacher gave an assignment to the students.
No: The teacher gave to the students an assignment.
Yes: The teacher gave the students an assignment.
[the verb give can be used without to]
10. When a pronoun is used as an indirect object, some verbs require to or
for before the pronoun, while others do not. Consult a dictionary if you are
unsure (the best place to look this up is in the example sentences within the
entry of the verb in the dictionary).
The teacher explained the grammar rule to the students.
No: The teacher explained them the grammar rule.
Yes: The teacher explained the grammar rule to them.
[the verb explain follows only one pattern, with to]
The teacher gave an assignment to the students.
Yes: The teacher gave an assignment to them.
Yes: The teacher gave them an assignment.
[The verb give follows both patterns, with and without to]
12. When both the direct object and the indirect object are pronouns, put the
direct object before the indirect object and use to or for with the indirect
object.
The teacher gave an assignment to the students.
No: The teacher gave them it.
Yes: The teacher gave it to them.
Yes: The teacher gave them an assignment.
[the verb give can also be used without to before indirect object]
13. A typical word order for an English one-clause-sentence would therefore
17

be:
Subject-Verb-Direct Object-Indirect Object
The teacher gave an assignment to the students.
14. To expand the basic one-clause-sentence, you can add manner (how?),
place (where?) and time (when?how often?) modifiers. These usually appear
in the above mentioned order. An easy formula to help you remember the
basic word order for a basic English sentence is:
Subject-Verb-Object-Manner-Place-Time, or conversely the acronym
SVOMPT (pronounced like swamp). You usually do not have to include all six
parts, but if you do, this order is recommended.
The teacher gave an assignment to the students quickly in class yesterday.
[subject] [verb] [direct object] [indirect object] [manner] [place] [time]
15. A complement is an element appearing in the predicate that renames
or describes a subject or an object. A subject complememt is a noun,
pronoun, or adjective that follows a linking verb (e.g. b e, look, appear). An
object complement follows a direct object and either renames or describes
it.
This student is a 12th-grader.
[ is = linking verb, a student = subject complement]
This student refers to himself as "Professor X."
[ refers = verb, himself = direct object, Professor X = object complement]
16. A modifier is a word or group of words that describes or limits other
words. Modifiers can appear in both the subject and the predicate of the
sentence. Modifiers may be single words, phrases or whole clauses.
The best student got an A on the biology test.
[the adjective best modifies the noun student, the noun biology modifies the
noun test]
The students in class were very excited when the teacher read the story
funnily.
[ the preopositional phrase in class modifies students, the adverb very
modifies the adjective excited, the adverb funnily modifies the verb read]
Consequently, the teacher continued reading the story. He did not finish it
because the lesson ended.
[the adverb consequently modifies the independent clause the teacher
continued reading the story,
the dependent clause because the lesson ended modifies the independent
clause he did not finish it]
18

17. An appositive is a word or group of words that renames the noun or

pronoun preceding it. When an appositive is not essential to identifying what
it renames (when it is non-restrictive), use a comma to separate it from the
rest of the sentence.
Berlin, the capital of Germany, is developing rapidly.
[the appositive the capital of Germany renames Berlin]
The student talked to Mr. Smith, his counselor.
[the appositive his counselor renames Mr. Smith]
Sentence Structure: Summing it up
As our brief article shows, sentence structure rules are the basic building
blocks of English writing. If you know the basics, you will be able to make
your writing more complex as you advance your writing skills.
Hallidays Functions of Language
Function

Examples

Classroom
Experiences

Instrumental
language is used to
communicate
preferences, choices,
wants, or needs

"I want to ..."

Problem solving,
gathering
materials,
role playing,
persuading

Personal
language is used to
express individuality

"Here I am ...."

Making feelings
public and
interacting with
others

Interactional
language is used to
interact and plan,
develop, or maintain
a play or group
activity or social
relationship

"You and me ...."

"I'll be the
cashier, ...."

Structured play,
dialogues and
discussions,
talking in groups

Regulatory
language is used to
control

"Do as I tell
you ...."
"You need ...."

making rules in
games, giving
instructions,
teaching

Representational

"I'll tell you."

Conveying

19

Use language to
explain

"I know."

messages,
telling about the
real world,
expressing a
proposition

Heuristic
language is used to
find things out,
wonder, or
hypothesize

"Tell me why ...."

"Why did you do
that?"
"What for?"

Question and
answer, routines,
inquiry and
research

Imaginative
language is used to
create, explore, and
entertain

"Let's
pretend ...."
"I went to my
grandma's last
night."

Stories and
dramatizations,
rhymes, poems,
and riddles,
nonsense and
word play

SEMANTICS
Semantics (from Ancient Greek: smantiks, "significant")[1][2] is the study of
meaningin language, programming languages, formal logics, and semiotics. It focuses on the
relationship between signifierslike words, phrases, signs, and symbolsand what they stand
for, their denotation.
In international scientific vocabulary semantics is also called semasiology. The word semantics
was first used by Michel Bral, a French philologist.[3] It denotes a range of ideasfrom the
popular to the highly technical. It is often used in ordinary language for denoting a problem of
understanding that comes down to word selection or connotation. This problem of understanding
has been the subject of many formal enquiries, over a long period of time, especially in the field
of formal semantics. In linguistics, it is the study of the interpretation of signs or symbols used in
agents or communities within particular circumstances and contexts.[4] Within this view, sounds,
facial expressions, body language, and proxemics have semantic (meaningful) content, and each
comprises several branches of study. In written language, things like paragraph structure and
punctuation bear semantic content; other forms of language bear other semantic content.[4]
The formal study of semantics intersects with many other fields of inquiry, including lexicology,
syntax, pragmatics, etymology and others. Independently, semantics is also a well-defined field
in its own right, often with synthetic properties.[5] In the philosophy of language, semantics and
reference are closely connected. Further related fields include philology, communication, and
semiotics. The formal study of semantics can therefore be manifold and complex.

20

Semantics contrasts with syntax, the study of the combinatorics of units of a language (without
reference to their meaning), and pragmatics, the study of the relationships between the symbols
of a language, their meaning, and the users of the language.[6] Semantics as a field of study also
has significant ties to various representational theories of meaning including truth theories of
meaning, coherence theories of meaning, and correspondence theories of meaning. Each of these
is related to the general philosophical study of reality and the representation of meaning.
Sense and reference
The distinction between sense and reference was an innovation of the German philosopher and
mathematician Gottlob Frege in 1892, reflecting the two ways he believed a singular term may
have meaning. The reference (or "referent", German: Bedeutung)) of a proper name is the object
it means or indicates (bedeuten), its sense is what the name expresses. The reference of a
sentence is its truth value, its sense is the thought that it expresses.[1] Frege justified the
distinction in a number of ways.
1.

2.

Sense is something possessed by a name, whether or not it has a reference. For example,
the name "Odysseus" is intelligible, and therefore has a sense, even though there is no
individual object (its reference) to which the name corresponds.
The sense of different names is different, even when their reference is the same. Frege
argued that if an identity statement such as "Hesperus is the same planet as Phosphorus"
is to be informative, the proper names flanking the identity sign must have a different
meaning or sense. But clearly, if the statement is true, they must have the same reference.
[2]
The sense is a 'mode of presentation', which serves to illuminate only a single aspect of
the referent.[3]

Sense

Hesperus

21

Phosporus
Frege introduced the notion of Sense (German: Sinn) to accommodate difficulties in his early
theory of meaning.
First, if the entire significance of a sentence consists in its truth value, it follows that the sentence
will have the same significance if we replace a word of the sentence with one having an identical
reference, for this will not change the truth value of the sentence.[8] The reference of the whole is
determined by the reference of the parts. If 'the evening star' has the same reference as 'the
morning star', it follows that 'the evening star is a body illuminated by the Sun' has the same truth
value as 'the morning star is a body illuminated by the Sun'. But someone may think that the first
sentence is true, but the second is false, and so the thought corresponding to the sentence cannot
be its reference, but something else, which Frege called its sense.
Second, sentences which contain proper names that have no reference cannot have a truth value
at all. Yet the sentence 'Odysseus was set ashore at Ithaca while sound asleep' obviously has a
sense, even though 'Odysseus' has no reference. The thought remains the same whether or not
'Odysseus' has a reference.[9] Furthermore, a thought cannot contain the objects which it is about.
For example, Mont Blanc, 'with its snowfields', cannot be a component of the thought that Mont
Blanc is more than 4,000 metres high. Nor can a thought about Etna contain lumps of solidified
lava.[10]
Frege's notion of sense is somewhat obscure, and neo-Fregeans have come up with different
candidates for its role.[11] Accounts based on the work of Carnap[12] and Church[13] treat sense as
an intension, or a function from possible worlds to extensions. For example, the intension of
number of planets is a function that maps any possible world to the number of planets in that
world. John McDowell supplies cognitive and reference-determining roles.[14] Devitt[15] treats
senses as causal-historical chains connecting names to referents.
Sense and description
In his theory of descriptions, Bertrand Russell held the view that most proper names in ordinary
language are in fact disguised definite descriptions. For example, 'Aristotle' can be understood as
"The pupil of Plato and teacher of Alexander," or by some other uniquely applying description.
This is known as the descriptivist theory of names. Because Frege used definite descriptions in
many of his examples, he is often taken to have endorsed the descriptivist theory. Thus Russell's
22

theory of descriptions was conflated with Frege's theory of sense, and for most of the twentieth
century this 'Frege-Russell' view was the orthodox view of proper name semantics. However,
Saul Kripke argued compellingly against the descriptivist theory. According to Kripke,[16] proper
names are rigid designators which designate the same object in every possible world.
Descriptions such as 'the President of the U.S. in 1970' do not designate the same in every
possible world. For example, someone other than Richard Nixon, e.g. Hubert Humphrey, might
have been the President in 1970. Hence a description (or cluster of descriptions) cannot be a rigid
designator, and thus a proper name cannot mean the same as a description.[17]
However, the Russellian descriptivist reading of Frege has been rejected by many scholars, in
particular by Gareth Evans in The Varieties of Reference[18] and by John McDowell in "The Sense
and Reference of a Proper Name,"[19] following Michael Dummett, who argued that Frege's
notion of sense should not be equated with a description. Evans further developed this line,
arguing that a sense without a referent was not possible. He and McDowell both take the line that
Frege's discussion of empty names, and of the idea of sense without reference, are inconsistent,
and that his apparent endorsement of descriptivism rests only on a small number of imprecise
and perhaps offhand remarks. And both point to the power that the sense-reference distinction
does have (i.e., to solve at least the first two problems), even if it is not given a descriptivist
reading.
Translation of Bedeutung
As noted above, translators of Frege have rendered the German Bedeutung in various ways. The
term 'reference' has been the most widely adopted, but this fails to capture the meaning of the
original German ('meaning' or 'significance'), and does not reflect the decision to standardise of
key terms across different editions of Frege's works published by Blackwell.[20] The decision was
based on the principle of exegetical neutrality, namely that 'if at any point in a text there is a
passage that raises for the native speaker legitimate questions of exegesis, then, if at all possible,
a translator should strive to confront the reader of his version with the same questions of exegesis
and not produce a version which in his mind resolves those questions'.[21] The term 'meaning' best
captures the standard German meaning of Bedeutung, and Frege's own use of the term sounds as
odd when translated into English as it does in German. Also, 'meaning' captures Frege's early use
of Bedeutung well.,[22] and it would be problematic to translate Frege's early use by 'meaning',
and his later use by 'reference', suggesting a change in terminology not evident in the original
German.
Relation to connotation and denotation
The sense-reference distinction is commonly confused with that between connotation and
denotation, which originates with Mill.[23] According to Mill, a common term like 'white' denotes
all white things, as snow, paper'. But according to Frege, a common term does not refer to any
individual white thing, but rather to an abstract Concept (Begriff). We must distinguish between
the relation of reference, which holds between a proper name and the object it refers to, such as
between the name 'Earth', and the planet Earth, and the relation of 'falling under', such as when
the Earth falls under the concept planet. The relation of a proper name to the object it designates
is direct, whereas a word like 'planet' has no such direct relation at all to the Earth at all, but only
23

to a concept that the Earth falls under. Moreover, the judgment of whether something falls under
this concept is not in any way part of our knowledge of what the word 'planet' means.[24] The
distinction between connotation and denotation is closer to that between Concept and Object,
than to that between 'sense' and 'reference'.
Sentences, Utterances, and Propositions
1. 1. UTTERANCES: Virtue is its own Read the following out loud: reward
Virtue is its own reward Now read it out loud again. The same
sentence was involved in the two readings, but you made two different
utterances, i.e. two unique physical events took place. An utterance is
an act of saying. An utterance has time, place, speaker, language, but
no special form or content. Virtue is its own reward
2. 2. DEFINITION An UTTERANCE is any stretch of talk, by one person,
before and after which there is silence on the part of that person. An
utterance is the USE by a particular speaker, on a particular occasion,
of a piece of language, such as a sequence of sentences, or a single
phrase, or even a single word. *P* Virtue is itsVirtue own reward. That
is my motto. *P* *pause* Virtue is *pause*
3. 3. P16
4. 4. THE CHARACTERISTICS OF UTTERANCE: It is spoken Physical
event. Events are ephemeral i.e. short-lived May be grammatical or
not (REMEMBER, utterances do not focus on the grammatical aspect)
A piece of language (a single phrase or even a single word)
Meaningful or meaningless e.g. is Identified by a specific time or on
particular occasion by a specific person (in particular accent).
5. 5. SENTENCES Definition (partial): A SENTENCE is neither a physical
event nor a physical object. It is, conceived abstractly, a string of
words put together by the grammatical rules of a language. A sentence
can be thought of as the IDEAL string of words behind various
realizations in utterances and inscriptions. Virtue is its own reward. A
sentence has no time or place etc., but it has a definite linguistic form.
*pause* Virtue is Virtue is *pause* its own Virtu reward. e
6. 6. CONVENTION IN SEMANTICS A book such as this contains no
utterances (since books dont talk) or sentences (since sentences are
abstract ideals). In semantics we need to make a careful distinction
between utterances and sentences.
7. 7. A- John announced Marys hereB- Mary thought how nice John was
Tom: Mary thought how nice John was
8. 8. Rule A given sentence always consists of the same words, and in the
same order. Any change in the words, or in their order, makes a
different sentence, for our purposes.
24

9. 9. Practice1) Does it make sense to ask what language (e.g.English,

French, Chinese) a sentence belongs to? Yes /No2) Does it make sense
to say that an utterance was in aparticular accent ? Yes / No3) Does it
make sense to say that a sentence was in aparticular accent ? Yes / No
10.
10. SENTENCES Definition (partial): A SENTENCE is a
grammatically complete string of words expressing a complete
thought. This excludes any string of words that does not have a verb
in it, as well as other strings. A sentence is a complete expression in a
language. E.g. I would like a cup of coffee is a sentence. Coffee,
please is not a sentence. In the kitchen is not a sentence. Please put
it in the kitchen is a sentence.
11.
11. Utterances of non-sentences, e.g. short phrases, or single
words, are used by people in communication all the time. The
abstract idea of a sentence is the basis for understanding even those
expressions which are not sentences. The meanings of non-sentences
can best be analysed by considering them to be abbreviations, or
incomplete versions, of whole sentences. Please put it in the In the
kitchen kitchen
12.
12. PROPOSITION: Semantics is concerned with the meanings of
non- sentences, such as phrases and incomplete sentences, just as
much as with whole sentences. But it is more convenient to begin our
analysis with the case of whole sentences. The meanings of whole
sentences involve propositions; the notion of a proposition is central to
semantics.
13.
13. PROPOSITION Definition: A PROPOSITION is that part of the
meaning of the utterance of a declarative sentence which describes
some state of affairs. A proposition is a claim about the world. It has
just the form of an idea. A proposition is a (potential) fact about the
world, which can be true or false. e.g. The boy is playing football. Two
plus two makes five.
14.
14. PROPOSITION The state of affairs typically involves persons
or things referred to by expressions in the sentence and the situation
or action they are involved in. In uttering a declarative sentence a
speaker typically asserts a proposition. E.g. Two plus two makes five.
15.
15. The notion of truth can be used to decide whether two
sentences express different propositions. Thus, if there is any
conceivable set of circumstances in which one sentence is true, while
the other is false, we can be sure that they express different
propositions.
16.
16. True propositions correspond to facts, in the ordinary sense
of the word fact. False propositions do not correspond to facts.
25

17.
17. Can one entertain propositions in the mind regardless of
whether they are true or false ? E.g. What am I doing if I entertain the
thought that the moon is made of green cheese? I may believe the
proposition that the moon is made of green cheese 0r I may not
believe. Or I may wonder whether the moon is made of green cheese
is true ? ( I believe that I do not know but desire to know). It may
simply have struck me that the moon could be made of green cheese;
that is, I may believe that to be possible. Or I may be wondering what
would happen if the moon were made of green cheese; for instance, I
may wonder that the moon would collapse. Entertain = to admit into
the mind; consider i.e. by thinking them, or believing them
18.
18. But only true propositions can be known. Not all true
beliefs are knowledge, not all unknown beliefs are false.
19.
19. Propositions are involved in the meanings of other types of
sentences in addition to the declarative. Declarative: The speaker
commits himself to the truth of the corresponding proposition: i.e. he
asserts the proposition. Interrogative: Is used to ask questions.
Questions the truth of the proposition. Doesnt assert the truth of the
proposition. Imperative: Is used to convey orders. Demands carrying
out the proposition. Doesnt assert the truth of the proposition.
20.
20. Does it make sense to ask what language (e.g. English,
French, Chinese) a proposition belongs to? Yes / No Propositions,
unlike sentences, cannot be said to belong to any particular language.
Sentences in different languages can correspond to the same
proposition, if the two sentences are perfect translations of each other.
21.
21. One may question whether perfect translation between
languages is ever possible? In point of fact, many linguists disagree
about this and it is likely that absolutely perfect translation of the same
proposition from one language to another is impossible. However, to
simplify matters here we shall assume that in some, possibly very few,
cases, perfect translation IS possible.
22.

22. SUMMARIZING THE RELATIONSHIP BETWEENTHE 3 NOTIONS

23.
23. It is useful to envisage the kind of family tree relationship
between these notions shown in the diagram.
24.
24. This time I Which path think Ill should I take take the left this
time? path. Which ? Which pathThis Left path this time?time Which
path should I take Left ? Ill I think Ill take the take This time? the left
path left
25.
25. A proposition is an abstraction that can be grasped by the
mind of an individual person. In this sense, a proposition is an object of
thought.Can we equate propositions with thoughts??? Thoughts are
26

usually held to be private, personal, mental processes, whereas

propositions are public in the sense that the same proposition is
accessible to different persons: different individuals can grasp the
same proposition. A proposition is not a process, whereas a thought
can be seen as a process going on in an individuals mind. Problem ??
26.
26. The word thought may sometimes be used loosely in a way
which includes the notion of a proposition. For instance, one may say,
The same thought came into both our heads at the same time. In this
case, the word thought is being used in a sense quite like that of the
word proposition. The relationship between: - mental processes (e.g.
thoughts), - abstract semantic entities (e.g. propositions), - linguistic entities (e.g. sentences), - and actions (e.g. utterances) is
problematic and complicated.
Coherance and Cohesion
Coherence and cohesion are dimensions within overall article development that deal with how
text and other information is organized and structured within an article and how different articles
are organized and linked to form a more complete picture - concepts that we will be dealing with
more and more as new article creation slows down due to our approaching a theoretical concept
limit. With over 5 M articles as of November 2015, there are fewer missing articles to write in
many areas (although gender bias in Wikipedia and racial bias in Wikipedia have left significant
gaps in topics pertaining to women and people of colour). This means that in many subject areas,
our editing work will take a greater focus on developing existing articles and topics to their
maximum depth and ensuring that existing articles are well-linked and connected together
through the use of wikilinks, categories, topicboxes, "see also" sections and other techniques.
There are areas which are well developed: Well formed articles are considered such largely
because they deal with and link to the most relevant superordinate (contexts) and subordinate
topics (concepts) in a logical order. The liberal usage of topicboxes is a necessity for large series
of articles to be coherently navigable and developed.
Coherency refers to an article providing logical, understandable and usable knowledge to the
reader. In order to be coherent,
1 the article shall treat one topic, or many topics that are
otherwise the article is
logically related to each other,
fragmented
2 if many topics are treated, then there shall be text that relates otherwise the article is
each topic to each other,
fragmented
3 the language shall be as easy, straightforward and jargon-free otherwise the language is messy
as possible, not making outright deviations from the topic
and/or unclear
before reaching an explanation, and
4 the terms should be as common, as unambiguous and as
otherwise the language contains
comprehensible as possible, the terms used mustn't
too much jargon and will be hard
contradict each other,
to understand
27

5 the article layout shall follow, in most cases, the

conventional article section order in Wikipedia,
6 and the article shall neatly integrate, (not contradict, not
overlap), into the larger dataset called Wikipedia.

because this makes it easier for

readers to navigate around a new
article,
coherency on a larger scale

Coherency is not about truth and verification. Coherency is about understandability, clarity and
logic. If there is neither too much nor too little information, and the explanation is simple and
clear, instead of overflowing with irrelevant details, then the article is coherent!
What is Cohesion & Coherence?
Cohesion and coherence aren't too difficult to explain. Cohesion refers to connectivity in a text.
Coherence refers to how easy it is to understand the writing.
Cohesion & Coherence
"My favourite colour is blue. I like it because it is calming and it relaxes me. I often go outside
in the summer and lie on the grass and look into the clear sky when I am stressed. For this
reason, I'd have to say my favourite colour is blue."

Cohesive AND coherent: Blue > Relaxes > Clear Sky > Blue (Photos from Flickr)
This sentence is both coherent and cohesive, but let's focus on the cohesion first. I've highlighted
the ways that each sentence is connected to the sentence before.
Cohesion with NO Coherence
Now, here is a sentence that has cohesion but is not coherent.
"My favourite colour is blue. Blue sports cars go very fast. Driving in this way is dangerous
and can cause many car crashes. I had a car accident once and broke my leg. I was very sad
because I had to miss a holiday in Europe because of the injury."

28

Cohesive NOT coherent: Blue > Sports Car > Fast Driving > Car Crashes > Broken Leg
> Holiday in Europe (Photos from Flickr)
As you can see, there is plenty of cohesion here. The sentences connect clearly together but if
you read the paragraph, it really makes no sense - I start talking about blue and I finish talking
about a holiday in Europe. There is no coherence in this sentence.
Coherence with NO Cohesion
Now, let's take a look at a sentence that is coherent but not cohesive.
"My favourite colour is blue. I'm calm and relaxed. In the summer I lie on the grass and look
up."
29

Coherent NOT cohesive: Blue - Calm & Relaxed - Looking Up (Photos from Flickr)
This is more difficult to understand but basically this lack of cohesion means a lack of sufficient
connectors to join the ideas together. If I try hard I can understand what the person is saying: a
short answer, an explanation, an example; however the sentences don't fit together.
Cohesion & Coherence in Conversation

Are your conversations coherent? Are they cohesive?

Now, in spoken discourse, the easiest example I can think of is a Cambridge First Certificate
speaking exam, part 3: the students' conversation. Two students are asked to talk about some
pictures but if they do not respond to what each other is saying and make no attempt to reference
each other then the conversation can be coherent but can completely lack cohesion. For
example:
A. "I think these people are having a good time."
B. "It appears these people are enjoying themselves."
A. "They seem to be on holiday."
B. "It looks like they are on vacation."
Obviously there is no connection between A and B in this conversation. We understand them and
they are coherent. What is missing is cohesion. They are not connected. A is not listening to B
and B is not listening to A.
On the other hand, take a look at this example:
30

A. "I think these people are having a good time."

B. "Time is difficult to manage. I am always late for my social appointments like when I have a
date with a girl."
A. "I like girls with long, dark hair and brown eyes."
B. "My dog has brown eyes and a long tail."
etc, etc.
This example shows that there is cohesion but the conversation makes no sense and therefore it is
missing coherence.
Next time you are looking at a piece of writing; a newspaper, an essay you wrote, another
student's essay, a web article like this one, you should consider the cohesion and coherence of the
composition. It is worth 25% of your IELTS mark and it is an important factor in the other
Cambridge exams as well.
Speech act
A speech act in linguistics and the philosophy of language is an utterance that has performative
function in language and communication. According to Kent Bach, "almost any speech act is
really the performance of several acts at once, distinguished by different aspects of the speaker's
intention: there is the act of saying something, what one does in saying it, such as requesting or
promising, and how one is trying to affect one's audience." The contemporary use of the term
goes back to J. L. Austin's development of performative utterances and his theory of locutionary,
illocutionary, and perlocutionary acts. Speech acts are commonly taken to include such acts as
promising, ordering, greeting, warning, inviting and congratulating.
Locutionary, illocutionary and perlocutionary acts
Speech acts can be analysed on three levels:
1. A locutionary act, the performance of an utterance: the actual utterance and its ostensible
meaning, comprising phonetic, phatic and rhetic acts corresponding to the verbal,
syntactic and semantic aspects of any meaningful utterance;
2. an illocutionary act: the pragmatic 'illocutionary force' of the utterance, thus its intended
significance as a socially valid verbal action (see below);
3. and in certain cases a further perlocutionary act: its actual effect, such as persuading,
convincing, scaring, enlightening, inspiring, or otherwise getting someone to do or realize
something, whether intended or not (Austin 1962)
Illocutionary acts
The concept of an illocutionary act is central to the concept of a speech act. Although there are
numerous opinions regarding how to define 'illocutionary acts', there are some kinds of acts
which are widely accepted as illocutionary, as for example promising, ordering someone, and
bequeathing.
31

Following the usage of, for example, John R. Searle, "speech act" is often meant to refer just to
the same thing as the term illocutionary act, which John L. Austin had originally introduced in
How to Do Things with Words (published posthumously in 1962). Searle's work on speech acts is
also commonly understood to refine Austin's conception. However, some philosophers have
pointed out a significant difference between the two conceptions: whereas Austin emphasized the
conventional interpretation of speech acts, Searle emphasized a psychological interpretation
(based on beliefs, intentions, etc.).[1][2]
According to Austin's preliminary informal description, the idea of an "illocutionary act" can be
captured by emphasizing that "by saying something, we do something", as when someone issues
an order to someone to go by saying "Go!", or when a minister joins two people in marriage
saying, "I now pronounce you husband and wife." (Austin would eventually define the
"illocutionary act" in a more exact manner.)
An interesting type of illocutionary speech act is that performed in the utterance of what Austin
calls performatives, typical instances of which are "I nominate John to be President", "I sentence
you to ten years' imprisonment", or "I promise to pay you back." In these typical, rather explicit
cases of performative sentences, the action that the sentence describes (nominating, sentencing,
promising) is performed by the utterance of the sentence itself.
Classifying illocutionary speech acts
Searle (1975)[3] has set up the following classification of illocutionary speech acts:

Representatives = speech acts that commit a speaker to the truth of the expressed
proposition, e.g. reciting a creed
Directives = speech acts that are to cause the hearer to take a particular action, e.g.
requests, commands and advice

Commissives = speech acts that commit a speaker to some future action, e.g. promises
and oaths

Expressives = speech acts that express the speaker's attitudes and emotions towards the
proposition, e.g. congratulations, excuses and thanks

Declarations = speech acts that change the reality in accord with the proposition of the
declaration, e.g. baptisms, pronouncing someone guilty or pronouncing someone husband
and wife

Indirect speech acts

In the course of performing speech acts we ordinarily communicate with each other. The content
of communication may be identical, or almost identical, with the content intended to be
communicated, as when a stranger asks, "What is your name?"
However, the meaning of the linguistic means used (if ever there are linguistic means, for at least
some so-called "speech acts" can be performed non-verbally) may also be different from the
32

content intended to be communicated. One may, in appropriate circumstances, request Peter to

do the dishes by just saying, "Peter ...!", or one can promise to do the dishes by saying, "Me!"
One common way of performing speech acts is to use an expression which indicates one speech
act, and indeed performs this act, but also performs a further speech act, which is indirect. One
may, for instance, say, "Peter, can you open the window?", thereby asking Peter whether he will
be able to open the window, but also requesting that he does so. Since the request is performed
indirectly, by means of (directly) performing a question, it counts as an indirect speech act.
Indirect speech acts are commonly used to reject proposals and to make requests. For example, a
speaker asks, "Would you like to meet me for coffee?" and another replies, "I have class." The
second speaker used an indirect speech act to reject the proposal. This is indirect because the
literal meaning of "I have class" does not entail any sort of rejection.
This poses a problem for linguists because it is confusing (on a rather simple approach) to see
how the person who made the proposal can understand that his proposal was rejected. Following
substantially an account of H. P. Grice, Searle suggests that we are able to derive meaning out of
indirect speech acts by means of a cooperative process out of which we are able to derive
multiple illocutions; however, the process he proposes does not seem to accurately solve the
problem. Sociolinguistics has studied the social dimensions of conversations. This discipline
considers the various contexts in which speech acts occur.
In other words this means that one does not need to say the words apologize, pledge, or praise in
order to show they are doing the action. All the examples above show how the actions and
indirect words make something happen rather than coming out straightforward with specific
words and saying it.
John Searle's theory of "indirect speech acts"
Searle has introduced the notion of an 'indirect speech act', which in his account is meant to be,
more particularly, an indirect 'illocutionary' act. Applying a conception of such illocutionary acts
according to which they are (roughly) acts of saying something with the intention of
communicating with an audience, he describes indirect speech acts as follows: "In indirect
speech acts the speaker communicates to the hearer more than he actually says by way of relying
on their mutually shared background information, both linguistic and nonlinguistic, together with
the general powers of rationality and inference on the part of the hearer." An account of such act,
it follows, will require such things as an analysis of mutually shared background information
about the conversation, as well as of rationality and linguistic conventions.
In connection with indirect speech acts, Searle introduces the notions of 'primary' and 'secondary'
illocutionary acts. The primary illocutionary act is the indirect one, which is not literally
performed. The secondary illocutionary act is the direct one, performed in the literal utterance of
the sentence (Searle 178). In the example:
(1) Speaker X: "We should leave for the show or else well be late."
(2) Speaker Y: "I am not ready yet."
33

Here the primary illocutionary act is Y's rejection of X's suggestion, and the secondary
illocutionary act is Y's statement that Y is not ready to leave. By dividing the illocutionary act
into two subparts, Searle is able to explain that we can understand two meanings from the same
utterance all the while knowing which is the correct meaning to respond to.
With his doctrine of indirect speech acts Searle attempts to explain how it is possible that a
speaker can say something and mean it, but additionally mean something else. This would be
impossible, or at least it would be an improbable case, if in such a case the hearer had no chance
of figuring out what the speaker means (over and above what they say and mean). Searle's
solution is that the hearer can figure out what the indirect speech act is meant to be, and he gives
several hints as to how this might happen. For the previous example Direct Speech and Indirect
Speech "While direct speech purports to give a verbatim rendition of the words that were spoken,
indirect speech is more variable in claiming to represent a faithful report of the content or content
and form of the words that were spoken. It is important to note, however, that the question of
whether and how faithful a given speech report actually is, is of a quite different order. Both
direct and indirect speech are stylistic devices for conveying messages. The former is used as if
the words being used were those of another, which are therefore pivoted to a deictic center
different from the speech situation of the report. Indirect speech, in contrast, has its deictic center
in the report situation and is variable with respect to the extent that faithfulness to the linguistic
form of what was said is being claimed." (Florian Coulmas, "Reported Speech: Some General
Issues.") a condensed process might look like this:
Step 1: A proposal is made by X, and Y responded by means of an illocutionary act (2).
Step 2: X assumes that Y is cooperating in the conversation, being sincere, and that Y has
made a statement that is relevant.
Step 3: The literal meaning of (2) is not relevant to the conversation.
Step 4: Since X assumes that Y is cooperating; there must be another meaning to (2).
Step 5: Based on mutually shared background information, X knows that they cannot
leave until Y is ready. Therefore, Y has rejected X's proposition.
Step 6: X knows that Y has said something in something other than the literal meaning,
and the primary illocutionary act must have been the rejection of X's proposal.
Searle argues that a similar process can be applied to any indirect speech act as a model to find
the primary illocutionary act (178). His proof for this argument is made by means of a series of
supposed "observations" (ibid., 180-182).
Analysis using Searle's theory
In order to generalize this sketch of an indirect request, Searle proposes a program for the
analysis of indirect speech act performances, whatever they are. He makes the following
suggestion:
Step 1: Understand the facts of the conversation.
Step 2: Assume cooperation and relevance on behalf of the participants.
Step 3: Establish factual background information pertinent to the conversation.
Step 4: Make assumptions about the conversation based on steps 13.
34

Step 5: If steps 14 do not yield a consequential meaning, then infer that there are two
illocutionary forces at work.
Step 6: Assume the hearer has the ability to perform the act the speaker suggests. The act
that the speaker is asking be performed must be something that would make sense for one
to ask. For example, the hearer might have the ability to pass the salt when asked to do so
by a speaker who is at the same table, but not have the ability to pass the salt to a speaker
who is asking the hearer to pass the salt during a telephone conversation.
Step 7: Make inferences from steps 16 regarding possible primary illocutions.
Step 8: Use background information to establish the primary illocution (Searle 184).
With this process, Searle concludes that he has found a method that will satisfactorily reconstruct
what happens when an indirect speech act is performed. Direct Speech and Indirect Speech
"While direct speech purports to give a verbatim rendition of the words that were spoken,
indirect speech is more variable in claiming to represent a faithful report of the content or content
and form of the words that were spoken. It is important to note, however, that the question of
whether and how faithful a given speech report actually is, is of a quite different order. Both
direct and indirect speech are stylistic devices for conveying messages. The former is used as if
the words being used were those of another, which are therefore pivoted to a deictic center
different from the speech situation of the report. Indirect speech, in contrast, has its deictic center
in the report situation and is variable with respect to the extent that faithfulness to the linguistic
form of what was said isdo n= being claimed." (Florian Coulmas, "Reported Speech: Some
General Issues."
History
For much of the history of linguistics and the positivist philosophy of language, language was
viewed primarily as a way of making factual assertions, and the other uses of language tended to
be ignored, as Austin states at the beginning of Lecture 1, "It was for too long the assumption of
philosophers that the business of a 'statement' can only be to 'describe' some state of affairs, or to
'state some fact', which it must do either truly or falsely."[4] He was one of the first people who
made a systematic account for the use of language. Later Wittgenstein came up with the idea of
"don't ask for the meaning, ask for the use." showing language as a new vehicle for social
activity.[5] Speech act theory hails from Wittgensteins philosophical theories. Wittgenstein
believed meaning derives from pragmatic tradition, demonstrating the importance of how
language is used to accomplish objectives within specific situations. By following rules to
accomplish a goal, communication becomes a set of language games. Thus, utterances do more
than reflect a meaning, they are words designed to get things done.[6] The work of J. L. Austin,
particularly his How to Do Things with Words, led philosophers to pay more attention to the nondeclarative uses of language. The terminology he introduced, especially the notions "locutionary
act", "illocutionary act", and "perlocutionary act", occupied an important role in what was then to
become the "study of speech acts". All of these three acts, but especially the "illocutionary act",
are nowadays commonly classified as "speech acts".
Austin was by no means the first one to deal with what one could call "speech acts" in a wider
sense. The term 'social act' and some of the theory of this sui generis type of linguistic action are
to be found in the fifth of Thomas Reid's Essays on the Active Powers of the Human Mind
35

(1788, chapter VI, Of the Nature of a Contract). "A man may see, and hear, and remember, and
judge, and reason; he may deliberate and form purposes, and execute them, without the
intervention of any other intelligent being. They are solitary acts. But when he asks a question
for information, when he testifies a fact, when he gives a command to his servant, when he
makes a promise, or enters into a contract, these are social acts of mind, and can have no
existence without the intervention of some other intelligent being, who acts a part in them.
Between the operations of the mind, which, for want of a more proper name, I have called
solitary, and those I have called social, there is this very remarkable distinction, that, in the
solitary, the expression of them by words, or any other sensible sign, is accidental. They may
exist, and be complete, without being expressed, without being known to any other person. But,
in the social operations, the expression is essential. They cannot exist without being expressed by
words or signs, and known to the other party."[7][8][9]
Adolf Reinach (18831917) and Stanislav krabec (1844-1918), have been both independently
credited with a fairly comprehensive account of social acts as performative utterances dating to
1913, long before Austin and Searle. For Reinach see[10][citation needed]
The term "Speech Act" had also been already used by Karl Bhler.[11][12]
The term metalocutionary act has also been used to indicate a speech act that refers to the forms
and functions of the discourse itself rather than continuing the substantive development of the
discourse, or to the configurational functions of prosody and punctuation.[citation needed]
In language development
Dore (1975) proposed that children's utterances were realizations of one of nine primitive speech
acts:
1. labelling
2. repeating
3. answering
4. requesting (action)
5. requesting (answer)
6. calling
7. greeting
8. protesting
9. practicing
Formalization
There is no agreed formalization of Speech Act theory. A first attempt to give some grounds of an
illocutionary logic has been given by John Searle and D. Vandervecken 1985.[13] Other attempts
36

have been proposed by Per Martin-Lf for a treatment of the concept of assertion inside
intuitionisti type theory, and by Carlo Dalla Pozza, with a proposal of a formal pragmatics
connecting propositional content (given with classical semantics) and illocutionary force (given
by intuitionistic semantics). Up to now the main basic formal application of Speech Act theory
are to be found in the field of human-computer interaction (in chatboxes and other tools: see
below).
In computer science
Computational speech act models of human-computer conversation have been developed.[14]
Speech act theory has been used to model conversations for automated classification and
retrieval.[15]
Another highly-influential view of Speech Acts has been in the 'Conversation for Action'
developed by Terry Winograd and Fernando Flores in their 1987 text "Understanding Computers
and Cognition: A New Foundation for Design". Arguably the most important part of their
analysis lies in a state-transition diagram (in Chapter 5) that Winograd and Flores claim underlies
the significant illocutionary (speech act) claims of two parties attempting to coordinate action
with one another (no matter whether the agents involved might be human-human, humancomputer, or computer-computer).
A key part of this analysis is the contention that one dimension of the social domain- tracking the
illocutionary status of the transaction (whether individual participants claim that their interests
have been met, or not) is very readily conferred to a computer process- independent of whether
the computer has the means to adequately represent the real world issues underlying that claim.
Thus a computer instantiating the 'conversation for action' has the useful ability to model the
status of the current social reality independent of any external reality on which social claims may
be based.
This transactional view of speech acts has significant applications in many areas in which
(human) individuals have had different roles- for instance- a patient and a physician might meet
in an encounter in which the patient makes a request for treatment, the physician responds with a
counter-offer involving a treatment she feels is appropriate, and the patient might respond, etc.
Such a "Conversation for Action" can describe a situation in which an external observer (such as
a computer or health information system) may be able to track the ILLOCUTIONARY (or
Speech Act) STATUS of negotiations between the patient and physician participants even in the
absence of any adequate model of the illness or proposed treatments. The key insight provided
by Winograd and Flores is that the state-transition diagram representing the SOCIAL
(Illocutionary) negotiation of the two parties involved is generally much, much simpler than any
model representing the world in which those parties are making claims- in short- the system
tracking the status of the 'conversation for action' need not be concerned with modeling all of the
realities of the external world- a conversation for action is critically dependent upon certain
stereotypical CLAIMS about the status of the world made by the two parties. Thus a
"Conversation for Action" can be readily tracked and facilitated by a device with little or no
37

ability to model circumstances in the real world other than the ability to register claims by
specific agents about a domain.
Uses in technology
In making useful applications of technology to domains such as healthcare, it is helpful to
discriminate between problems which are very, very hard (such as deep understanding of
pathophysiology as it relates to genetic and various environmental influences) and problem
which are relatively easier, such as following the status of negotiations between a patient and a
health care provider. Speech Act (Illocutionary) Analysis allows for a useful understanding of the
status of a negotiation between (for instance) a health care provider and a patient
INDEPENDENT of any well-accepted credible and comprehensive understanding of a disease
process as it might apply to that patient. For this reason, systems which track the status of
PROMISES and REJECTED-PROPOSALS and ACCEPTED-PROMISES can help us to
understand the situations in which (human or computer) AGENTS find themselves as they
attempt to fulfill ROLES involving other agents, and such systems can facilitate both human and
human-computer systems in achieving role-associated goals.
In multiagent universes
Multi-agent systems sometimes use speech act labels to express the intent of an agent when it
sends a message to another agent. For example the intent "inform" in the message
"inform(content)" may be interpreted as a request that the receiving agent adds the item
"content" to its knowledge-base; this is in contrast to the message "query(content)" which may
be interpreted (depending on the semantics employed) as a request to see if the item content is
currently in the receiving agents knowledge base. There are at least two standardisations of
speech act labelled messaging KQML and FIPA.
KQML and FIPA are based on the Searlian, that is, psychological semantics of speech acts.
Munindar P. Singh has long advocated moving away from the psychological to a social
semantics of speech actsone that would be in tune with Austin's conception.[16] Andrew
Jones[17] has also been a critic of the psychological conception. A recent collection of manifestos
by researchers in agent communication reflects a growing recognition in the multiagent systems
community of the benefits of a social semantics.[18]
Conversation Analysis
"Conversation analysis" is a popular approach to the study of discourse. It is a way of
thinking about and analyzing the pragmatics of ordinary conversation, focusing on the
interactive, practical construction of everyday interchanges.
1. What is Conversation Analysis?
1.1 Origins in Ethnomethodology
38

Conversation analysis (CA) has its origins in the "ethnomethodology" of Harold

Garfinkel and Harvey Sachs, which in turn built on the social phenomenology of Alfred
Schutz (e.g. Schutz & Luckmann, 1974). As a result CA has some distinctly
phenomenological characteristics. As Levinson puts it:
"Conversation analysis... has been pioneered by a break-away group of
sociologists, often known as ethnomethodologists. The relevance of the
sociological background to the pragmaticist is the methodological preferences
that derive from it. The movement arose in reaction to the quantitative
techniques, and the arbitrary imposition on the data of supposedly objective
categories (upon which such techniques generally rely), that were typical of
mainstream American sociology. In contrast, it was argued cogently, the proper
object of sociological study is the set of techniques that the members of a society
themselves utilize to interpret and act within their own social worlds -- the
sociologists objective methods perhaps not really being different in kind at
all. Hence the use of the term ethnomethodology, the study of ethnic (i.e.
participants own) methods of production and interpretation of social
interaction (see Garfinkel, 1972; Turner, 1974a). Out of this background comes a
healthy suspicion of premature theorizing and ad hoc analytical categories: as far
as possible the categories of analysis should be those that participants themselves
can be shown to utilize in making sense of interaction; unmotivated theoretical
constructs and unsubstantiated intuitions are all to be avoided. In practice this
results in a strict and parsimonious structuralism and a theoretical asceticism -the emphasis is on the data and the patterns recurrently displayed therein"
(Levinson, p. 295).
1.2 What is a conversation?
A conversation is the impromptu, spontaneous, everyday exchange of talk between two
or more people.
"Conversation may be taken to be that familiar predominant kind of talk in which
two or more participants freely alternate in speaking, which generally occurs
outside specific institutional settings like religious services, law courts,
classrooms and the like" (Levinson, 1983, p. 284)
The participants in a conversation take turns, and during their turn each makes a
conversational move of some kind. Conversation analysts adopt the view that when
39

people conduct a conversation it is an interactionally managed and locally managed

phenomenon. That is to say, people organize the construction of a conversation together,
cooperatively, and they deal with the organization at a "local" level, one utterance at a time.
"Conversation is a process in which people interact on a moment-by-moment,
turn-by-turn basis. During a sequence of turns participants exchange talk with
each other, but, more important, they exchange social or communicative actions.
These actions are the moves of conversation considered as a collection of
games. Indeed, conversational actions are some of the most important moves of
the broader game of everyday life." (Nofsinger, p. 10)
Not all kinds of verbal exchange operate this way: a formal speech is planned in
advance, and is managed primarily by the person giving it (though responses from the
audience play some part too). So not every kind of verbal exchange is a conversation.
However, interactions that are not conversations in this sense can still be analyzed
using CA.
1.3 What is the method of CA?
CA seeks to describe conversation in a way that builds upon the way it is taken up by
the people who are participating in it. It does this by paying attention to the way each
utterance displays an interpretation of the previous utterance, and by paying particular
attention to hitches, misunderstandings, and repairs:
"The methodology employed in CA requires evidence not only that some aspect
of conversation can be viewed in the way suggested, but that it actually is so
conceived by the participants producing it. That is, what conversation analysts
are trying to model are the procedures and expectations actually employed by
participants in producing and understanding conversation.... We may start with
the problem of demonstrating that some conversational organization is actually
oriented to (i.e. implicitly recognized) by participants, rather than being an
artifact of analysis. One key source of verification here is what happens when
some hitch occurs -- i.e. when the hypothesized organization does not
operate in the predicted way -- since then participants (like the analyst) should
address themselves to the problem thus produced. Specifically, we may expect
them either to try to repair the hitch, or alternatively, to draw strong inferences of
a quite specific kind from the absence of the expected behavior, and to act
accordingly" (Levinson, p. 319)
40

For example, consider the following exchange between student (S) and teacher (T):
1 S: So I was wondering would you be in your office after class this week?
2 (2.0)
3 S: Probably not
4 T: Hmm no
[Modified from (39) in Levinson.]
Here the two-second pause after the students question -- a hitch in the
conversation -- is interpreted as a negative answer to the question. (This is a much
abbreviated analysis; see Levinson pp. 320-321 for more detail.) Although a silence has
no features on its own, conversational significance is attributed to it on the basis of the
expectations that arise from its location in the surrounding talk. (Below we shall
summarize the three main kinds of interpretation of silence.)
"A fundamental methodological point can be made with respect to [this
example], and indeed most examples of conversation. Conversation, as opposed
to monologue, offers the analyst an invaluable analytical resource: as each turn is
responded to by a second, we find displayed in that second an analysis of the first
by its recipient. Such an analysis is thus provided by participants not only for
each other but for analysts too" (Levinson, p. 321).
When we are trying to understand a particular utterance or conversational action it is
important to consider where and how that action is located in a sequence of other
conversational actions. When people speak in an ongoing conversation they do so in the
light of what has just been said, and in anticipation of what might take place in the
future. They "design" or "construct" their own speech, and understand the talk of other
people, accordingly. They also shape their utterances to take account of the identity of
the speakers and what their interests are. The meaning of an utterance -- the way it is
interpreted, and the way it was designed -- depends, then, on its context, both verbal
and non-verbal. This construction of utterances is called recipient design.
"This ongoing judgment of each utterance against those immediately adjacent to it
provides participants with a continually updated (and, if need be, corrected)
understanding of the conversation" (Nofsinger, p. 66). Every person involved in the
41

conversation has their own interpretation of what is going on, but although these
interpretations are subjective in the sense that everybody has their own, they are
intersubjective in the sense that every person treats the adjacent utterances in similar
ways. People share a understanding of the "game" they are engaged in, and its "rules."
2. Speech Acts
Utterances are used to do things; they are actions; what John Austin called performatives.
Speech acts can be grouped into several families, each containing similar types of
performative:
Commissives: their point is to commit the speaker to a course of action
promise "Ill tell noone what youve said."
offer "Shall I do that?"
make a vow
take a pledge
give a guarantee
Directives: their point is to get the recipient to do something
request "Please tell me more."
command "Tell me about that"
order
suggest "Why dont you describe what happened."
give permission "You can share that if you wish."
question "Whats your family like?"

42

Assertives: their point is to display the speakers belief in the propositional

content of the utterance
assert "This rain is heavy."
describe
state
predict "It will surely rain tomorrow."
speculate "I wonder whether it will rain tomorrow"
report
announce
Expressives: their point is to express the speakers psychological state
compliment "Great dress!"
apologise "Im really sorry I did that."
welcome "Nice to see you."
thank "Thanks very much!"
greet "Hi!"
acknowledge "uh huh"
Declarations: done by an appropriately authorized speaker
fire "Youre fired!"
appoint "Youre in charge."
sentence "I sentence you to thirty days in jail"
43

The illustrations given here should be taken with caution. It is a central insight of
Conversation Analysis that the action that participants will interpret an utterance to be
will depend not just on its linguistic form, but also on its location in the sequence, on
the context, on the identity of the speaker, etc..
So its important to examine the structure of conversation in which speech acts are
produced. We consider next a central aspect of this structure.
3. Turn-taking
It is an evident fact about conversation is that it takes the form of turn-taking: two or
more participants take turns to speak. But how does this happen? How does someone
"get the floor"? It may seem that people simply wait for the speaker to stop, and then
talk, but the gaps between turns are generally too short for this to be the case:
sometimes they are just micro-seconds in length, and on average they are no longer than
a few tenths of a second.
3.1 Turn-construction
Turns can be made up of a single word, a phrase, a clause, or a full-sentence. They are
not syntactic or semantic units, but genuinely pragmatic units. The recognizable
potential end of a turn is called in CA a "transition relevance place" (TRP). A TRP may
be identified by "a change in the pitch or volume of the voice, the end of a syntactic unit
of language, a momentary silence, or some sort of body motion" (Nofsinger, p. 81).
Transition between speakers usually occurs at such a point, and it is at a TRP that
speakers employ the conversational techniques that CA aims to discover.
3.2 Turn-allocation
Sacks et al. (1974) suggest a handfull of techniques that assign the rights and
responsibilities of the participants in a conversation. In simplified form, these
techniques are the following:
1. The current speaker (C) can select the next speaker (N) while still talking, but
must then stop talking at the next TRP. (Current speaker selects next)
2. If N is not selected, anyone can jump in, and the first to do so gains rights to
the floor. (Self -selection)

44

3. If neither (1) nor (2) occurs, C may (but need not) continue talking. (Speaker
continuation)
4. If (3) happens, rules (1)-(3) apply again at the next TRP.
For example, technique 1 can be employed by pointing, using a name, making eye
contact, etc.. Another way the current speaker can select the nextr speaker is to use the
first part of an "adjacency pair," as described in the next paragraph.
3.3 Adjacency Pairs
Conversational actions tend to occur in pairs. We speak of an "exchange of opinions"
and "an exchange of greetings" because many conversational actions call for a particular
kind of conversational response in return. Greetings and farewells typically call for
another utterance of the same type. Other actions call for a different type of action:
invitations with acceptances (or rejections); congratulations with thanks; offers with
acceptances (or refusals). Such pairs of conventionally linked conversational actions are
said to have two "parts": a "first part" and a "second part." The pairs are said to have
"conditional relevance."
More formally stated, adjacency pairs are sequences of two utterances that are:
(i) adjacent (unless separated by an "insertion sequence"; see below)
(ii) produced by different speakers
(iii) ordered as a first part and a second part
(iv) typed, so that a particular first part requires a particular second (or range of
second parts) - e.g. offers require acceptances or rejections, greetings require
greetings, and so on.
...and there is a "rule" governing the use of adjacency pairs, namely:
Having produced a first part of some pair, current speaker must stop speaking,
and next speaker must produce at that point a second part to the same pair.
Adjacency pairs are often found linked together in closely integrated ways, and the next
two sections describe two of these. One pair may follow another (question, answer;
question, answer), or one pair may be embedded inside another pair . A "presequence"
is an example of the former, an "insertion sequence" is an example of the latter.
45

3.4 Presequences
A presequence occurs when some preliminary action is taken before initiating the first
part of an adjacency pair, and the preliminary action itself involves an adjacency pair.
Before making a request, for instance, it often makes sense to check whether the other
person has the item one wants. Here a question-answer pair (turns 1 and 2) prepares for
a request-agreement (or request-rejection) pair (initiated in turn 3).
1 A: Do you have the spanner? ) presequence
2 B: Yes. )
3 C: Can I have it please? ) R-A pair
4 B: [...] )
Another example:
1 Teacher: Mike, do you think you know
the answer to question four? )presequence
2 Mike: Yes. )
3 Teacher: Can you tell the class, then, please? )R-A pair
4 Mike: [...] )
3.5 Insertion sequences
The person towards whom the first part of an adjacency pair has been directed may
want to undertake some preliminary action before responding with the second part. A
request for clarification by the recipient will take place after the first pair part, but
before the second pair part. This is an insertion sequence. Here turns 1 and 4 make up
one adjacency pair, and turns 2 and 3 make up a second adjacency pair inserted
between the two parts of the first pair:
1 P: Martin, would you like to dance? )
2 M: Is the floor slippery? )
46

3 P: No, its fine. )

4 M: Then Id be happy to. )
Another example of this:
1 Teacher: Will you tell us the answer to question four? )
2 Mike: Is that one page six or seven? )
3 Teacher: Six. )
4 Mike: Oh, okay. The answer is factorial two. )
3.6 Silence
Depending on where silence occurs in a conversation, and its location in the
conversational structure, it will be interpreted as a gap between turns, a lapse in the
conversation, or a pause that is attributed to the designated speaker.
A gap is silence at the TRP when the current speaker has stopped talking without
selecting the next speaker, and there is a brief silence before the next speaker selfselects. A gap does not "belong" to anyone.
A lapse is silence when no next speaker is selected, and no-one self-selects: the
conversation comes to an end for at least a moment. (N.b., a gap and a lapse can
be distinguished from one another only in retrospect.)
A pause is silence when the current speaker has selected the next speaker and
stopped talking, but the next speaker is silent. A pause is also silence that occurs
within a participants turn (i.e., before a TRP is reached). A pause "belongs" to
the person currently designated speaker.

3.8 Preference
When speakers have a choice between two conversational actions, one will typically be
considered more usual, more normal, than the other. This phenomenon is called
"preference." The term doesnt refer to the psychological desires of a speaker, but the
norms of the intersubjective conversational system. These shared norms mean that "any
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of the conversational tendencies and orientations that we commonly attribute to

participants personalities or interpersonal relationships derive (at least in part) from
the turn system" (Nofsinger, p. 89).
For example, in response to the first part of an adjacency pair some second part
responses are preferred, while others are dispreferred. Refusals of requests or
invitations are nearly always dispreferred, while acceptances are preferred. (See the
table below.)
Conversationalists grasp of preference will influence their interpretation of
conversational actions. For instance, a silence in response to a request may be taken as
evidence of a likely upcoming dispreferred response (a refusal), so that further
inducements may be added (this was the case with the first example in this handout).
Conversational actions that are not the preferred response are often conducted in a
manner that displays this: "dispreferred seconds are typically delivered: (a) after some
significant delay; (b) with some preface marking their dispreferred status, often the
particle well; (c) with some account of why the preferred second cannot be performed"
(Levinson, p. 307).
4. Mutual Understanding as Alignment
For a conversation to run smoothly and effectively the organization of turns must be
managed, but in addition the conversation must also be kept on track.
How do participants in a conversation get a sense of understanding and being
understood? The response to an utterance often provides some kind of interpretation of
the prior utterance, and so indicates the alignment. Assessments ("Thats good"),
newsmarks ("Oh, wow!"), continuers ("uh huh"), formulations (giving the gist of
whats been said), collaborative completions (finishing the speakers sentence), all
provide evidence to the speaker of how their talk is being understood.
Repairs are the things done to fix a conversational breakdown and restore alignment.
Breakdowns can be misunderstandings ("What did you say?"; "What do you mean?") as
well as disagreements ("I think youre wrong"), rejections ("No, I wont") and other
difficulties. Revisions may occur when the speaker can anticipate that trouble is likely
and reformulates talk accordingly.
Alignment is displayed and adjusted not only in responses to an utterance but also in
advance. Preventatives such as disclaimers ("I really dont know much about this,
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but...") are examples of such "pre-positioned alignment devices." Pre-sequences (see

above) do this too.
Alignment is especially important at the openings and closings of conversation.
5. Extended Discourse: Narratives and Arguments
Our examples have been of conversations where the turns are brief, but the lengthy
stories and substantial arguments that sometimes occur in conversations can be
examined with the focus and methods of conversation analysis, too. It turns out that,
counter to what we might expect, "Stories and other extended-turn structures in
conversation are not simply produced by a primary speaker, but are jointly or
interactively produced by a primary speaker together with other cooperating
participants" (Nofsinger, p. 94).
The same is true of argument. Researchers distinguish making an argument from
having an argument. "Roughly, the first involves using reasons, evidence, claims, and
the like to make a case. The latter involves interactive disagreement (for example,
"You cant," "I can," "Oh no you cant," "Well I certainly can"). Conversational
argument often consists of participants making arguments in the process of having one"
(Nofsinger, p. 146).
The dynamics of both narratives and arguments "can be understood by applying our
knowledge of ordinary conversational practices and structures such as the turn-taking
system, adjacency pair sequencies, the preference system, and repair" (Nofsinger, p.
154).
6. Conversation Analysis and the Ontological Blueprint
The ontological blueprint summarizes Heideggers analysis of human being. To be
human is to understand and interpret: to have an understanding, albeit tacit and
unarticulated, of the being of entities, of our own being, and of the world we are in. We
encounter entities with a kind of concern that grasps them and puts them to use, not
with a bare perceptual cognition. To understand an entity (an artifact) like a hammer is
to grasp it in practical activity: to project it into and onto the world that is the situation
or context, like the workshop.
What shows up is the being of the entity, and this shows up upon the ground that is the
meaning of that being. When action is going smoothly what we are aware of is a
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towards-which: the point of the activity, the project, in terms of which the entity is
grasped.
A tool functions as a "prosthetic device": when functioning smoothly and ready-to-hand
it is like an extension to the body, providing the tool-user with a feel for the material
being worked on, and a sense of how they are doing, as well as a way of making
something.
An utterance is like a tool, except it is made on the spot, off hand, in the moment: it is an
improvised artifact (literally: sudden; unforeseen). An utterance is a "conversational
device"; its production makes a point, provides the speaker with a feel for the other
person (through their response), gives her a sense of herself (we discover ourselves in
our words), as well as a way of accomplishing something socially.
To understand an entity like an utterance is to be aware of its point, by grasping the
utterance and projecting it. The way the utterance is projected depends on (1) the
ongoing conversation of which it is a part, (2) the context: the here-&-now, and (3)
familiarity with the public conventions of language. These three form the fore-structure
of the conversational participant. The conversation is an ongoing project, a way of being
involved: the fore-view. The here-&-now provides a fore-grounding. And the
conversationalist knows the language (including its conversational maxims), and thus
has a preliminary sense of how to interpret: a fore-grasp.
To understand a speech act is to recognize its point: where the speaker is coming from;
where they are going; what they are getting at?what their concern is, not what their
beliefs are. We can talk of alignment among participants in a conversation in terms of
the ontological blueprint. When participants project an utterance in ways that line up,
they are aligned. Their projections are not necessarily identical, they may also be
reciprocal: the speakers good news may be the recipients bad news.
Our goal as interpretive researchers is to understand and articulate the way the
participants understand their interaction. We want to understand the constituting, the
construction, that produces the phenomena of social reality. It is in social interaction
that human being is remade. In addition, settings are continually reconstructed, at the
same time as they are used as grounds for human activity. Both the world and persons
in at are socially constructed. It is this social construction that is the broad object of
interpretive inquiry. (Nofsinger points out that conversational utterances are both
context-shaped and context-renewing: "Context, in this immediate and narrow sense, is
composed not just of what people know, but of what participants do to show each other
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which items of their shared knowledge should be used in making interpretations. The
conversational actions produced by participants create an interpretive resource that is
used to align conversational understanding" Nofsinger, p. 143).
Table: Preferred and Dispreferred Second Parts to various First Parts:

SECOND
PARTS:
Preferred:

FIRST PARTS:
Request

Offer/Invite Assessment

acceptance acceptance

Dispreferred: refusal

refusal

agreement

Question

Blame

expected
answer

denial

disagreement unexpected admission

answer or
non-answer

Implicature, Presupposition, Maxims

General introduction to the topics of this lecture:
In the previouse lectures we learned that pragmatics studies how context influences
communication. Austin made the first more concrete step towards the explanation of this
phenomenon by introducing the concepts of speech act and of illocutionary force which
were developed later by Searle. In the mean time Grice, an Oxford philosopher,
concentrated on studying the difference between what is said and what is meant. He
realized that to understand an utterance one needs not only shared general knowledge of
the world and linguistic knowledge but also knowledge of communicative principles which
guide interlocutors and which are part of their communicative competence as well as
shared contextual knowledge. These principles can be described as common expectations in
a given communicative situation between rational human beings. They are not ethical
principles, but express typical communication values. He called the sum of these principles
The Cooperative Principle (CP) which consisted of 4 basic maxims:

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 maxim of Quality - do not say what you believe to be false and do

not say that for which you lack adequate evidence
maxim of Quantity - make your contribution as informative as is
required for the current purpose of the exchange and do not
make your contribution more informative than is required
maxim of Relation - be relevant
maxim of Manner - avoid obscurity and ambiguity, be brief and
orderly.
Put in this way and may be also in this order these maxims are not absolute rules, because
the language game, or the human communication functions to a great degree by the
violation, flouting or suspension of maxims, although not all maxims at the same time. For
example, different genres presuppose the violation of different maxims: poetry is typically
obscure and ambiguous, uses metaphors which typically suspend the maxim of Quality and
all these 'violations' of the CP are essential characteristics of the genre. What is important
about the CP is that it gives something like an index, a reference point for the
interpretation of a given utterance in a given context. If I believe that a person I talk with is
having in mind the CP and I have no reason to think that it is to be violated I will interpret
the utterances according to the CP. But if my companion utters a sentence like "Here
comes the blue whale." I will infer that he is violating the quality maxim because, e.g.,
whales live in the ocean not in cities, and I will provide, again by inference, his utterance
with a special interpretation.The inferencial process or the act of recognizing how a maxim
is applied by assumptions about the speaker's adherence to the CP is called implicature. In
this sense an implicature is not any kind of implication but an implication dependent on the
CP and the maxims. Thus the implicature extends the inferential relations used by
traditional semantics, namely, material implication and entailment which do not depend on
the context but only on the logical relations between the elements in the sentence. The
implicature is an inference from the context and the CP to the concrete utterance.
It is important to pay attention to the fact that it is not only the immediate context which
directs our interpretations and applications of CP. The activity in which we are engaged,
e.g., reading poetry or scientific journal, listening to a lecture, being interrogated in a court,
etc., already give us a suggestion of how we could expect the utterance may or should be
interpreted. That is, level of adherence to the CP is already encoded in the activity as such
and knowledge of the specifics of the activity or the genre is needed for a successful
communication.
There is a distinction between two main types of implicature:

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 Conventional implicature
example: I am crying although I am happy.
It is by convention expected that if somebody cries than s/he
is unhappy and the word "although" signals this expectation.
Conversational implicature is divided in two subtypes:
Particular - Specific utterance in a specific situation which
may have had completely different interpretation in a
different context.
example:
A:"How did you come in?"
B:"The cat suddenly disappeared behind the window."
Generalized - independent of the context.
example:
The utterance "Everybody went to the party." logically interpreted means that there was
nobody who didn't go to the party or at least, by pragmatical inference, that most of the
people went.
But what is pragmatic and logical inference, what is the difference? The next philosopher
to be introduced is the one who developed the pragmatic notion of presupposition, namely,
Strawson (1952) (and after him it was Gazdar (1979) who distinguished between potential
and actual presupposition).
In order to answer the above question we have to introduce the next big topic in semantics
and pragmatics, namely, presupposition, definition of which follows below. Presupposition
is a relation between two arguments one of which is a condition for the other. In logic there
are two valid inferences (not counting adbuction here): deduction and induction.
Let us compare deduction and presupposition:
Deduction
Premise 1: All x are y
Premise 2: B is x
=> B is y (q)
(=> means 'necessarily implies')
that is
p (premise1+2) => q and not p => not q
That is if the premises of the deduction are true than q is necessarily true too. And if the
premises are not true then q is of necessity false too. But:
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Presupposition
p => q
not p =>q
not p "in fact" not q
That is, presuppoition is different from logical entailment because the negation of the
proposition does not lead to negation of the presupposed proposition.
example:
I am washing the vase.
Presupposition: There is a vase.
I am not washing the vase.
Presupposition: There is a vase.
However, in the second case we can very well add
I am not cleaning the vase because there is no vase.
In this case the presupposition is negated.
One way of dealing with presupposition is to introduce a 3th truth value, so called, truth
value gaps, according to which a proposition is neither true nor false. This solution means
significant change in fundamental logical principles and means that presupposition is still
treated as a formal semantic's phenomenon.
The other solution is to consider the illocutionary force of an utterance and the CP and thus
treat presupposition as a pragmatic rather than a logical condition.

STANDARD IMPLICATURE
Definition:
Conversational implicature that arises from the addressee's assumption that the speaker is
being cooperative by directly observing the conversational maxims.
Example:
A is visiting B in his house.
A: Jag har inte tit hela dagen.
B: Det finns en restaurang i nrheten.
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Under the assumption that B is being cooperative and truthful, adequately informative,
relevant, and clear, A can infer that
B has no food at home (or other hinders) and
that B believes that A can get food in the restaurant.

PRESUPPOSITION
Definition:
A background belief relating to an utterance, that must be mutually known or assumed by
the speaker and addressee for the utterance to be considered appropriate in context, that
generally will remain such a necessary assumption whether the utterance is placed in the
form of an assertion, denial, or question,and that can generally be associated with a specific
lexical item or grammatical feature (presupposition trigger) in the utterance.

Example:
The utterance of "John regrets that he stopped doing linguistics before he left Cambridge"
has the following presuppositions:
- `There is someone uniquely identifiable to speaker and addressee as "John"',
- `John stopped doing linguistics before he left Cambridge',
- `John was doing linguistics before he left Cambridge',
- `John left Cambridge',
- `John had been at Cambridge'.
If the assertion is changed to a denial or a question, it retains its presuppositions [example
from Levinson,1983:179-180].

Make a search in the lexicon or the glossary on the following releated terms:
actual presupposition,
potential presupposition,
presupposition denial,
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presupposition suspension,
presupposition trigger.

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