Context and Inference

Context and Inference

1. Deixis

   • The reference of certain expressions cannot be determined without knowing to the extralinguistic context of the utterance
     • Spatial Deixis
       • Adverbs
         • A division of time relative to the act of speaking.
         • Via pronouns, shorthand naming system for the participants involved in the talk.
       • Demonstratives
         • This/these and that/those.
           • Items closer to her will be discribed as this/these
           • Items further away as that/those
   • Grammaticalization of context
     • Type of semantic information
       • Included in deictic terms=grammaticalized
         • Language
           • Divides up space and time and its function words or its morphology
         • The ability
           • To talk about any division of space and time by paraphrase.
   • Extensions of spatial deixis
     • Textual deixis - metaphoric deixis in texts, often borrowing spatial/temporal deictic words
       • Spacial deixis terms such as demonstratives, are extended to refer to time.
   • Person diexies
     • Deictic system grammaticalized the roles of participants
       • Grammaticalized by pronouns
         • First person-speaker
         • Second person pronouns-addressee(s)
         • Third person category-category neither-speaker-nor-addressee
   • Social Deixis
     • English thou/ye
     • Metaphorical proximity/distance on a social hierarchy
     • Terms of familiarity/solidarity
     • Deictic because choice of forms depends on speaker.

2. Reference and Context

   • Involves reliance on context
   • Speakers calculate how much information the hearer needs to make a successful reference
     • EG. I’m looking for the new McCartney.
   • Shorthands
     • Metonymy and synecdoche
       • With metonymy we identify the referent by something asociated with it
   • Synedoche
     • Where the part stands for the whole
       • Use of referring expresions
         • Calculation of retrievability

3. Knowledge as a Context

   • Speaker
     • To make reference
       • To make estimations of what the hearers know
   • That computable from the physical context
   • That available from what has already been said
   • That available from the background or common knowledge

4. Focus and Topic

   • English is intonation
     • To mark new information.
       • a. Henry cleaned the kitchen b. Someone cleaned the kitchen

5. Inference

   • A referential relation between expressions where they both refer to the same entity
     • NOMINAL. May be repeated (ANAPHORA)
     • INDEPENDENT NOMINAL. Used as an epithet
     • ANAPHORIC PRONOUN. They have no independent reference and must rely on an antecedent

6. Conversational impliccature

   • Philosopher H.Paul Grice
     • Cooperative principle
       • Tacit agreement by speakers and listeners to cooperate in communication
     • Cooperation between speakers and listeners
     • Griece’s maxims of conversational cooperation
       • Maxims: assumptions
         • A speaker’s conduct seemed to Griece to be of several different types.

7. LITERAL LANGUAGE THEORY

   • Viewed as the engine
     • Drives the interpretetion of non-literal utterances
       • If a listener interprets an utterance as literally untrue or nonsensical, the principle may lead him to search dor a futher level of meaning.
         • EG. I’ve read this millions of times. You’re the only woman in my life

8. Relevance theory

   • by Sperber and Wilson in 1995
     • Ostensive communication
       • Situation
         • Interaction: the communicator
           • Create a mutual environment of communication
             • Recognized by her hearers

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