ELL2018F: SEMANTICS NOTES

Part 1: Formal Semantics

MEANINGN, AND MEANINGV Semantics is concerned with the study of (literal) meaning, and the relationship between meaning and language as phenomena. Thus, it interacts with many other aspects of linguistics: morphology for word meaning, syntax for sentence meaning, etc. Pragmatics, on the other hand, is concerned with meaning in context: the ways in which the world must be considered in order to understand exactly what is intended and interpreted in the real world.

Meaning is not a straightforward concept—the word mean itself is multiply polysemous. For example, consider what mean means in the following examples:

1. ‘Bovine ruminant’ means ‘cow’.2. Boeuf means ‘cow’.3. Dark clouds mean rain.4. Red means stop.5. I didn’t mean to insult you.

This gives us an indication that there are many different types of meaning. These will be covered in detail in class.

Literal (or ‘dictionary’) meaning: the core meaning of a word, which is always accessed.

This doesn’t say much in itself. However, consider the use of a sentence like:

John is a pig.

Is the speaker necessarily referring to a ‘an omnivorous domesticated hoofed animal with sparse bristly hair and a flat snout’1? No; although we rely on this core meaning to interpret exactly what the speaker meant. However, does this mean that that John is an animal, omnivorous, domesticated or hoofed, or endowed with short bristly hair and a flat snout?

Meaning does not only work literally. A central idea in semantics, which seems to have survived the cognitive revolution, is that word meanings have a literal core; meanings have become extended by our frequent interaction with words and their meanings. Some further types of meaning, beyond the literal2 (examples given in class):

connotative meaning: additional meaning attached to a piece of language, owing to individual or societal perceptions of a thing.

1 From the South African Concise Oxford Dictionary, 2002.2 Adapted from Leech Chapter 2.

1

social / affective meaning: additional meaning attached to a piece of language, created by the circumstances of their use.

collocative meaning: additional meaning that becomes attached to a piece of language because of the pieces of language it commonly occurs with.

From a more technical angle, we can look at different aspects of literal meaning—this will be the focus of the first part of the semantics module.

Denotation

Denotations exist as abstractions, and are easily confused with the related concepts of sense and reference. Some basic rules of denotation:

The denotation of an individual (name) is that individual. The denotation of a noun is that class of things in which the noun has

membership.

Without looking at Kearns’s definition below, or any other formal definition of denotation, write in your own words how the two bullets above can be reconciled into one definition.

Kearns’s definition (p. 2): ‘The denotation of an expression is the part of reality the expression is linked to.’

The denotation of an expression is essentially the reason the word exists in our vocabulary: i.e., the expression cow exists so that we can communicate about cows; the expression sleep exists so that we can talk about sleep (and things that sleep), etc.

Sense and Reference3:

Sense is also an abstract construct of the mind. Hurford & Heasley’s (p. 28) definition of the sense of a linguistic expression:

‘The sense of an expression is its place in a system of semantic relationships with other expressions in the language.’

Translate that into English!

Reference is the most concrete of the meaning relationships. Unlike sense and denotation, which are general and systemic, reference is tied to a specific event. It is the use of a piece of language to indicate a thing in the world.

EXERCISE

Use the following sentences as a basis for a discussion on the similarities and differences between denotation, sense and reference.

a) That man was buying an umbrella.b) Do cows have horns?3 Cf. Hurford & Heasley, Unit 3.

2

c) No.d) The rat that the cat that the dog bit chased ran.e) John threw a stick for Fido to catch.

A few tips: is the denotation of e.g. man different to the denotation of that man? what is the sense of do in (b) and was in (a)? what is the sense of No? do all the individual words have a denotation, sense and reference? do all the phrases and sentences have a denotation, sense and

reference?

This brings up one last ‘type’ of meaning that we shall consider: the difference between lexical and structural meaning. This is a simple distinction:

Lexical meaning: meaning (sense, reference, denotation) associated with individual words;

Structural meaning: meaning associated with phrase structures.

SEMANTIC UNITS4

Any meaningful sequence of speech sounds is known as an utterance. This may or may not exactly reflect a grammatically complete sequence or sentence, but always corresponds to one. The meaningful part of the utterance or sentence is known as the proposition behind the sentence-utterance. Thus:

an utterance is a physical event, tied to space and time; a sentence is an abstract concept; a grammatically complete reflection of an

utterance; a proposition is an abstract, cognitive concept, reflecting the state of affairs the

sentence-utterance relates to.

The same proposition can theoretically be expressed by an infinite number of sentences; likewise, the same sentence can be a token of a theoretically infinite number of utterances.

EXERCISE

1. Group the following sentences by the propositions they share:

a) The senators stabbed Caesar.b) Caesar was killed by the senators.c) Caesar was stabbed by the senators.d) Did the senators kill Caesar?e) Caesar was killed by the senators in the forum.f) Who killed Caesar in the forum?g) Had Caesar been stabbed by the senators?h) Caesar died in the senate.4 Cf. Hurford & Heasley, Unit 2.

3

i) Where did Caesar die?j) The senators have been stabbing Caesar.

2. For each of the sentences above, write down three utterances of which they could be a token.

APPROACHES TO MEANING

In the course of this module, we will examine two major approaches to meaning. The first is a formal approach, whereby linguistic expressions are tied to a rigidly defined meaning. The most common example of this approach is the (semantic) features approach: a thing is named or classified according to the features its real world correspondent has. This enables things to be grouped together by similarity, difference, etc. For example:

COW

[+MAMMAL][+BOVINE]

[+QUADRUPED][+RUMINANT]

[+FEMALE]

Last year, we looked at a number of sense relations. Revise them, and then use a features approach to show how they differ. Keep your features lists as concise as possible.

a) Synonymy: pail ~ bucketb) Hyponymy: rose ~ flowerc) Binary antonymy: alive ~ deadd) Incompatibility: horse ~ dog

Family resemblances, on the other hand, use a different, more flexible features-based approach. It was developed especially to deal with categories whose members vary widely from each other—even to the point where no commonality can be found between two members of the same category. I only touch on this here, because we will be investigating this in more detail later—it is the foundation of the prototype approach. In the meantime, though, think of the membership of the following categories: how do they all come to be classed in the same category?

Game: soccer, chess, roulette, poker, etc. (Compare this also with the category sport: how do you decide whether something is a game or a sport? Or a game and a sport?)Humanities: Literature, linguistics, history, economics, etc.

4

FORMAL SEMANTICS

Denotations

What is the relationship between, e.g. a word and the world—i.e. what that word means? What do we use language for? Is every instance of language use some sort of act of communication?

These are the questions formal semantics tries to answer. The basic unit of vocabulary is the word, and every word has a denotation: essentially, a denotation is what a word is used for (this concept is defined more formally later). Thus:

a proper name is used to refer to an individual. Thus, the denotation of a proper name is an individual. E.g. the denotation of Caesar is Caesar.

a noun can potentially be used to refer to any one of a whole class of things. The denotation of a noun is the class of things to which that noun could potentially refer. E.g. the denotation of cow is the set of all cows in the world.

a verb is used to express states or events. The denotation of a verb is the set of all things for which it is true that they participate in that event. E.g. the denotation of sleep is the set of all things that sleep5.

Now, imagine a real instance of the following utterances:

a) I saw a cow in the field.b) The cat’s been in the house again.c) John met us at the office.

Each word (lexical item) has its own meaning, and the particular sentence or information structure used also has its own meaning. First, look at the expressions that are used to refer to things:

EXERCISE

1. What is the major difference between a name like John and a noun like dog?2. What is the major similarity?

3. According to the definition we used earlier, provide the denotation of:

i) cow in sentence (a) above; ii) house in sentence (b), above;iii) John in sentence (c), above.

Based on these answers:

iv) Is the denotation of a cow different from the denotation of cow?

5 More accurately, the denotation of an intransitive verb like sleep is ‘the set of all things for which it is true that they sleep’.

5

v) Is the denotation of the cat different from the denotation of cat?

What does this tell you about the meaning of a and the, and about denotation in general? Can you come up with a separate denotation for a and the?

Denotation is combinatorial: lexical items, or individual words, have their own denotations; but, as words build up into phrases, so those phrases have their own denotations.

Write down the denotation for:

vi) the verb see (sentence (a), above) vii) the adverb again (sentence (b))viii) the preposition at (sentence (c)).

ASIDE: a short notation for denotations

To save time, and to be concise, we can use a shorthand system, based on set theory, to write down denotations. Double square brackets [[ ]] are used to express what must be denoted, = introduces the denotation, and braces { } enclose the set. Thus:

The denotation of Elizabeth is Elizabeth would be expressed: [[Elizabeth]] = Elizabeth.

The denotation of cat is the set of all cats would be expressed:[[cat]] = {cat}.

The denotation of the verb sleep is the set of all things for whom it is true that they sleep would be expressed:[[sleep]] = {x sleeps}

The denotation of a sentence is its truth value. Thus, whenever a sentence is true, it belongs to the set of all things that are true; whenever a sentence is false, it belongs to the set of all things that are false (or, alternatively, does not belong to the set of all things that are true). The denotation of a sentence The cow ate the grass would be expressed:[[the cow ate the grass]] = { 1 ; 0 } (where 1 and 0 represent true and false respectively.6

Etc.

For practice, express all the denotations you have already done in the shorthand notation.

EXERCISE

Explain the anomaly of the following sentences in terms of denotation:

6 We are not going to deal with the denotation of intransitive verbs in any detail. But, can you work out what it would be, from the denotation of an intransitive verb?

6

a) !An amoeba took my umbrella.b) !Our dead aunt lives in Durban.c) !The coin is dated 44BC.d) !Einstein lost his cellphone in 1947.

All these sentences are, however, perfectly understandable and imaginable.

BEYOND THE REAL WORLD

If language were tied only to the ‘real world’, we would never be able to read or watch a work of fiction. Language is not only used for the ‘real world’, but for all possible or imaginary worlds (imho, any imaginary world is a possible world). Even the most hardcore of practical people has had at least one dream, or imagined the world a way it isn’t. Indeed, more works of fiction, or descriptions of the way the ‘real world’ isn’t, emanate from the commercial world than from anywhere else.

Moreover, as any news bulletin will show, individuals’ perceptions of the world vary enormously.

When we assign meanings to words, we need to take into account all hypothetical worlds, as well as the ‘real’ one. I.e., words need to relate to the world even when things are / if things were different to the way they are now.

All this notwithstanding, when we use the word cow, for example, in conversations, we denote the set of all cows in the ‘real’ world. However, we could also use it to denote the set of all cows in all possible worlds. Thus, there are two sides to every denotation:

Extension: the set of all things in the real world denoted by an expression.Intension: the set of all things in all possible worlds denoted by an expression.

Then:

Reece (a friend’s dog) is part of the extension of dog;Cujo (the killer dog in Stephen King’s novel) is part of the intension of dog.

Where would you place your childhood pet who has since gone to ‘live on a farm’?

TRUTH CONDITIONS

Such a rigorous and formal treatment of meaning in language naturally raises issues about truth. Consider the following:

Is it true that…?

a) Cape Town is a city in South Africab) Julius Caesar was a Roman dictatorc) Osama bin Laden is a terroristd) George Bush is a terrorist

7

e) Nelson Mandela is the King of Francef) Superman grew up in Smallvilleg) My dog has fleash) Love of money is the root of all evili) Idi Amin was the King of Scotlandj) Atlantis was destroyed by an earthquakek) Semantics is funl) The area of a triangle is equivalent to (base x height) / 2.

What does this tell us about truth, and our ability to discern truth?

There are (at least) four kinds of ‘truth value’:

TruthFallacyUnknown Mystery (Unknowable)

How would your answers to the above fit in with this?

LOGIC

Logical semantics treats language as a system rather than a human behaviour (in much the same way as respiration and digestion are systems rather than examples of human behaviour). As such, language is seen to be concerned with describing the way the world is. Categories are rigid, like those of the classical / structuralist model, and the truth conditions of sentences and phrases are important—if the goal of a linguistic expression is to describe the way the world is, then speaker and hearer must be able to tell whether a given linguistic expression is true.

The keystone of logical semantics is the proposition: an expression which describes some state of affairs and is (usually) either true or false. The proposition is composed of a predicate and its arguments:

Predicate: the expression which relates the nominals in (a sentence expressing a) proposition.

Argument: the nominals involved in the relationship expressed by the predicate.

Nominal: any expression that can be an argument: i.e. involved in a relationship expressed by a predicate. It can be NP, S or CP: i.e. an entity, state or event.

There are four kinds of predicate:

Zero-place predicate: expresses a state of affairs of the world, and does not have arguments (though a dummy pronoun is used to satisfy the syntactic requirement that the sentence have a subject).

E.g. It is raining.

8

One-place predicate: expresses the relationship between one nominal and the world. These are intransitive verbs and predicative nouns and adjectives.

E.g. The baby slept.Madonna is a singer.The field is green.

Two-place predicate: expresses the relationship between two nominals. These are transitive verbs and prepositions.

E.g. The dog bit the postman.The cow is in the field.

Three-place predicate: expresses the relationship between three nominals. These are ditransitive (and pseudoditransitive) verbs.

E.g. They sent the minister a letter.

Copular be does not express identity, but only introduces an attribute. It is never counted as a predicate.

In the following sentences, the predicate is underlined and the arguments are italicised:1. I shot the sheriff. (2-place predicate)2. John gave Mary a riding crop. (3-place predicate)3. The broccoli is in the bin. (2-place predicate)4. For Caesar to have married a foreign queen is scandalous. (1-place predicate)5. The widow is an old lady. (1-place predicate)6. Cleopatra is the queen of Egypt (identitive be: 2-place predicate)

Simple propositions like these are expressed in a kind of shorthand, known as propositional notation. The notation reflects the mental relationship between the arguments, as expressed by the predicate. Because it is only interested in the state of affairs, all grammatical features (such as tense and aspect) are stripped away from the base proposition, and the arguments are abbreviated to initials or other representative symbols. The predicate is expressed in its uninflected form, and usually in capitals; the arguments follow in sequence after the predicate. Arguments are always expressed in the order (subject / agent – direct object / theme – indirect object / receiver). Thus, the notations for the sentences given above are:

1. SHOOT (i, s)2. GIVE (j, r, m)3. IN (br, b)4. SCANDALOUS (MARRY (c, fq)) NB7!!5. OLD LADY (w)6. BE (c, q)

Other expressions, which serve to locate the state of affairs expressed by the proposition in time, or to query or deny its truth, are extraneous to the basic state of 7 Only two linguistic objects can be arguments: nouns (or Noun Phrases) and clauses.

9

affairs, or base proposition. However, they do serve to locate it specifically in context, or to stipulate its truth conditions—and, in doing so, they affect the whole proposition. They are therefore construed as operators over the whole proposition. The most important operators are:

1. Grammatical operators: tense and aspect

These serve to locate a proposition in time (tense) and specify its state at that time (aspect). There are 2 tense operators: past and present.

The dog bit the postman (past tense, aspect unspecified): PAST (BITE (d, p))The dog was biting the postman (past tense, progressive aspect): PAST (PROG (BITE (d, p)))

Present tense is taken as basic and is never expressed. Thus, if a notation lacks a tense operator, assume present tense.

2. Mood operators

The mood operators involve the truth conditions of a sentence. Grammatically, they are expressed by sentence form:

Declarative: speaker knows or believes the truth of what s/he is saying. ‘Ordinary’ sentence form. E.g. Mary eats breakfast.

Interrogative: speaker doubts or queries the truth of a state of affairs. Shown in grammar by Aux inversion. E.g. Does Mary eat breakfast?

Imperative: speaker demands that a state of affairs come into being. Shown by possible omission of subject and non-inflexion of verb: Mary, eat breakfast!

Notice that all three example sentences used above have the same underlying proposition (i.e. describing the same state of affairs: EAT (m, b)). With the mood operators:

Mary eats breakfast. EAT (m, b). The declarative is taken as basic, and is not expressed in the notation.

Does Mary eat breakfast? INT (EAT (m, b) (interrogative operator) Mary, eat breakfast! IMP (EAT (m, b)) (imperative operator)

3. Modal operators

Grammatically, the modal operators are expressed as a kind of auxiliary verb. They give the hearer some insight into the speaker’s attitude towards the state of affairs expressed by the proposition. Modal operators may be epistemic, reflecting some aspect of the speaker’s knowledge or belief regarding the proposition, or deontic, reflecting some aspect of the speaker’s attitude towards the state of affairs expressed by the proposition.

The modal operators are most commonly realised by the four modal auxiliaries:

can: ability (epistemic) or permission (deontic). Lassie can go home.

10

may: possibility (epistemic) or permission (deontic). Lassie may go home.must: probability (epistemic) or obligation (deontic). Lassie must go home.will: prediction (epistemic) or obligation (deontic). Lassie will go home.

Thus:

Lassie can go home = ABLE (GO (l, h)) or PERM (GO (l, h))Lassie must go home = PROB (GO (l, h)) or OBL (GO (l, h))

The grammatically lexical verb, want, is also a modal operator.

Etc.

4. Negative operator

The negative simply denies the truth of the proposition it applies to. Thus:

Mary did not eat the Easter eggs.

NEG (PAST (EAT (m, e)))

The negative operator can ‘shift’ its scope when it occurs in conjunction with a modal operator, so that the modal may or may not be brought under the scope of the negative.

E.g.

John wasn’t able to go to summer school. NEG (ABLE (GO (j, s)))John was able not to go to summer school. ABLE (NEG (GO (j, s)))

5. Sentence connectives

The connective operators operate over two (or more) propositions, which they relate to each other. They are:

The conjunctive operator, and (&)The disjunctive operator, or (V)The conditional operator, if…then (>)

Because we are not really interested in the structural content of the propositions, we can abbreviate the entire proposition to p or q. (Conventionally, the letters p-w are used to represent propositions.)

The truth of an expression that results from the application of a connective operator over two propositions depends on the truth of the propositions involved. This is shown by means of a truth table:

&

p q p & q

11

T T TF T FT F FF F F

I.e., an expression p & q is only true if p is true and q is true.

We can test this by substituting sentence forms for p and q:

p = The men smoke cigars.q = The women wash the dishes.p & q = The men smoke cigars and the women wash the dishes.

V

p q p V qT T TF T TT F TF F F

The expression p V q is true if at least one of p and q is true. p V q is not true if both p and q are false.

>

p q p > qT T TF T ?T F FF F ?

The conditional operator sets one proposition as a condition and the other as a result dependent on that condition. So:

in order for the expression If the men smoke cigars, the women wash the dishes to be true, both p and q must be true. p, the men smoke cigars is the condition; if this condition is met the result is q: the women wash the dishes. However, if the condition (p) is met (i.e. true), and the result is false, then the expression p > q is clearly false.

If the condition is false, but the result is true, we cannot determine the truth of p > q. p > q does not mean that the women wash the dishes is only true when the men smoke cigars: it means that when the men smoke cigars is true, so is the women wash the dishes. Similarly, if both are false, we cannot determine the truth of p > q.

12

6. Quantifiers

Quantifiers are useful for delimiting sets and parts of sets. As the name implies, quantifiers express the number of members of a category we are dealing with. Thus, numerals are quantifiers, but we are only going to deal with two more general quantifiers: the universal quantifier (), which encompasses the total membership of a set / category, and the existential quantifier (), which delimits a non-specific part of a set.

Consider:

All semanticists are linguists.Barbara is a semanticist.Therefore, Barbara is a linguist.

The conclusion Barbara is a linguist is valid. Compare:

Some semanticists are linguists.Barbara is a semanticist.Therefore, Barbara is a linguist.

Here, the conclusion Barbara is a linguist is invalid, because the category semanticist is not sufficiently delimited in relation to linguist. Compare again:

No semanticists are linguists.Barbara is a semanticist.Therefore, Barbara is not a linguist.

No is essentially the absolute negative of all (but NB it is not the same as Not all semanticists…, which is the same as Some semanticists…). If a negative appears in the first (major) premise, then the conclusion must also be negative in order to be valid.

13

COGNITIVE SEMANTICS

The classical approach to categorisation (Aristotelian model)

This was the approach to categorisation favoured by the structuralists of the late 19th to mid 20th century. It was based on Aristotle’s notion of essence and accidents:

The essence of a thing is a feature or set of features that that thing must have in order to belong to its category; ‘all parts immanent in things which define and indicate their individuality, and whose destruction causes the destruction of the whole’ (Taylor 1995:22, quoting from Metaphysics).

Accidents are incidental features of a thing, whose presence does not ensure membership of a certain category, and whose destruction would not remove it from that category.

Thus, the essence of aeroplane would be a set of features like [WING] [TAIL] [MOTOR DRIVEN] [ABLE TO FLY]. According to the Classical approach, the lack of any one of these features would disqualify an object from the category aeroplane. ‘Broken’ aeroplanes would be discounted from the system: an aeroplane that has lost its tail is still an aeroplane; the point is that an aeroplane cannot be built, or at least cannot function as an aeroplane, if it is created without a tail. Functionality is important in the (modern) Classical approach: the destruction of any one of the features given for aeroplane results in the destruction of the function of the aeroplane (and aeroplanes are arguably built with a certain function in mind!).

For natural, as opposed to man-made, categories, the notion of essence is useful for distinguishing categories from one another. For example, [MAMMAL] is part of the essence of both human and dog, but [BIPEDAL] is part of the essence of human only, and is one of the features that distinguishes dog and human. Distinguishing essential features become fewer and finer as categories become more like each other: how do humans differ from gorillas, as opposed to dogs?

The idea of essence was elaborated to become the structuralist notion of the necessary and sufficient features set: an entity has to possess a certain number of features in order to qualify for membership of a particular category; it cannot be lacking any one of the features in the necessary and sufficient features set; however, it can, but need not, have any number of other features besides.

Other features, that a member of a category may have, but do not serve to distinguish categories from each other, are known as accidents. Features like ethnicity, height, eye colour, build, etc. are accidents of the human category; number of wings, type of engine, etc. would be accidents of aeroplanes. Accidents often create hyponyms: while the number of wings, for example, is accidental to the category aeroplane, it is essential to some of the hyponyms of aeroplane, such as monoplane, biplane, triplane. I.e., no aeroplane which intrinsically has only one wing could be called a biplane.

14

The necessary and sufficient features set extends into four rules (or, more properly, assumptions) of categorisation:

Categories are defined in terms of a conjunction of necessary and sufficient features (the essence of a thing);

Features are binary: a thing either possesses a feature or it does not; Categories have clear boundaries: a thing is either a member of a category or it

is not; All members of a category have equal status: there are no degrees of category

membership.

See Taylor 1995: 23f for a fuller explanation.

This was the accepted model of categorisation in semantics until the 1960s. Language continued to be perceived as an autonomous system, independent of other faculties. However, revolutionary thinking in cognitive science and philosophy posed some serious challenges to the classical model of categorisation. Some of the most important were:

1. Colour categorisation (esp. Berlin & Kay)

The categorisation of colour was a sticking point for the classical model of categorisation for some time. Look at a rainbow or light spectrum. Although the spectrum is traditionally divided into seven colours—red, orange, yellow, green, indigo and violet—it does not consist of seven clear-cut bands of colour. Rather, red blends gradually into orange, orange into yellow, and so forth. However, if we concentrate on the middle region of each ‘band’, we are able to discern seven distinct colours. This gives evidence that, for the categorisation of colour at least, categories are not clear-cut, and colour features are not binary.

In 1969, the linguistic anthropologists Berlin and Kay conducted a survey of speakers of 98 different languages, to determine how colour is categorised. Read up on the full results in Taylor (1995: §1.3). I have briefly summarised them here as follows:

Languages have a minimum of 2 and a maximum of 11 ‘basic’ colour terms; Colour categories are not necessarily the same across languages, but are

always equal.

The results of the survey led to Berlin and Kay’s two important claims regarding cross-linguistic colour categorisation:

Although there is a great deal of (apparent) variation in colour terminology across languages, focal areas remain consistent.

Universally, there exist only 11 focal colours.

A focal colour is taken from the middle or core range of any colour category. Thus, all languages that have a term equivalent to red will identify the same shade of red as the best example, no matter how far into (our) orange the colour extends.

15

For example, consider two languages, A and B. Language A has separate terms for red and orange; Language B has the same term for both. However, both will point to the same shade / range of red as the best example of the term red.

Berlin and Kay also discovered a hierarchy across languages. If a language has only two (basic) colour terms, the core regions or best examples of these will be focal black and focal white. If a language has three colour terms, they will be based on focal black, focal white and focal red. Following Berlin and Kay, Taylor (1995:10) diagrams the hierarchy as follows:

greyblack yellow orange

< red < < blue < brown <white green purple

pink

I.e., if a language has a term based on focal blue, then it also has terms based on focal yellow and / or green, red, black and white.

Research into colour categorisation challenged the classical model by showing that colour categories have a centre and a periphery. Thus, all members of a colour category do not have equal status, and colour category boundaries are not clear cut.

2. Wittgenstein (definition of game)

Wittgenstein posed a challenge to the classical model as early as 1945, when he addressed the question of how to define the word ‘game’ (see Taylor 1995: 38ff). Presenting a range of games, Wittgenstein asked what they all had in common, and concluded that there was no one feature that made a game a game; rather, there is a general resemblance between individuals and groups across the category. Thus, things as disparate as rugby and solitaire can belong to the same category, because each resembles different members, or shares different attributes with, members of the same category. Indeed, we could propose a kind of resemblance hierarchy, along the lines of:

rugby resembles soccer: team, field of play, points system, ball, objective of game; they differ in the number of team members, shape of the ball, details of the points system, contact, layout of field, etc.pool resembles rugby and soccer in that it has a points system and balls; and the objective of the game is to win; the differences are many and obvious;poker resembles pool in that it is played on a table;patience resembles poker in that it is played with cards.

This was later to give rise to the family resemblance model of categorisation: entities have membership in a category according to their resemblance to a prototype.

3. Labov’s ‘cup and bowl’ experiment

Labov’s interest was the sociolinguistic relationship between language and perception of the world. He conducted an experiment in which children of different age groups were presented with a series of containers of varying height : width ratios. He then presented the same containers again, but this time with a handle added to each.

16

The results of the first part of the experiment were relatively consistent. Objects (without a handle) that were higher than they were wide were labelled ‘cup’; those that were wider than they were high were labelled ‘bowl’, with some inconsistency where height and width were nearly equal. The addition of a handle expanded the ‘cup’ category significantly, with only objects that were significantly wider than they were high retaining the label ‘bowl’. Older children tended to qualify various ‘cups’: e.g. tea cup (for a short cup), mug (for a cup slightly higher), etc. This experiment shows some support for the family resemblance idea, with [HANDLE] being a highly salient feature for the category ‘cup’, in addition to the height : width ratio. Inconsistencies show that the category is not clear cut, but ‘fuzzy’: while the core (e.g. an ‘ideal’ cup) is clearly marked by language users, there is no agreement as to what cleanly distinguishes ‘cup’ from ‘bowl’.

Prototype models

These and other experiments gradually led to the development of an alternative model of categorisation. The two leading ideas in the prototype model of categorisation are:

family resemblance: things are categorised according to their resemblance to other members of that category

prototypicality: categories are based on a good example of that category

Prototype categories are therefore hierarchical, in that their members do not all have equal status. Category members that resemble the prototype are ‘better examples’ than those that do not. Thus, sparrows are better examples of ‘bird’ than penguins.However, prototype categories are not based on a real example; rather, they are a mental composite of features associated with a good example of the category in question. For example, if someone is asked to draw a fish, they generally do not produce a drawing of a real fish (or species of fish), but rather something that resembles the basic idea of ‘fish’.

POLYSEMY, METAPHOR AND METONYMY

Polysemy is defined as one word which has two or more meanings; and these meanings are historically or psychologically related to each other (cf. Crystal 1996:267). I.e., over time, the meaning of a word becomes extended, so that that word can be applied to other concepts.

For example, the sense of green (the colour) became extended over time so that it can also be used to describe something or someone that is new or inexperienced; this came from the association with green wood, which cannot be whittled or burnt as easily as older (or more experienced) wood.

Polysemy is a common way of enriching vocabulary without resorting to new word formation. The sense of bank has multiple polysemous extensions (though, interestingly, we no longer use it in its original sense, bench or desk, from which all its other senses were derived). Consider this list of definitions for bank, all culled

17

from the Cassell Concise Dictionary (CD Rom version 1998), and all with the same etymology: you can see for yourselves how the polysemous extension works.

bank2 (bangk)n. 1 an establishment which deals in money, receiving it on deposit from customers and investing it. 2 a building operated by such an establishment. 3 in gaming, the money which the proprietor of the table, or player who plays against the rest, has before them. 4 any store or reserve of material or information (blood bank). 5 a child's box for saving money in, a piggy bank. 1 a raised shelf or ridge of ground. 2 a mound with steeply sloping sides. 3 a shelving elevation of sand, gravel etc., in the sea or in a river. 4 the margin or shore of a river. 5 the ground near a river. 6 an embankment. 7 the sides of a road, cutting or any hollow. 8 an incline on a railway. 9 a bed of shellfish. 10 a long flat-topped mass, as of ice, snow, cloud or the like. 11 the face of the coal in a mine. 12 the surface of the ground at the top of a mine-shaft. Etymology: from Fr. banque = ‘bench’.

Many of our prepositions are affected by polysemy. Down, for example, can be a static or progressive vertical position or a psychological state. Also, compare the senses of over in the following sentences:

1. The helicopter hovered over the field. (static vertical position)2. The helicopter flew over the town. (vertical position with progressive

horizontal dimension)3. The car ran over the bottle. (progressive contact position)4. She finally got over him. (psychological state).

Metaphor can be thought of as polysemy on a sentential scale. Structuralism generally avoided trying to incorporate metaphor into a theory of meaning:

‘…indeed everywhere where one is dealing with the notion of sense, one has to ignore metaphorical and figurative interpretations of sentences.’ (Hurford & Heasley 1990:191).

Metaphor is essentially polysemous meaning extension: the name given to one concept is applied to another, different concept that is somehow related to the first. In fact, metaphor generally goes beyond mere naming, so that the discourse structures associated with one concept become associated with another.

Consider the metaphor below (borrowed from Taylor 1995:131):

18

Sally is a block of ice.

In the structuralist tradition, the extension of the individual Sally (which is Sally) is compared to the extension of ‘block of ice’ (every thing in the world, past, present and future, which could be accurately labelled ‘block of ice’). The individual Sally is found not to be a block of ice, and the sentence yields a truth value of False. I.e., metaphor is dismissed as an aberration; and perhaps the structuralists have a point: metaphor is usually subjective, and, as such, cannot really be construed as true or false. Metaphor is a valuable part of the prototype model of categorisation, because it shows the looseness of category boundaries. We have seen in class how category boundaries are relatively loose in the prototype model: categories can be manipulated so that e.g. a cucumber can be a fruit (albeit a marginal exemplar) and a vegetable (slightly closer to the prototype) at the same time, while the structuralists are stuck with saying that it is equally a fruit and a vegetable at the same time—which, given the necessary and sufficient features set, is nothing short of a contradiction!

However, in our metaphor above, are we trying to claim that Sally belongs to the category ‘block of ice’? Under the prototype model, yes. The claim is that metaphor is a stretching of a category’s boundaries, so that even remote associations can be brought into the category. Thus, under the prototype model, ‘block of ice’ does not contain only blocks of ice, but also things (like Sally) that resemble blocks of ice in some way. Metaphor, then, fits snugly into the prototype model, oblivious to structuralist derision.

The most common type of metaphor is the ontological metaphor, aka the existential metaphor. Metaphors of this type are structured as X is Y (once the metaphor is established in a discourse situation, the name of Y is simply substituted for X). Sally is a block of ice is a good example of an ontological metaphor, as are:

Life is a lemon.Here comes the old cow. That pig ate the lot.Etc.

Orientational metaphors derive mainly from the polysemy of prepositions. Most prepositions have some sort of psychological association: down describes a depressed psychological state; up describes an elated psychological state, and so on. Other orientational expressions, such as high, over and low, do exactly the same thing.

Consider the extension of the meaning of high in the following sentences:

Mount Everest is high.The aeroplane is high.Their marks are high.The price of beer is high.The students are high.The meat is high.

19

The concepts described by high are very different, but a psychological thread of ‘highness’ clearly pervades them all.

Ontological and orientational metaphors become established and give rise to conceptual metaphors. Conceptual metaphors are a restructuring of discourse, so that one concept is referred to in terms associated with another. For example, argument is frequently talked about in terms originally associated with war, giving us the ARGUMENT IS WAR conceptual metaphor:

He lost the battle in court.

The defence’s position was weak on all fronts.

They bombarded their opponents with rhetoric.

She shot down his argument in flames.

Chomsky attacked the structuralist model.

I held my position.

The empiricists lost ground against the rationalists.

Because of the (perceived) similarities between argument and war, there is no need for a wholly separate vocabulary for each: the language that describes war extends into the conceptual space of argument.

TIME IS MONEY is another very common conceptual metaphor: time, like money, can be spent, wasted, saved, etc.

Orientational metaphors give us some interesting polar conceptual metaphors. Consider vertical orientation, and the various ways in which we use up and down.

Their mid-term marks were very high / low.They are men of high / low morals.Standards of education are rising / falling.His salary’s going up / down next year.Etc.

This use of these orientation-based expressions can be summed up in the conceptual metaphor GOOD IS UP / BAD IS DOWN. Another metaphor that has largely fallen out of conscious use is the Roman idea GOOD IS RIGHT / BAD IS LEFT (the Latin for left hand was sinister; our word left is derived from the Old English for ‘weak’, ‘useless’; and consider the polysemy of ‘right’ in English!).

Metonymy

Metonymy is essentially a kind of ontological metaphor, which relates already related things. For example:

20

Pretoria told Athens to keep its ouzo.The kettle is boiling.She smokes two packets a day.

Metonymy is defined (Taylor 1995:122) as follows:

A figure of speech whereby the name of an entity e1 is used to refer to another entity, e2, which is contiguous to e1.

Thus, the name of a city is substituted for the government that resides there; the name of a container is used to refer to its contents, and so on.Synecdoche (ibid.) is a special type of metonym, wherein the name of a whole is substituted for the name of one of its salient parts:

We need another pair of hands in the kitchen.The last thing we need is another fat arse on the council*.

The flexibility of the prototype model enables us to incorporate metaphor into a general theory of meaning, where it was treated as anomaly in the more rigid structuralist model. However, it does not allow us to abstract human behaviour from language, as the structuralist model did.

* This is a fictitious example. Any resemblance to actual councils, present or past, is purely coincidental and unintentional.

21

PRAGMATICS NOTES

Introduction

Pragmatics, in essence, is the study of meaning in context. I have chosen to present it from a somewhat formal point of view, to create an analogue with the Formal Semantics section of this course (the context being part and parcel of the cognitive outlook).

Context

The role of context is crucial to pragmatics, as it influences the linguistic expressions that can be used in it. Consider, for example, any interaction between you and a hearer or hearers. Your use of the pronoun you excludes yourself; their use of you includes yourself, etc. A context of a speech interaction comprises the following ‘ingredients’:

participants (at least two, whether these are part of the ‘real’ world or not); a medium, common to the participants (English, sign language, Franglais, etc.) a situation, or space, in which the interaction occurs; a topic of conversation; a time in which the interaction occurs.

Note that these are all external to the utterances that make up the interaction. Since in utterances we talk about things, utterances have their own ‘built-in’ contexts, which share many of the components as the utterance-external, or immediate, context.

For example, consider the following hypothetical situation:

Gretchen and Esmerelda are talking at a party in a dingy Victorian residence in Mowbray on Tuesday. Gretchen tells Esmerelda: ‘John was smoking a joint on the beach’.

The context external to the utterance is:

Participants: Gretchen and EsmereldaMedium: EnglishSituation: a party at a dingy house in MowbrayTopic: SMOKE (john, joint) Time: Tuesday

The context internal to the utterance (‘John was smoking a joint on the beach’) is:

Participants: John (other participants may be introduced in the whole conversation)Medium: not relevant (why?)Situation: the beachTopic: not relevant (why?)Time: past (given by tense in utterance).

22

Participants in an interaction talk about each other, or people outside of the interaction, about the context itself, and about various times and places. Languages are equipped with a set of expressions to facilitate this.

Deixis

As the Greek scholars among you can testify, the function of deictic terms is to refer to, or exactly identify contextual elements. Deictic expressions typically vary their reference according to the speaker’s perspective. Definite expressions are deictic: their reference changes according to the speaker’s perspective, and they serve to delimit large classes of objects to the members that exist in the context of the interaction or utterance.

Definite expressions: pronouns, demonstratives, quantifiers (excluding numerals, some, many, most and any, which are indefinite or not sufficiently definite) and any DP headed by the definite article. Proper names are a special case; we will regard them as deictic.

Deictic expressions are classified in two ways: relative to the context (personal, spatial and temporal), and relative to the speaker (proximal and distal).

Personal deictics:

These are expressions which serve to identify people and objects in a context. Examples:

pronouns: I, you, he, she, it, we, they, etc.

names: John, King James II, Tshwane, etc.

person / object descriptions: the two white kittens / the man in the corner / my pencil, etc.

possessive pronouns: my, mine, your, yours, etc.

Spatial deictics:

Expressions which serve to identify space and motion in context. For example:

locative prepositions: in, at, on, near, far from, etc.

locative pronouns: here, there

verbs of motion: bring, take, approach, retreat, etc.

Temporal deictics:

Expressions which identify or locate time in context. Examples:

Lest there be no Greek scholars among you, deixis derives from Greek , ‘pointing’.

23

names of days: Tuesday, Friday, etc.

temporal adverbs: today, yesterday, tomorrow, now, then, later, etc.temporal expressions (adverbials): last week, next month, etc.

Proximal deictics:

These are expressions centred on or near the speaker—i.e.

proximal personal deictics: first person pronouns and possessives, and proximal demonstratives (this / these);

proximal spatial deictics: expressions that suggest spatial nearness to, or motion towards the speaker (here, bring, etc.)

proximal temporal deictics: expressions that suggest the speaker’s present: now, today, this week, this year, etc.

Distal deictics:

These are the complements of the proximal deictics: everything that does not evoke the speaker, or his / her spatial or temporal proximity. Thus:

distal personal deictics: second and third person pronouns and possessives, and distal demonstratives (that / those), and proper names;

distal spatial deictics: expressions suggesting a spatial distance to, or motion away from, the speaker (there, take, etc.)

distal temporal deictics: expressions that suggest the speaker’s past or future: yesterday, tomorrow, last / next month, etc.

The Descriptive Fallacy

This is the notion that the sole purpose of the utterance of a declarative sentence is to describe a state of affairs (Hurford & Heasley 1983:233). Naturally, there is such a descriptive element in many utterances, but it is seldom the sole purpose of making the utterance. For example, an utterance of It’s cold in here is unlikely to be a statement of fact…it could be a request to switch on the heater, close the windows, light a fire, and so on. In fact, relatively few of our statement-utterances have the sole purpose to inform our hearers about a state of affairs.

Speech acts

The act of making an utterance is known as a speech act. This comprises the speaker’s purpose in making the utterance, as well as the hearer’s reaction. Languages have a number of ‘standard’ speech act types, which can be used when a speaker intends a particular consequence. The most common speech act types or forms are:

24

Speech act Common form Intent of S

Assertive declarative sentence that H believes, or is informed by, S

Directive question or command that H does something required by S. E.g.

provide information fulfil a request obey a command

Commissive declarative statement with commissive verb (promise, vow, etc.)

S undertakes to do something

Performative First person declarative with performative verb(convoke, nominate, dismiss, baptize, etc.)

S brings a state of affairs into being by making the utterance

Verdictive First person declarative(declare, find, judge)

S determines a state of affairs by making the utterance

EXERCISE

What kind of speech act is each of the following utterances?

a) ‘I sentence you to five years in jail.’b) ‘How much is that cur in the window?’c) ‘I believe in the Divine Eminence of Chomsky.’d) ‘What’s that?’e) ‘I declare that you are a thief, a scoundrel, and a liar.’f) ‘I swear to honour the Crown.’g) ‘Can we get some service here?’

We could think of these as ‘standard’ speech acts. However, the system is imperfect, for two reasons:

we can use the form of one speech act to make a very different speech act; certain speech acts are context-dependent

Let’s look at the second point first: under what circumstances would each of the speech acts be successful? These circumstances constitute the felicity conditions for speech acts.

Felicity conditions

These are self-evident, and require minimal mental exertion. Felicity conditions apply to both speaker and hearer; in the table below, S = speaker and H = hearer.

SPEECH ACT FELICITY CONDITIONS

25

Assertive S must believe what s/he assertsH must believe S’s assertion

Directive (Question)

Directive (Request)

Directive (Command)

S must require information from HH must believe S requires the informationS must require an act from HS must reasonably believe that H is in a position to perform this actH must be in a position to accept or deny the requestS must have the authority to command HS must reasonably believe that H is in a position to obey the commandH must recognise S’s authorityH must reasonably be in a position to obey the command

Commissive S must be in a position to undertake the commissiveS must reasonably feel some obligation to HS must intend to carry out the content of the commissive H must believe S’s intention to carry out the commissiveH must believe S is in a position to carry out the commissive

Performative S must have the authority to carry out the performativeH must recognise S’s authority to carry out the performative

Verdictive S must have the authority to carry out the verdictive(H must recognise S’s authority to carry out the verdictive)

Politeness and indirectness

Few of our everyday speech acts are as direct as those listed in the tables above. A major reason for this is our tendency towards politeness, which often manifests as indirectness. For example, a request for salt, expressed directly, would be:

Can I have the salt, please?

Very often, though, a request may be disguised, as if to take the onus from speaker and / or hearer:

Is there any salt? (This prevents S from having to ask directly for an act from H; request disguised as a question)

I can’t find the salt. (Here, the request is disguised as an assertion).

Other ways of expressing indirectness are:

use a request instead of a command (would you mind wearing shoes?) the use of modality (you might want to blow your nose) polite ‘expletives’, like please.

26

Locution, illocution and perlocution

Like any linguistic sign, a speech act utterance is composed of two parts: form and function. The form of a speech act is usually the sound, from the physical act of speaking:

‘There’s a spider in the bath’.

It has the form of a declarative sentence, and is thus, superficially, an assertive speech act. This is its form. The physical utterance of a speech act is the locution.

The meaningful component of a speech act depends on both the Speaker and the Hearer, so it is split into two parts. One part is based on the speaker’s intention behind his or her locution: is it just to state a fascinating ontological fact, or is it a request that the spider be removed from the bath? The Speaker’s intention is the illocution of the speech act.

The other part of the meaningful component is the Hearer’s interpretation of the locution. S/he could interpret ‘There’s a spider in the bath’ as intriguing information, as a warning, or as a request. Whatever the Hearer’s interpretation is, it is the perlocution of the speech act.

If the illocution and perlocution match (i.e., if the Hearer correctly interprets the Speaker’s intention), then the speech act interaction is considered a success.

E.g.

Locution: ‘There’s a spider in the bath’Illocution: Remove the spider from the bathPerlocution *Removes the spider from the bath*

…represents a successful speech act. The speaker’s assertive speech act is, in fact, a disguised request that the spider be removed from the bath; and this is correctly interpreted by the hearer.

But…

Locution: ‘There’s a spider in the bath.’Illocution: Remove the spider from the bath.Perlocution (new locution): ‘That’s nice, dear.’

…represents a failed speech act, in which the Hearer treats the locution as a straightforward assertion, and responds as such.

EXERCISE

27

Discuss the potential illocutions and perlocutions of:

1. The cow is in the field.2. Who’s been sleeping in my bed?

As indirectness shows, our language and society give us the facility to say things without directly saying them. We call this the art, and science, of implicature. Implicature can be defined as follows:

What a speaker can imply in the locution (illocution) What the hearer can infer from the speaker’s locution (perlocution).

Whenever a speaker uses an indirect speech act, the literal or propositional content of the locution does not match with the propositional content of the illocution. This means that the propositional content of an indirect speech act (locution) can be expressed by a declarative sentence corresponding to a direct locution of the speaker’s intention.

For example, if a speaker says:

‘My beer’s finished.’

…the literal meaning of this locution can be expressed as PAST [FINISHED (mb)]. This might be far from the speaker’s intention, or illocution. If the speaker said ‘My beer’s finished’, but actually meant ‘I want another beer’, we could legitimately express the illocution with a declarative sentence like:

‘I want another beer’, representing the proposition WANT (I, ab).

From a cognitivist perspective, we could say that speech acts are polysemous; a kind of high-level metonymy.

The upshot of all this is that we can distinguish between the natural, or canonical, form of a sentence, and what a speaker really means by uttering it. We call this phenomenon implication (from a speaker’s point of view), and implicature (from a hearer’s point of view).

Another way we can say something without actually saying it is in the way we structure our discourse: either by the words we use, or the way in which we string our propositions together.

E.g. Consider the following sentences—what is implied by the use of the word but in these sentences?

1. She was cursed with a stammer, unmarried, but far from stupid.2. He plays rugby, but his marks are quite good.3. The main character is 37, but quite attractive.

28

First, note that but is a connective operator, with the same truth conditions as and. The principal difference between and and but is that there is an element of surprise in the second proposition in the connection. This leads to the implication that, e.g. people who stammer and / or are unmarried are stupid.

And also has associated implications. What is the implication in the following sentences, connected by and (and why is the second one odd, on one reading?)

She got in her car and went to the shops.She went to the shops and got in her car.

Given the truth tables we’ve done for and, we’d expect the two sentences to mean the same thing. They clearly do not, quite.

Another way of setting up an implication is to string apparently unrelated sentences together (there’d usually be a phonological component here, too):

1. When John had left, I noticed my umbrella had gone.

(Implication: John stole my umbrella).

2. Mary used my computer, and now its got a virus.

(Implication: Mary gave my computer a virus).

With all this superficial confusion, we need (really!) a theory of how human interactions work successfully. The philosopher Herbert Paul Grice came up with a principle to explain this: The Principle of Conversational Co-operation:

Make your contribution such as is required, at the stage at which it is required, by the accepted direction and purpose of the talk exchange in which you are involved. (Levinson 1985: 101)

Hardly rocket science. But the important thing here is that the kind of conversation is significant: a gossip session in the local coffeeshop, for example, would be governed by a very different set of principles compared to an earnest debate about Chomsky’s contribution to linguistics.

Grice further unpacks his Cooperative Principle into four maxims, each governing an aspect of conversation (Levinson 1985:101-102):

Maxim of Quality

Try to make your contribution true, specifically:

i) do not say that which you believe to be false;ii) do not say that for which you lack evidence

29

Maxim of Quantity

i) make your contribution as informative as required for the current purposes of exchange; ii) do not make your contribution more informative than required.

Maxim of Relation

i) make your contribution relevant

Maxim of Manner

Make your contribution perspicuous, specifically:

i) avoid obscurity ii) avoid ambiguityiii) be brief iv) be orderly

Violations

If we all believe each other to be abiding by ‘rules’ like this, we have a kind of explantation for implicature. Consider (example from Levinson 1985:106)

A: Nigel has fourteen children.

This asserts that Nigel has fourteen children, and implies that he only has fourteen children. A’s Hearer could well be aggrieved upon finding out that Nigel in fact has twenty children, because s/he assumes A to be abiding by the maxim of Quantity: say as much as is required. A cannot be said to have lied; but s/he has violated the maxim of quantity.

Of course, one can say too much. Consider this in the context of a standard greeting:

A: How are you?B: Not so good, actually. I’ve got a boil in my armpit, and then this morning the car wouldn’t start and the kids were acting up…

B provides too much information for the talk exchange in which s/he is engaged.

EXERCISE

Which maxims are violated in the following talk exchanges?:

A: Do you think I’m pretty?B: I wonder if they have Amstel…

A: The sun isn’t going to rise tomorrow.

30

A: Did you hear poor old Bill died yesterday?B: Like sands through the hourglass…

A: Have you seen my husband?B: He left with the secretary.

Grice’s maxims also provide us with an explanation for conversations which are superficially uncooperative, but nevertheless successful—in some talk exchanges, it is appropriate to violate the maxims deliberately, or flout them.

A: Do you think he’ll get his doctorate?B: When pigs fly.

This is likely to have been a successful talk exchange, even though the maxim of quality has been superficially violated. Sarcasm is usually a flouting of quality.

Similarly, a flouting of the maxim of relation:

A: Hey, let’s go to Cavendish!B: We’ve got a test tomorrow.

Entailment and presupposition

Whenever we receive new information in a proposition, there are other propositions we have to accept as true before we can accept this new information as true. These underlying propositions are known as the presuppositions of the proposition. For example, consider the statement:

John’s car was stolen.

Before the Hearer can accept this statement as true, s/he must first accept that it is true that John has (or had, in this case) a car. Presupposition, then, is a balance between old and new information. In the given example, John had a car presupposes John’s car was stolen.

One way of testing for the propositions that presuppose a (new) proposition is by entailment. Remember:

Entailment: the sense relation whereby the truth of one proposition leads necessarily to the truth of another, for the same situation.

Now consider the following sentence. What do you have to accept is true before you can accept the proposition behind these sentences is true?

1. John managed to break the window.

Unless the maxim of quality is being flouted, in (1) we have to accept one important ‘underlying’ proposition before we can accept the whole proposition: that John tried

31

to break the window. In other words, it is being asserted that John did not break the window accidentally.

Do we have to accept John broke the window as true before we can accept John managed to break the window?

No. What is highlighted in John managed to break the window is the fact that he tried to break the window: his success, i.e. that he broke the window is new information.Let us look at entailment again. ( is the sign for entailment)

If John managed to break the window is true, then John tried to break the window is necessarily true for the same situation. John managed to break the window John tried to break the window.

Similarly, if John managed to break the window is true, then John broke the window is true for the same situation. John managed to break the window John broke the window.

So, both John tried to break the window and John broke the window are entailed by John managed to break the window, but only John tried to break the window is presupposed. It is by acknowledging John’s success through the use of the word manage that we get to the new information encapsulated in John broke the window.

If John tried to break the window, we don’t know whether he was successful (though it is implied that he wasn’t). So how do we know what is presupposed (other than by intuition)?

‘Old’ information can be rooted out like truffles by applying the sentence family entailment test. This is done by comparing the entailments of the positive, negative and interrogative forms of the proposition of a sentence. If the same proposition is entailed by the positive and negative, and reasonably implied by the interrogative, then it is a presupposition.

For example:

The sentence family for John managed to break the window is:

John managed to break the window (positive)John didn’t manage to break the window (negative)Did John manage to break the window? (interrogative)

John managed to break the window entails:

John tried to break the windowJohn broke the window

John didn’t manage to break the window entails:

John tried to break the window

32

…but does not entail

John broke the window

Did John manage to break the window reasonably implies:

John tried to break the window

…but does not reasonably imply:

John broke the window.

So, John tried to break the window is entailed or reasonably implied by all members of the sentence family, and is a valid presupposition.

But, John broke the window is only entailed by the positive, and does not constitute a valid presupposition.

In discourse, there are various cues or presupposition triggers available to us: these are expressions that alert us to ‘old’ information that must be accepted as true before we can accept the whole statement as true. Levinson (1985:181ff) lists a vast number of these: we’ll only be concerned with a few of them.

Presupposition triggers

(I have only included the positive and negative here; you can test the interrogative yourselves.)

1. Definite descriptions. These tell us that we have to accept the existence of the referents.

The knave saw / didn’t see the queen of hearts

>> A queen of hearts exists.

2. Factive verbs. Verbs like know, regret, understand signal that the propositional content of the clause that follows them is presupposed.

John understands / doesn’t understand that Mary loves Vladimir.

>> Mary loves Vladimir.

3. Implicative verbs (sometimes included with factive verbs). Verbs like manage, forget, etc. that imply a predication over the propositional content of the clause that follows them.

John managed / didn’t manage to save the kitten.

>> John tried to save the kitten.

33

4. Change of state verbs. Verbs like become, stop, continue which express or imply a change of state, presuppose a previous state of affairs.

Greenberg became / didn’t become jaded.

>> Greenberg wasn’t jaded.

5. Iteratives. These are expressions, like again, any more which point to the repetition of a state of affairs, presupposing that state of affairs.

Gretchen kissed / didn’t kiss Esmerelda again.

>> Gretchen has kissed Esmerelda before.

6. Temporal clauses: the propositional content of the complement of a temporal clause marker, like when, while, as, since, whenever is presupposed.

Whenever Mary sings, the dogs howl / don’t howl.

>> Mary sings.

REFERENCES

Crystal, David (1996). A Dictionary of Linguistics and Phonetics. Oxford, Blackwell.

Hurford, James & Heasley, Brendan (1988). Semantics: a coursebook. Cambridge, Cambridge University Press.

Kearns, Kate (2000). Semantics. Houndmills, MacMillan.

Levinson, Stephen C. (1985). Pragmatics. Cambridge, Cambridge University Press.

Leech, Geoffrey (1990). Semantics: the study of meaning. London, Penguin.

Taylor, John (1995). Linguistic Categorization: prototypes in linguistic theory. Oxford, Oxford University Press.

Other useful texts:

Kempson, Ruth (1980). Semantic Theory. Cambridge, Cambridge University Press.

Palmer, Frank (1986). Semantics. Cambridge, Cambridge University Press.

Sinclair, William Angus (1963). The Traditional Formal Logic: a short account for students. Essex, Meuthen & Co.

Wierzbicka, Anna (1996). Semantics: primes and universals. Oxford, Oxford University Press.

34

All books on this list can be borrowed from me on a short-term basis.

35