Pragmatic Categories Research Articles

“Nothing is but what is not.” Performing constatives in Shakespeare’s drama

Abstract - Recent studies in historical pragmatics have focused on the performative language of Renaissance, drawing on J. L. Austin’s distinction between “constative” and “performative” utterances; the former refers to assertions that can be classified as true or false and the latter to the factual power of doing something rather than describing it. This model may prove particularly fruitful if applied to drama, and in particular to Shakespeare’s plays, for it provides a critical frame to examine to what extent language is involved in changes concerning the axiology of truth and falsehood. In this paper, I will focus on three case-situations taken from As you like it , Macbeth and The Taming of the Shrew , in order to demonstrate how a certain rhetoric of mendacity derives from the exploration of an emergent new semiosis and is performed in Shakespeare’s plays through the confusion and inversion of the two pragmatic categories.

Facilitating Automation in Sentence Processing: The Emergence of Topic and Presupposition in Human Communication

Human attention is limited in its capacity and duration. In language, this is manifested in many ways, but more conspicuously in the strategies by which information is distributed in utterances, that is, their information structures. We contend that the pragmatic categories of Topic and Presupposition precisely meet the necessity to modulate attentional resources on sentence contents, and they do this by “directing” certain contents to automatic and others to controlled processing mechanisms. We discuss experimental findings suggesting that presupposed or topicalized information correlates with automatic processing, and we suggest that this association grounded for the emergence of topic and presupposition units in human communication. We also put forth the processing automaticity induced by these units as the (possible) rationale behind their persuasiveness in some specific contexts of language use (e.g. political discourse and advertising).

THE COGNITIVE-PRAGMATIC POTENTIAL OF WORDS IN THE LIGHT OF TRANSLATION AND INTERCULTURAL COMMUNICATION

The article is dedicated to the investigation of the influence of word pragmatic potential on the process of taking translation decisions. The most part of attention is focused on the translation difficulties of the lingual pragmatic categories components, on the specifics of the pragmatic relations in the process of bilingual com-munication, as well as on the importance of translator in these latter days

Towards a pragmatic category of conditionals

In this paper, we present the benefits of regarding conditionality as a pragmatic phenomenon as compared with approaches based on the syntactic category of a conditional sentence. We propose a pragmatic category of conditionality and justify it using theoretical arguments supported with examples from our database collected from the International Corpus of English-GB. Next, we demonstrate how conditional utterances that pertain to a variety of syntactic constructions can be represented in Default Semantics, a contextualist, truth-conditional approach to utterance meaning. We identify six types of such constructions, using the dimensions of (i) primary vs. secondary meaning (PM/SM index) and (ii) meaning conveyed through sentence structure vs. meaning conveyed at the level of merger representation (WS/Σ index). It is concluded that in view of the diversity of constructions through which conditional thoughts are expressed, conditionality is best regarded as a pragmatic (and as such conceptual) category. Finally, we comment on the status of this claim as a potential semantic/pragmatic universal.

성경 히브리어 동사의 양태 특성 소고

This article provides a comprehensive description of the Biblical Hebrew verbal system that focuses on the value of modal concept. Until recently, some Hebraists insisted that the verbal system of classical Hebrew is tense-prominent, but scholars at the opposing end disputed the theory, and insisted it as aspect-prominent. In this context, some scholars suggest a new syntactic and pragmatic perspectives in the light of common understanding of tense, aspect and modality. I demonstrate that the value of modality is absolutely indispensible in understanding the functions of verbal conjugations of Biblical Hebrew: qatal, yiqtol, wayyiqtol, weqatal and weyiqtol. As far as the verbal system is concerned, it is true that verbal forms could carry the value of tense, aspect, and modality. But as Joosten, Hatav, Warren, and Andrason insist, epistemic and deontic modality gives various new perspectives to solve complex issues of the yiqtol and waw-consecutive weqatal forms. I propose that deontic and epistemic modality contributes to accurate identification of the meaning of yiqtol and weqatal. Furthermore, with regard to the qatal form, Hebraists generally advocate that the qatal expresses the meaning of indicative past and also the value of resultative construction, but sometimes the qatal conceptually could be shown to be modal, involving the remaining dominant sense of propositional/evidential modality. In this respect, I propose that the modal concept should be considered in the semantic and pragmatic categories of Biblical Hebrew verbal system.

Classifying Prosocial Lies

The term prosocial lies refers to lies speakers produce with benevolent intentions. Such lies can be further divided into categories depending upon the context of utterance and the person who benefits from the lie (Levine and Schweitzer, 2014). This paper defines prosocial lies as a distinct pragmatic category of a lie. In order to examine this category, university students were provided with 10 vignettes containing prosocial lies and were asked (using a Likert Scale) whether they considered each target utterance to be a lie, a polite utterance, and an act benefiting the speaker and/or the hearer. The results show that prosocial lies are judged as lies proper. Furthermore, the study gives support for several categories of prosocial lies.

Ingrouping, Outgrouping, and the Pragmatics of Peripheral Speech

ABSTRACT:Speech does not merely reflect social identity; it helps create it, by ingrouping and outgrouping individuals and establishing and clarifying community boundaries and norms of membership. We define a pragmatic category of community-specific speech that is used by and directed at community insiders. We focus on a species of community-specific speech that has flown under the philosophical radar, a type of speech we term peripheral speech: Peripheral speech is informal, typically playful, insider speech that includes inside jokes, riffs, gossip, insider references; it is loosely constrained, and only those who have skills and normative competence characteristic of a community can play along successfully. Peripheral speech is shared by a community, but also used to bring people into it and cast people out of it. We argue that entitlement to peripheral speech requires a type of speaker authority that is not granted by way of established rules and conventions, but rather settled locally and in situ.

Pragmatični frazemi v Slovarju slovenskega knjižnega jezika

V prispevku je predstavljena posebna skupina frazemov, pragmatični frazemi, in sicer so izpostavljene njihove oblikoslovne, skladenjske in predvsem pomenske značilnosti. Podan je kratek pregled rabe izrazov, ki se za pragmatične frazeme uporabljajo v literaturi. Shematično so prikazane pragmatične kategorije, ki so potrebne za ustrezen pomenski opis teh jezikovnih enot. Pragmatični frazemi iz Slovarja slovenskega knjižnega jezika so razvrščeni glede na uslovarjeno pragmatično funkcijo.

Prosodic and lexical marking of contrast in L2 Italian

We investigated the second language (L2) acquisition of pragmatic categories that are not as consistently and frequently encoded in the L2 than in the first language (L1). Experiment 1 showed that Italian speakers linguistically highlighted affirmative polarity contrast (e.g. The child ate the candies following after The child did not eat the candies) in 34.3% of the cases, by producing a nuclear pitch accent on the finite verb (i.e. verum focus accent). Experiment 2 revealed that high-proficient German and Dutch non-native speakers of Italian linguistically encoded polarity contrast more frequently, either using a verum focus accent (German) or lexical markers (Dutch). This corresponds closely to the patterns preferred in their native languages. Our results show L1 transfer on three levels: (1) the relevance of the pragmatic category (i.e. marking polarity contrast on the assertion component), (2) the linguistic markers to encode polarity contrast and (3) the phonetic implementation of the intonational marking. These three levels of transfer have implications for how non-native speakers acquire the L2 discourse organizational principles and the linguistic markers to encode them.

Study of Addressing (Vocative) as Linguistic Pragmatic Category (in the Context of Secondary School)

The present paper is dedicated to questions of disparity of school and scientific approach to some problems of the Russian language in its modern state: the connection of the linguistic course with studying literature; communicative activity approach as a possibility to avoid traditional methodic and to implement algorithms of linguistic research for studying the native language; the shift of a paradigm of teaching from knowledge-oriented to activity-oriented, which is demonstrated by the example of introducing the theme of addressing at secondary school.

THEORETICAL AND PRACTICAL FEATURES OF THE "FINANCIAL INFORMATION QUALITY" CATEGORY

The paper attempts to draw attention to the relationship between theory and practice, a tendency to replace the sphere of theory with worldwide (European) regulations. The problem is discussed with reference to the financial information quality category interpreted in the light of theory and global accounting regulations. In the paper, financial information is treated as a product of accounting and it is characterized on the background of accounting aim. The quality of financial information is presented in the light of the theoretical qualitology framework and world accounting regulations. Comparison of approaches in this respect in the sphere of theory and practice allows to clearly recognize the tendency to build variables, pragmatic category concepts. It leads to reflection on the appropriate relations that should occur between the theoretical achievements and practical regulations.

From “ineducability” to “rare disabilities”. Evolution and emergence of political categories involved in shaping the French medico-social sector

In France, a notion is currently the focus of a number of political debates, that of “rare disabilities”, a notion that does not seem to be used, or to a limited extent, in other countries. The aim of this article is to return to the history of this notion in France: when and why did it appear? What issue and what population does this category designate? To set the issues related to “rare disabilities” in the context of the French disability policy, the first section of the article traces the development of the medico-social sector at the end of the 1940s, on the basis of the notion of educability, superseding that of incurability on one hand, and the categorization of the populations of disabled persons in terms of impairments on the other hand. The second part shows how in this context, the issue of children with several impairments emerges and how, under the impetus of parents and health professionals, distinctions are formed within the category of multiple disabilities between “multihandicap”, “plurihandicap” and “polyhandicap”. The third section traces the appearance of the term “rare disabilites” in the context of a political decentralization in 1986, the construction of a new political and administrative category and the fluctuations of its definition, which currently falls short of the challenges raised by this complex form of disability. The fourth section shows how this new category became from 1998 on, a performative and pragmatic category leading to the creation of specific and original modes of care that challenge the traditional institutional approach of disability in a context of reform of the French disability policy. The article is based on an exploratory research that has consisted in an analysis of grey literature (legal texts, associations and working groups reports) concerning the notion of “rare disabilities”.

De « l’inéducable » aux « handicaps rares ». Évolution et émergence des catégories politiques en lien avec la structuration du secteur médico-social français

In France, a notion is currently the focus of a number of political debates, that of “rare disabilities”, a notion that does not seem to be used, or to a limited extent, in other countries. The aim of this article is to return to the history of this notion in France: when and why did it appear? What issue and what population does this category designate? To set the issues related to “rare disabilities” in the context of the French disability policy, the first section of the article traces the development of the medico-social sector at the end of the 1940s, on the basis of the notion of educability, superseding that of incurability on one hand, and the categorization of the populations of disabled persons in terms of impairments on the other hand. The second part shows how in this context, the issue of children with several impairments emerges and how, under the impetus of parents and health professionals, distinctions are formed within the category of multiple disabilities between “multi-handicap”, “pluri-handicap” and “polyhandicap”. The third section traces the appearance of the term “rare disabilities” in the context of a political decentralization in 1986, the construction of a new political and administrative category and the fluctuations of its definition, which currently falls short of the challenges raised by this complex form of disability. The fourth section shows how this new category became from 1998 on, a performative and pragmatic category leading to the creation of specific and original modes of care that challenge the traditional institutional approach of disability in a context of reform of the French disability policy. The article is based on an exploratory research that has consisted in an analysis of grey literature (legal texts, associations and working groups reports) concerning the notion of “rare disabilities”.

Infants’ behaviors as antecedents and consequents of mothers’ responsive and directive utterances

To investigate possible influences on and consequences of mothers’ speech, specific infant behaviors preceding and following four pragmatic categories of mothers’ utterances – responsive utterances, supportive behavioral directives, intrusive behavioral directives, and intrusive attentional directives – were examined longitudinally during dyadic free play at ages 13, 17, and 21 months. Analyses revealed developmental increases in children’s positive social and object-directed behaviors before and after maternal speech. Responsive utterances were the most likely to be preceded by social and object initiatives and more likely than intrusive directives to occur following high toy interest. Although mothers’ intrusive behavioral and attentional directives were often preceded by infants’ disengagement from play and toys, they were followed by infants’ greater levels of toy interest. Infants’ rates of compliance were substantial following all directives. The findings reveal differential behavioral circumstances preceding and following mothers’ responsive versus directive speech and their supportive directive versus intrusive directive utterances.

How Do Children Acquire Early Grammar and Build Multiword Utterances? A Corpus Study of French Children Aged 2 to 4

In the last 50years, researchers have debated over the lexical or grammatical nature of children's early multiword utterances. Due to methodological limitations, the issue remains controversial. This corpus study explores the effect of grammatical, lexical, and pragmatic categories on mean length of utterances (MLU). A total of 312 speech samples from high-low socioeconomic status (SES) French-speaking children aged 2-4years were annotated with a part-of-speech-tagger. Multiple regression analyses show that grammatical categories, particularly the most frequent subcategories, were the best predictors of MLU both across age and SES groups. These findings support the view that early language learning is guided by grammatical rather than by lexical words. This corpus research design can be used for future cross-linguistic and cross-pathology studies.

Identification of non-technical skills from the resilience engineering perspective: A case study of an electricity distributor

Training in non-technical skills (NTSs) does not usually question the design of the work system but focuses narrowly on workers as the unit of analysis. This study discusses how the identification of NTS, a major step for developing an NTS training program, might be re-interpreted from the perspective of resilience engineering (RE). This discussion is based on a case study of identifying NTS for electricians who perform emergency maintenance activities in an electricity distribution network. The case study showed that four data collection and analysis procedures might operationalize the RE perspective: (a) by identifying work constraints which create the need for NTS as a means to adjust performance; (b) by identifying recommendations for re-designing the system, which could either eliminate, or reduce the need for, or make it easier to use NTS; (c) by regarding the identification of NTS as an opportunity to give visibility to adaptations carried out by workers; and (d) by classifying the NTS into pragmatic categories, which are meaningful for workers. These procedures aim at emphasizing that the NTS are intertwined with the socio-technical system, and thus have little meaning unless there is a context.

LOS MARCADORES DE REFORMULACIÓN ALEMANES: ENTRE LA CONEXIÓN Y LA ARGUMENTACIÓN

Reformulation markers (das heist, und zwar, beziehungsweise, namlich) are discourse units that fulfil extrapredicative functions related to text coherence and cohesion, as well as to the guiding of the inferences which facilitate the construction of sentence meaning in view of a given communicative context. Contemporary German grammars have dealt with these units in a very partial way and have not attempted to find similarities in their meaning and discursive behaviour that allow us to define reformulation markers as a pragmatic (and not a lexical) category. Our research intends to show that the comprehensive representation of a marker must comprise the identification of the metalinguistic operations that it is able to carry out and of the different kinds of relations (connexion, coherence, cohesion, rhetorical and stylistic effects, etc.) that its use elicits. For this purpose, we have analysed a corpus of samples from the reference corpus of written German IDS-Korpora, which provides sufficient and representative evidence on the different values that a specific marker can acquire in a text. The resulting data of this study confirm that connectivity is just one of the defining features of markers and that the actual reason for their appearance in text is to be found in the desire of a speaker to direct cooperatively the interpretation of discourse. Our study, which focuses on the prototypical reformulation marker das heist, leads us to conclude that the thorough description of a reformulation marker must pay attention to all dimensions of discourse and, besides, render information about the grammatical properties of the marker if it seeks to become a useful reference tool for the discursive education of learners of German as an L1 or L2.

Identification of non-technical skills from the resilience engineering perspective: a case study of an electricity distributor

Training in non-technical skills (NTS) does not usually question the design of the work system, and thus focuses narrowly on workers as the unit of analysis. This study discusses how the identification of NTS, a major step for developing an NTS training program, might be re-interpreted from the perspective of resilience engineering (RE). This discussion is based on a case study of identifying NTS for electricians who perform emergency maintenance activities in an electricity distribution power line. The results of the case study point out that four data analysis procedures might operationalize the RE perspective: (a) identifying factors that make the work difficult and which could be integrated into NTS training scenarios; (b) identifying recommendations for re-designing the system, in order either to reduce or eliminate the need for NTS; (c) classifying the NTS into pragmatic categories, which are meaningful for workers; and (d) regarding the identification of NTS as an opportunity to give visibility to adaptations carried out by workers.

Discourse analysis, cognition and evidentials

This article echoes concerns recently formulated regarding CDA’s lack of attention to cognitive science (or evolutionary psychology). From a cognitive pragmatic viewpoint, I argue that discourse analysis should undergo an epistemological change in order to seriously take into account what cognitive (thus naturalistic) approaches have to offer, in particular as regards the automatic processing of utterances and the subsequent non-conscious evaluation of contents vis-a-vis previously held beliefs. I regard the epistemological tension in CDA as stemming from a wider tension of the same sort affecting social science in general. Considering discourse as a process of interpretation and evaluation, I address briefly the influence of evidentiality as a pragmatic category in persuasive discourse and conclude that the uptake of new beliefs on the basis of discourse is oriented towards the maximization of relevance in the sense of Sperber and Wilson.

Categories of definiteness in Classical Armenian

In this paper, the use of the definite article in semantic and pragmatic categories in the Greek and Classical Armenian New Testament translation is compared. Greek and Classical Armenian agree in their use of the definite article only in NPs determined by contrastive attributes. In all other categories the systems of both languages differ. Generally, Armenian avoids the definite article with proper nouns and nouns with unique reference, while definite articles with proper names in Greek are common (with the exception of sacred or especially “respected” persons such as prophets). If the definite article is present in Greek, it is often motivated by pragmatic factors (e.g. re-topicalization, etc.). There is no clear evidence in Armenian for the use of the definite article as a marker of generic reference, nor for the use in NPs determined by superlative, comparative or ordinal attributes.