Semantics
1) Semantics is a branch of linguistics devoted to the study of meaning (the meanings of propositions, those aspects of meaning that remain constant whenever a given expression is uttered) A partial representation of the meaning is obtained based on the possible syntactic structure(s) of the sentence, and on the meanings of the words in that sentence.
Semantics is something that relates sentences (or utterances) of language and the outside world.
-If you are dealing with meaning and
there is no context to consider, then you are doing semantics.
?A typical semantic question is: is (1) true
(1) There are nine planets.
-Semantic meaning is truth conditional (sentences express propositions which have a truth-value).
-Semantics is concerned with the conditions under which the
proposition expressed by a sentence is true. These are said to be its truth-conditions.
‘Snow is white’ is True if and only if snow is white.
Example: The sentence ‘Sam is a man’ has to fulfill the following conditions to be true:
a. Sam is a person.
b. Sam is an adult.
c. Sam is a male.
d. Sam is an adult male person.
-Notice that semantics is interested in the conditions that make the sentence ‘true’.
2)meaning is a dyadic relation: “X means Y”
3. In semantics we refer to sentence meaning.
Sentence meaning is predictable from the meaning of the lexicon items and grammatical features of the sentence.
4) Semantics deals with meaning out of context.
-Semantics is concerned with what a speaker says or asserts in uttering a declarative sentence.
-Semantic arguments : truth condition
- Aspects of the interpretation of utterances that do not involve truth conditions are commonly considered outside the domain of semantics, Green (1989) says.
-Semantics is compositional: The meaning of a complex expression relates in a predictable way to the meanings of the parts from which it is constructed. The meaning of the whole is a function of the meaning of the parts.
Pragmatics
1) Pragmatics is the study of all those aspects of meaning not captured in semantic theory.(pragmatics deals with questions of
use.) contextual meaning and world knowledge.
-If there is a context to be brought into consideration, then you are engaged in
pragmatics.
-A typical pragmatic question is: is it appropriate so utter (1) in a given situation?
-Pragmatics is not about truth.
non-truth-conditional meaning: pragmatics there are felicity conditions.
Explicit and implicit performatives cannot be analyzed without taking into account the speaker's intentions and the hearer's understanding of the use of such a form. The strong claim of Austin's theory of speech acts is that all sentences are essentially acts -- performatives --
- The utterance ‘I promise to be back early’ means a promise on condition a future action is involved: ‘I’ll come back early’ (SEE the Speech act theory). In this case we are interested in those conditions which make the promise ‘felicitous’, i.e, be a promise and not a threat for instance.
-In pragmatics there are felicity conditions.
-meaning is a triadic relation: “Speaker means Y by X”.
Example:
Shall we see that film tonight?
I have a headache.
The speaker means NO (Y) by
saying I HAVE A HEADACHE (X).
3) In pragmatics we refer to utterance meaning.
Utterance meaning consists of the meaning of the sentence plus considerations of the intentions of the Speaker (the speaker may intend to refuse the invitation to go to the film), interpretation of the Hearer (the Hearer may interpret the utterance as a refusal, or not), determined by context and background knowledge.
4) pragmatics deals with meaning in context.
The context of an expression answers the following questions:
• Who said it? Who was addressed?
• What were the circumstances? What was the occasion?
• When was this word or expression used? When was the text given?
• Where was it spoken?
• Why was it spoken?
• How was it spoken? How was it received?
Pragmatics as the study of ‘meaning in context’ does not imply that one can automatically understand the utterance just by knowing all the extra linguistic information, because ‘context’ is not a static element, dynamic , subjective)
-What the speaker means or accomplishes by means of the utterance, and/or with how the audience interprets, or how the audience correctly interprets, the utterance
.Pragmatic arguments( interpretation): explicature and implicature maxims
- Whether an utterance is a promise, a prediction, or a question and how metaphorical .expressions are understood are matters of pragmatics, not semantics
