Pragmatics :: Class #1 :: Introduction

Class Date: September 4, 2003 [Notes last revised on September 8, 2003] Language in Context Pragmatics is concerned with many aspects of how people use language, too many for us to look at in this course. We will concentrate on some of the ways language use in context interacts with the structure of language and thus on some of the ways that language use in context impacts on the concerns of theoretical linguistics. The Pragmatic Wastebasket Linguists, just like other mortals, often like to play a game of passing the buck. One of the manifestations of this is known as Lasniks syllogism: This is a prob lem for everyone, so its not a problem for me. The other popular strategy is to blame an interfacing subeld, preferably a less wellunderstood one. In syntac tic investigations, it used to be common to say that some recalcitrant fact was just semantics. This is not anymore something one can get away with, since there is now a welldeveloped body of results and methods in natural language semantics. Similarly, pragmatics has traditionally been used to keep semantics clean of annoying facts, serving as a wastebasket (BarHillel, 1971). But this as well is not something one should accept. Such maneuvers are of course dubious. One might as well blame data one cant explain on the inuence of the stars. Using a pragmatic theory as an explanatory tool only works as long as one actually has such a theory. It is the purpose of this course to introduce some of the concepts and tools for such a theory.

The SemanticsPragmatics Distinction Much of this course will be concerned with the interplay of semantics and prag matics. But what do we mean by that? What is the semanticspragmatics distinction and why does it matter?1 The basic distinction is that semantics is concerned with those aspects of mean ing that arise from the linguistics/grammar of an expression qua linguistic ex pression. Pragmatics is concerned with those aspects of meaning that arise from the actual use of an expression by a speaker in a fullblooded speech situa tion/context. The line is a tricky one to draw since there are aspects of the linguistic meaning of expressions that encode properties pertaining to use. For example: Indexicals like the rst person pronoun I refer to the speaker of the ex pression. Presupposition triggers like the arguably give rise to requirements on what kind of contexts they can be used in. Markers of topic/focus/commentarticulation also encode how a sentence is supposed to t into a larger discourse context. etc. Another reason why the distinction is tricky is that native speaker intuitions do not come labelled as being semantic vs. pragmatic intuitions. For all intents and purposes, intuitions are intuitions about what a particular sentence means in the context it is uttered. It is sometimes suggested that one should examine sentences in a neutral or null context.2 But it has to be realized that when an informant is presented with an isolated example, they will simply try to reconstruct what a natural context for the example might be and proceed from there.
1 Phrasing courtesy of Bach (1999). 2 Katz (1977): [I] draw the theoretical line between semantic interpretation and pragmatic interpretation by taking the semantic component to properly represent only those aspects of the meaning of the sentence that an ideal speakerhearer of the language would know in an anonymous letter situation, . . . [where there is] no clue whatever about the motive, circum stances of transmission, or any other factor relevant to understanding the sentence on the basis of its context of utterance. (p. 14).

This fact about intuitions is reected in the proper shape of analyses of the meaning of natural language expressions. Such analyses come as a semantics pragmatics package, integrating a hypothesis about the linguistic meaning of the expression with a story about the pragmatics of the expressions, all set within the larger context of systematic theories of semantics and pragmatics. Much of the work in this area has to address the issue of the division of labor between semantic and pragmatic components of meaning. The arguments tend to be theoryinternal and driven by methodology, rather than being subject to direct intuitions. The hope is that in the end, there is an empirical fact of the matter. But usually the diagnosis is dicult and intricate. *** Here are some of the phenomena a theory of pragmatics has to deal with: Contextual Inferences, Implicatures Together with assumptions in the context, people make inferences that a se manticist will want to be distinguished from the hardwired content of the sentences that are uttered. This becomes especially hard when the assumptions that drive the inferences are natural and common ones. ContextDependency There are many expressions that have contextdependent meanings. An obvious example are free pronouns whose reference can only be determined in a live context. Context Appropriateness, Presupposition Many expressions require the context to be a certain way. They are only felic itous/appropriate/usable in certain contexts. An obvious example comes from contextdependent expressions which require the context to supply (some part of ) their meaning. Another example are expressions that carry presuppositions, which again can be thought of as requirements imposed on the context.

Context Change Once language is used, the context (which in a certain sense is just everything that is the case) is thereby changed. Since language depends or interacts with context in many ways (see above), one bit of language changes the environment for the next. This creates all kinds of intricate feedback situations, some of which are explored in Dynamic Semantics. All of these interactions are intertwined with each other, so unravelling whats going on is not going to be easy. But fun. References Bach, Kent: 1999. The SemanticsPragmatics Distinction: What It Is and Why It Matters. In Ken Turner, editor, The SemanticsPragmatics In terface from Dierent Points of View, Oxford: Elsevier, pp. 6584. URL http://userwww.sfsu.edu/~kbach/spd.htm. BarHillel, Yehoshua: 1971. Out of the pragmatic wastebasket. Linguistic Inquiry 2: 401407. Katz, J.: 1977. Propositional Structure and Illocutionary Force. New York: Crow ell.