Lecture 1: Introduction to Pragmatics

Pragmatics and Cognitive Semantics

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Biljana Martinovski,biljana@ling.gu.se,

Definition:

Pragmatics is a field of linguistics studying comunication. It is concentrated on the dynamic aspect of meaning in context.
It is the study of the aspects of meaning and language use that are dependent on the speaker, addressee, and other features of the context of utterance;including the study, on one hand, of the effect that context of utterance, generally observed principles of communication, and the goals of the speaker have on the choice of means of expression, and on the other hand, the effect such factors have on the interpretation made of an utterance, by the addressee.

One main interest of pragmatics is defining the principles for the determination of intended meaning. This meaning may be transmited verbally or non-verbally.

The main components of current pragmatic inquiry are:

One way of exemplifying the pragmatic aspect of an utterance is to determine the type of defect it contains, if any. For example:

Pragmatic defect:

The sun is big but I don't think so.

I don't regret lying.

I hereby play.

Come there!

Metaphoric defect:

Max Svensson is a pig. (and Max is, e.g., really fat, and/or eats too much)

Ironic defect:

Max Svensson is a pig. ( and Max is, e.g., really small and eats almost nothing)

Grammatical defect:

Max on sitting the chair.

Max are sitting on the chair.

Semantic defect:

I broke the dress.

The metaphor and the irony cases are one the main concerns of early pragmatics, cf. Grice nad Searle. From the above cases one may say that the grammatical defects may not be defects in other languages than English but the pragmatical defects may be defects in all languages. The semantic defect is also dependent on the semantic definition of a dress and of the verb of breaking in the concrete language we are studying. So, here we can see that the purpose of syntactic analysis is to define what is a well-formed sentence and are there syntactic forms which are defective in all languages. If we can find that there are such sentences we may study why are they universally defective, that is, is there an underlying cognitive reason for these defects. What regards the pragmatic and semantic defects it is not so clear if they could be explained only by semantics (if you follow this link, make a search on "meaning theories") or pragmatics. Thus one needs to settle the definitions of these two aspects of linguistic structure. Today, with the growth of interest in cognitive linguistics it is getting more and more typical to consider pragmtics and semantics as inseparable. The cognitive implication of the chosen definition will be that either there is a separate cognitive module for analysis of semantic aspects of linguistic expressions or that this module and the module of pragmatic analysis are one. Clearly, most theorists agree that syntax and sematics are two separate cognitive entities.

One may say that there is a continuum of defintions relating sematics and pragmatics the two extremes of which are:

truth-conditional semantics ------------------ Cognitive semantics and pragmatics

(homogeneous) (hyper hetergeneous)

In the first case, semantics is rigidly defined as the study of meaning in linguistic expressions, apart from consideration of the effect that pragmatic factors such as features of the context, conventions of language use, and the goals of the speaker have on the meaning of language in use (cf. Crystal, 1985:274; Leech, 1983:5-6; Lyons, 1981:136,163-4; Levinson, 1983:5-34). Phenomena such as implicatures, deixis, speech acts, intentions may be left to pragmatics. In the second case, there is no rigid distinction between the goals and the tasks of the two disciplines. Jackendoff's article, which will be discussed in the second part of the course defends this second view on pragmatics and semantics.

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