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The Semantics/ Pragmatics Distinction LING/PHIL 307: Elements of Semantics and Pragmatics
Semantics and Pragmatics — Why two fields? • Two very different factors go into our interpretation of language: The “structural system” of the language itself, General background knowledge, default assumptions, common sense reasoning, etc.
Ambiguity Resolution • A word, phase, sentence, etc. is ambiguous if it has more than one distinct meaning. • When a speaker uses an ambiguous item, interpreters are faced with the task of resolving the ambiguity — figuring out which meaning was intended.
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Illustration: Context and utterance In the kitchen of a restaurant, the chef says to the waiter… What does the chef probably mean? Don’t serve the chicken!
Illustration: Intended interpretation • Presumably, something like “Don’t present the chicken to any of the customers as a meal.” But what other meanings does this sentence have?
Other interpretations Don’t present anything to the chicken as a meal.
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Other interpretations Don’t act as a servant to the chicken.
Other interpretations Don’t initiate a volley by hitting the chicken over the net.
Other interpretations Don’t present the chicken with official notice of legal proceedings. etc.
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How do we choose among the interpretations? • Given all these possible meanings for this sentence, why do we interpret it as meaning “Don’t present the chicken to anyone as a meal”? • This the only one of these meanings which is consistent with our usual assumptions about how people interact with chickens, especially in restaurant settings like the one given. • That is, the reasons have to do with our knowledge of “human-chicken relations” more than our knowledge of the English language.
How do we choose among the interpretations? Suggestion: • As far as the structural system ( grammar ) of English is concerned, all these meanings are on a par. • The choice between them is made on a nonlinguistic ( pragmatic ) basis. Note: This means we are distinguishing knowledge of English from knowledge of chickens — and therefore cannot identify the meaning of the word chicken with everything a language user knows about chickens.
A different example: Context and utterance Don’t sell the chicken! A different example: Suppose the chef had said…
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Serve vs. sell: Available interpretations • Don’t serve the chicken. Don’t present the chicken to anyone as a meal. Don’t present anything to the chicken as a meal. • Don’t sell the chicken. Don’t exchange the chicken for money with anyone. Don’t exchange anything for money with the chicken. Ruled out because of what we know about how people interact with chickens. Also ruled out — but for the same reason?
Checking availability in a pragmatically unusual context • The reasons why the second reading is ruled out with sell are different from the reason why the second reading is ruled out with serve . • To see this, assume the sentences are being used to describe a fantasy situation (for example, a cartoon), in which chickens behave differently than they do in real life. In particular, they eat in restaurants, buy and sell things, etc. Don’t serve the chicken!
Checking availability in a pragmatically unusual context • In this kind of situation, the chef might very well use the sentence Don’t serve the chicken! to mean “Don’t present a meal to the chicken.” • But even in this scenario, the sentence Don’t sell the chicken! is not naturally interpreted as meaning “Don’t exchange anything for money with the chicken.” Don’t serve the chicken!
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Serve vs. sell: Participant roles • Why not? • We need to look at differences between the verbs serve and sell . • Serve (in the relevant use) describes a relation between three entities, which we might call the server , the recipient , and the meal . Of course things other than meals can be served; we are just using “ meal ” as a convenient label.
Serve vs. sell: Participant roles • Sell also describes a relation between three entities, which we might call the seller , the product , and the buyer . Really there is also a fourth entity involved — the money — but this will not be important for the current discussion. (Note that we are not concerned here with a separate use of sell , where it means something like “convince” — as in John sold Mary on the idea .)
Syntactic patterns Both verbs appear in two different syntactic patterns: S S NP VP NP VP John John V NP NP V NP PP serves Mary the chicken serves the chicken sells sells P NP to Mary Caution: These tree diagrams are simplified. “Double Object” pattern “Prepositional” pattern
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S S NP VP NP VP John John V NP NP V NP PP serves Mary the chicken serves the chicken sells sells P NP to Mary server seller recipient buyer meal product server seller recipient buyer meal product The positions in these structures correspond to the roles in the relations described by the verbs. “Double Object” pattern “Prepositional” pattern Associating participant roles with syntactic positions
S S NP VP NP VP John John V NP V NP serves Mary serves the chicken server recipient meal server recipient meal Certain items in these structures are optional . But which items these are depends on the verb. “Double Object” pattern “Prepositional” pattern With serve , • the final NP is optional in the Double Object pattern, • and the PP is optional in the Prepositional pattern. NP the chicken PP P to Mary NP Optional elements
S S NP VP NP VP John John V NP V NP serves Mary serves the chicken server recipient server meal Certain items in these structures are optional . But which items these are depends on the verb. “Double Object” pattern “Prepositional” pattern The result is that a sentence of the form ‘NP serve NP’ can be interpreted either as Server serves recipient or as Server serves meal. Optional elements
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S S NP VP NP VP John John V NP V NP Mary the chicken seller buyer product seller buyer product Certain items in these structures are optional . But which items these are depends on the verb. With sell , • The PP is optional in the Prepositional pattern, just like with serve, • But the final NP in the Double Object pattern is obligatory, unlike with serve . sells sells PP P to NP Mary NP the chicken “Double Object” pattern “Prepositional” pattern Optional elements
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S S NP VP NP VP John John V NP V NP Mary the chicken seller buyer product seller product Certain items in these structures are optional . But which items these are depends on the verb. The result is that a sentence of the form ‘NP sell NP’ can only mean Seller sells product , not Seller sells buyer . sells sells NP the chicken “Double Object” pattern “Prepositional” pattern Optional elements
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The nature of this explanation • Our explanation of these examples was partly syntactic — What are the structures these verbs can appear in? Which elements of these structures are optional, and which are obligatory? • And partly semantic — What is the interpretation of each element? • So our explanation of why Don’t sell the chicken! doesn’t mean “Don’t exchange anything for money with the chicken” is very different from our explanation for why Don’t serve the chicken! doesn’t mean “Don’t present anything to the chicken as a meal.” • For our current purposes, what is important to notice is that the explanation was stated completely in terms of the language — things a person would know as part of their knowledge of English — • not in terms of “human-chicken relations,” or other things which are independent of the English language.
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