Difference semantics and pragmatics
Literal meaning and speaker meaning
Explain what is semantic and pragmatic about the sentence: “The guy that I mentioned before is dangerous”.
Pragmatics: there’s previous information; who the guy is. Also, there probably is an additional meaning, like be careful with that guy, a warning.
Semantics: literal meaning, what the words in the example are, as well as how they are combined.
Proposition
- It describes a state of affairs.
- It is the semantic object that characterises the meaning of a sentence.
- A proposition is a set of worlds; it picks out worlds where some state of affairs is true.
Intensional and extensional semantics
Presupposition
You need to know whether a sentence is true to determine whether the next one can be true.
Presuppositions indicate the information that the speaker (and hearer) takes for granted in a discourse setting.
How do we determine that a proposition is presupposed?
Tests:
1. Negation
2. Conditionals
3. Questions
4. Modal sentences
The idea is that if we take a sentence and put it in contexts involving negation (for example), the presuppositions will still be there.
Difference between presuppositions and entailments
The idea of presuppositions is that if we take a sentence and put it in contexts involving negation (for example), the presuppositions will still be there.
But this is not the case with entailments, which will not survive in these contexts.
Does (6) presuppose (7)? Apply a test.
(6) Mary stopped smoking.
(7) Mary used to smoke.
If Mary quit smoking, then it must be the case that Mary used to smoke. In fact, if Mary didn’t used to smoke, then (6) wouldn’t make sense.
Negation: (8) Mary didn’t stop smoking.
Conditionals: (9) If Mary stopped smoking, then her clothes won’t smell funny anymore.
Question: (10) Did Mary stop smoking?
Modals: Maybe Mary stopped smoking.
So then the question is, is (7) true of (8), (9), (10) and (11)? All the answers are “Mary used to smoke”.
Presupposition triggers
The, know, again, still
What do you think about this case in terms of presuppositions?: The present king of France is bald.
You have to answer the question whether presuppositions like the one tied to “the present King of France” is context dependent. If yes, then pragmatics plays a key role involving presuppositions.
Common Ground (CG)
The set of propositions which the participants in a conversation agree to be uncontroversial for the purposes of the conversation.
If both speakers agree that it is raining, then “It stopped raining” can be used meaningfully.
Context Set (C)
The set of worlds where all propositions in the Common Ground are true.
Establish the CG and C about the three facts: 1. that it is raining, 2. that Stephanie is in the room, 3. that Manfredo is a nice dog.
CG = that it is raining, that Stephanie is in the room, that Manfredo is a nice dog.
C = the set of worlds in which it is raining, Stephanie is in the room and Manfredo is a nice dog.
Accommodation
Infelicitous
Can the sentence be uttered in this context without any problems? Example: “It stopped raining.”
Can every presupposition be accommodated? What are examples?
No. The following are rather odd when uttered out of the blue:
- Susi arrived late too (because there is no information whatsoever about who else arrived late).
- The woman likes beans (we have no information about who the woman is).
What is key when discussing pragmatics?
Context
Felicitous or infelicitous
The discussion in the semantic and pragmatic literature will include scenarios and different possibilities as to when uttering a sentence is felicitous or infelicitous.
What is the relation between presuppositions and CG?
A presupposition must be part of the Common Ground.
Example:
(13) Tuti is a nice dog too.
This presupposes that some other dog is nice. For it to be felicitous, that proposition must already be in the Common Ground.
(In the slides, that’s satisfied because CG contains “Manfredo is a nice dog.”)
Accommodation
Problem: Sometimes someone makes a presupposition that is not in the Common Ground.
Solution: Listeners usually “accommodate” it, i.e., update the Common Ground so that the presupposition is accepted retroactively.
Example:
You’ve been in a windowless room all day. Someone walks in and says: (14) It stopped raining.
Strictly speaking, CG didn’t contain “It was raining.”
But instead of objecting, you accept that presupposition and silently add it to CG.
