SEMANTICS AND PRAGMATICS

SEMANTICS AND PRAGMATICS

1. Semantics

   • Concerned with MEANING
     • . Semantics consists of:
       • relating sentence-objects to other sentence-objects and to the world.
     • a pragmatic approach is assumed when:
       • sentences are viewed as utterances of individuals engaged in communication
   • Deals with
     • those aspects of meaning which do not vary from context to context
   • study of conventional, linguistic meaning

2. Pragmatics

   • Deals with
     • aspects of individual usage and context-dependent meaning
   • study of how we use lunguistic knowledge in context

3. Deixis

   • deixis commits a speaker to set up a frame of reference around herself/himself
   • background knowledge
     • implication and inference relations
       • often rely on a kind of cultural knowledge that cannot be found in any dictionary entry.
   • The text exposes 3 types:
     • Spatial Deixis
       • extensions
         • Demonstratives
           • are also used to refer to time
           • described in terms of
             • metaphorical shift from the more concrete domain of physical space to the much more abstract concept of time.
               • notions like possession and states are expressed spatially
                 • physical state is also expressed in terms of space location
       • Adverbs of location
         • they pick out places according to their proximity to the location of the speaker.
           • if the speaker moves, the interpretation of the adverbs will change
         • there/here
       • mark
         • some kind of division of time
           • around the speaker in relation to the act of speaking.
         • some kind of division of space
     • Person Deixis
       • grammaticalizes the roles of participants
         • such as
           • the current speaker
           • the addressee
             • this information is grammaticalized
               • by pronouns
                 • first person singular
                   • is used for the speaker
                 • the second person
                   • for addressee or addressees
                 • third person
                   • ‘neitherspeaker - nor - addressee’
           • other participants.
     • Social Deixis
       • The pronoun systems include information about
         • the social identity and/or status of participants in a conversation
           • In English
             • the codification of the treatment of respect is not grammaticalized.
               • non-grammaticalized ways of expressing social distance or respect
                 • Mr
                 • Mrs
                   • before the surnames.
                 • Miss
   • Is REFERENCE
     • by means of an expression whose interpretation is relative to the extralinguistic context of the utterance
       • who is speaking
       • the time or place of speaking
       • the gestures of the speaker
       • the current location in the discourse

4. Meaning

   • Info structure
     • important reference points which connect
       • reality
         • the way we perceive it
         • the way we name it.
   • Text-sensitive element in which two main factors are especially relevant

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