On semantic and pragmatic ambiguity (original) (raw)
Related papers
2009
The term indirect speech act is used to name every utterance that conveys illocutionary force in an implicit way. The set of indirect utterances presents a large display of possibilities of conveying a message that largely overcomes the conventional or semantic meaning of the used expressions. The problem of meaning vs. use illustrated by the case of indirect speech acts puts us before the choice between conventional and nonconventional meaning. Indirect assertion would be the meeting point of semantics and pragmatics. This paper presents a case against illocutionary potential of sentences and argues the redundancy of the term indirect illocutionary act, exploring the communicative meaning on the semantics-pragmatics border.
This paper deals with approaches to language behaviour in terms of semantics and pragmatics, with a special emphasis on conversational implicature. It studies various ways the speaker conveys the meaning in language and the ways a listener perceives it according to the context. The paper provides analysis and explanations of theories developed by several semanticists concerning the subject, and it also suggests a good number of examples in form of dialogues. The paper is divided into eight parts, consisting mainly of theories, principles and maxims related to specific terms.
Non-Verbal Predication in Ancient Egyptian, 2017
The fields of semantics and pragmatics are devoted to the study of conventionalized and context-or use-dependent aspects of natural language meaning, respectively. The complexity of human language as a semiotic system has led to considerable debate about how the semantics/pragmatics distinction should be drawn, if at all. This debate largely reflects contrasting views of meaning as a property of linguistic expressions versus something that speakers do. The fact that both views of meaning are essential to a complete understanding of language has led to a variety of efforts over the last 40 years to develop better integrated and more comprehensive theories of language use and interpretation. The most important advances have included the adaptation of propositional analyses of declarative sentences to interrogative, imperative and exclamative forms; the emergence of dynamic, game theoretic, and multi-dimensional theories of meaning; and the development of various techniques for incorporating context-dependent aspects of content into representations of context-invariant content with the goal of handling phenomena such as vagueness resolution, metaphor, and metonymy. The fields of semantics and pragmatics are devoted to the study of the semiotics of language. The fact that two separate disciplines have developed for this purpose reflects the complexity of human language as a semiotic system, as well as the debate as to how it should be analyzed. This complexity is of at least four types. First, we use language not only to represent information (or thought) to ourselves and convey it to others, but also to act on and interact with others in ways that do not directly have to do with the transmission of information, such as greetings, exclamations or orders 1,2. Second, language is simultaneously highly systematic and flexible. On the one hand, interlocutors are under strong pressure to be consistent in their use of language to transmit messages; otherwise, communication would be more difficult and less reliable than it is. On the other, they continually innovate in using existing linguistic forms to convey new, and sometimes even radically different, messages via metaphor 3 , irony 4 , and other devices 5. Third, even if we assume a certain stability in the relation between linguistic form and what is communicated, the immediate context of use is Related Articles Article ID Article title COGSCI-086 Lexical Semantics COGSCI-106 Semantics, Acquisition of COGSCI-201 Discourse Processing
This article does not aim to discuss the different types of ambiguity, including phonetic ambiguity, lexical ambiguity, structural or syntactic ambiguity and pragmatic ambiguity, but will be alluded to directly or indirectly. Rather, the article aims to talk about ambiguity in the discourse of learners of English as a foreign language. It's more fun than academic.
Pragmatic Ambiguity: The Thetic Function of Modality
Lodz Papers in Pragmatics, 2009
The aim of this paper is to present an overview of the pragmatic aspects of ambiguity present in deontic sentences, which may have three pragmatic functions: a prescriptive or a descriptive or a constitutive function. This type of ambiguity is investigated on the lexical, phrasal, and sentential level. The discussion focuses on the deontic constructions of the German verb sollen and the English shall as they are used in legal texts. It also includes comments on the thetic function of the Latin imperative mood and the subjunctive mood.
Against ambiguity and underspecification: Evidence from presupposition as anaphora (2002)
Journal of Pragmatics 34. 2002. 829-849
I propose a critical assessment of both the underspecification (sense-generality) and ambiguity positions. I argue that within the frameworks that espouse the dynamic approach to meaning construction, a non-ambiguous interpretation ensues. My Default Semantics that merges the logical form with the output of the intentionality of the corresponding mental states (Jaszczolt, , b, 2000 demonstrates that the concept of underspecification is redundant in the case of definite descriptions. In the case of apparently semantically ambiguous referring expressions, the speaker's intentions interact with the logical form of the sentence and produce a unique propositional representation. The problem of ambiguity does not arise because intentions 'intrude' into the semantic representation. The view is compatible with pragmatic intrusionism of dynamic-semantic approaches such as Discourse
P&BNS 322 Journal of Pragmatics 200 (2022) Book review
This is genuinely an interdisciplinary book, full of insights and careful analysis, very informative, clearly written and all the epigraphs are wisely selected. Although these opening remarks might suggest perfection, there is of course some room for improvement. This review will summarise chapter by chapter, emphasizing strengths and potential weakness. Viviana Masia's research manifested in this book is a great contribution to the study of this sometimes regrettable, and sometimes necessary human behavior: manipulating reality and people by means of discourse. It is both a scientific and a humanistic enterprise, using rigorously evidence-based examples to illustrate the issues, using scientific methodology and multi-perspective analysis. The book is accessible to beginners and challenging for advanced scholars, with social and political consequences. It is up-to-date research, which references classic works. It is a generous book, because it provides many new ideas for further investigations for anyone interested in the topics covered. In the introduction, Masia declares in the first sentence that she tackles the analysis as a linguist. In this introduction the main goals are spelled out: "My focus on language in this book will be on what could be roughly called its underencoding power, that is, the ability to convey meanings without openly expressing them in discourse" (2). The purpose is: "… is to draw a path along some of the most common and compelling manifestations of implicit communication, the manipulative tricks it relies on and the threats it can pose in different contexts of language use" (2). However, Masia is considering one way in which presumptions work, but the relationship between persuasion and presumptions is not sufficiently described considering the role of the later in argumentative dialogues, that is, considering the reaction of audience when a presumption is offered as a point of departure. The examples provided are only the speaker's discourse, no real exchanges of points of view in terms of critical reactions. The first chapter provides almost all the necessary conceptual background. It begins with the perfect frame with the epigraph, making explicit a kind of machiavellistic mind of the manipulator. However, the type of mind that tend to use manipulations, unfortunately, is not fully described in the chapters to come. It continues with a basic definition of implicit communication by first addressing the notion of indirect speech act, using a rather out of date reference (Pinker, 2007). The author continues with some cognitive elements, assuming a general cognitive view about why we, humans, use implicit communication to convey important messages and actions, namely, that our cognitive system is geared to optimization. This cognitive approach is controversial; there are other approaches (i.e. Barrett, 2015) according to which our cognitive system is geared to work collectively with our human fellows to build and maintain niches, in which optimization is a secondary aim; in the same vein, and very important for persuasion, Mercier and Sperber (2017) demonstrate that our epistemic cognitive system is built in such a way that speakers tend to be guided less by optimization than by a dedicated balance within a cognitive division of labor. Masia describes the use of manipulative language, via well-selected examples, offering a complete description of one of her specific conceptual tools: packaging. It is defined as "… the linguistic clothing of information, irrespective of its givenness or newness status in sentence" (23). Despite the strong metaphorical flavor ("clothing"), the explanation is perfectly clear. Masia continues by focusing on the main way implicit communication is delivered: 1) presuppositions (to be used as pretended common information by the manipulator), 2) implicatures (a la Gricean), 3) topicalization (topic and focus being the crucial analytical categories), and 4) vagueness. The author explains difficult concepts in a helpfully pedagogical manner. Masia adds a subsection on content-commitments and discourse-commitments, which, again, demonstrates her ability to identify what is needed to analyze a multilayer problem. The notion of commitment is important because, as Masia points out (28), we not only "pack" the information sent, but also commit ourselves to the truth of the information itself in different degrees. Although we can't be totally sure about the mental state of the speaker in terms of her degrees of commitment to the information expressed (content commitment), we still have access to the way commitments are manifested in the use of language. Masia here refers to Hamblin's (1970) approach, a key reference in argumentative studies. Hamblin's background is nicely applied to interpret the (political) corpus, pointing out that politicians strategically induce assumptions in the audience