Pragmatic Relations Research Articles

Hoe Eenduidig is Samenhang in Tekst?

This article deals with two key issues in discourse studies. First, to what extent is there a correspondence in the labelling of coherence relations? Second, to what extent are coherence relations judged as semantic or pragmatic? In an experiment, it was examined how actual readers interpret the relation between utterances, by presenting them with sets of utterances which contained both a semantic and a pragmatic relation. It was concluded that the correspondence in labelling was high and that in most cases the respondents chose the intended label. The majority of the respondents judged the relations either semantic or pragmatic, in the course of which most relations were evaluated as predominantly semantic. Moreover, readers judged a relation more semantic when the text contained factual information or portrayed a situation outside the speaker's control. The relation is more pragmatic when the credibility of the utterances is dubious or when utterances are unverifiable.

What History Can Show: Jeremy Waldron's Reading of Locke's Christian Politics

It is no easy matter to do justice to Locke or any other capable seventeenth century thinker: to judge them in terms which are wholly appropriate to them, but which also give due weight to our own necessarily very different needs and preoccupations. Yet if equality is a normative relation which holds in time as well as space (and not a purely pragmatic relation which characteristically fails to hold anywhere at all), there must be a justice which sets a limit to the permissible inroads of all subsequent concerns on the part of other human beings: a personal entitlement to consideration in their own terms and on their own terms before we decide how far to set those terms aside to implement our own purposes in ways which may put their reflections to uses in which they could have held no conceivable stake. So seen the duty is a side constraint on interpretive licence, not an arbitrary restriction of subject matter, or a taboo on cognitive interest. It is fully discharged once we have done our best to grasp what it is they were talking about, and what led them to affirm and deny what they did. After that point, it holds no guarantee whatever (though it may, of course, hold some potential) of contributing further, even heuristically, to our capacity to judge what to make for ourselves of what they affirmed or denied.

A model and a methodology for the study of pragmatic markers: the semantic field of expectation

Abstract In this article, a model and a methodology are proposed for the study of pragmatic markers. The proposal not only contributes to the theoretical discussion but also has advantages from a descriptive point of view. As to the model, it draws on a number of notions which so far have not been brought together in a way which gives a satisfactory explanation for the existence and functioning of pragmatic markers. These notions, reflexivity and indexicality, are integrated here with a view of modality and evidentiality which, based on White (2003), goes beyond truth-functional accounts in its heteroglossic and rhetorical perspectives. From a methodological point of view, the article proposes the use of translations as a heuristic device for setting up lexical fields. Following Dyvik (in press), translation corpora are used to refine the descriptions of semantic and pragmatic relations between items in the same field. To illustrate the methodology, we have opted for the semantic field of ‘expectation’ in English, and we look at equivalents of the pragmatic markers in Swedish and in Dutch.

Definiteness effects: evidence from Sardinian

AbstractIn this paper I consider the definiteness effects which are found in Sardinian presentational structures. I argue that they result from well‐formedness conditions on the encoding of information structure. In particular, two kinds of information are encoded in morphosyntax: on the one hand, the pragmatic relations between the denotata of the sentence constituents and the propositions in which they are arguments and predicates, and, on the other hand, the status of such denotata in the minds of the discourse participants (see Lambrecht 1994: 49). An RRG analysis in terms of non‐derivational linking between semantics and syntax suggests that the syntax of existentials and locatives is irrelevant to agreement and the definiteness value of the nominal. The Sardinian evidence suggests that agreement can be subject to pragmatic constraints in dependent‐marking languages, regardless of pro drop. Finally, Sardinian presentationals with activity predicates, which are allegedly rare across languages, are analysed in terms of pragmatically motivated exceptional mapping between semantics and syntax. This analysis is likely to apply to analogous constructions which occur in Romance.

Notes on reference

This paper proposes a vocabulary for speaking on reference. The main idea is that we should sharply distinguish reference and designation. The former is esentially a pragmatic (intentional) relation between the user of a referential expression, whereas the latter is semantic in character. This distinction enables us to distinguish several cases of referring, including situations in which reference is incorrect. Reference also has some modal properties.

Three Levels of Marketing: Random, Routine, and Reflective

In the past, scarce resources have led us sort ourselves as if we were many kinds of beings, mostly unreflective, instead of one. Now, our very survival depends on classifying all people as human and reflective. This maturing change is already happening because high-tech weapons are not a scarce resource and the alternative is death by terrorism. The marketplace of the 21st century will profit by showing respect for consumers as reflective human beings. This paper offers a guide to the reflective level of thought and action, showing and explaining the logical and pragmatic relations between random, routine, and reflective functioning.

P(ragmatic)-trees. Coherence, intentionality and cognitive content in discourse and non-verbal action

Abstract The starting point of this study is the adoption of the simple device of a tree structure as a working model for the analysis of pragmatic cohesion relations between successive actions of both discourse and non-verbal behavior. It is claimed that (i) cohesion relations, as represented by the nodes of such a P(ragmatic)-tree, are in the case of discourse classifiable into a limited number of recursively applicable types, and that (ii) this pragmatic structure, representing the intentionality of behavior, constitutes a level that underlies the more superficial syntactic and prosodic levels of discourse (‘pragmatics first’). The aims of this paper are: (1) to address a number of technical issues concerning the application of the tree device to spontaneous speech, concentrating on traditional preoccupations of the interpretative approach to discourse analysis, such as thematization, intonation and the scope of discourse markers and topics; (2) to investigate the implications of the ‘pragmatics first’ claim and of assuming a fundamental analogy between verbal and non-verbal actions for such theoretical issues as the relations between pragmatic structure and (semantic) content, and the dynamics of cognition in general and discourse in particular.

Pragmatic keywords and the first combining verbs in children's speech

The first two transitive verbs and the first two intransitive verbs which begin word-combinations in the speech of children acquiring Hebrew were examined for their use as expressions of communicative intents in an independent speech sample of mothers and of children. It was found that the first-combining verbs tend to be used as constants or keywords of communicative intents. Syntagmatic relations apparently emerge from pragmatic relations between two single-word expressions of communicative intents, one a constant and the other its detailed elaboration. The results suggest that developmentally, syntax emerges from pragmatics, through a transitional period using highly frequent,

When subjects behave like objects

This paper is concerned with the cross-linguistic expression of a universal information-structure category called the ‘thetic’ or ‘sentence-focus’ (SF) category. The SF category differs from the unmarked ‘predicate-focus’ (PF) or ‘categorical’ category by the absence of a topic-comment relation between the subject and the predicate and it differs from the marked ‘argument-focus’ (AF) category by the absence of a focus-presupposition relation between an argument and an open proposition. The theoretical issue explored here is the question of the relationship between the form and the function of SF constructions, i.e. the question of motivation in grammar. I argue that the form of SF constructions is motivated by the need to distinguish them minimally from corresponding PF constructions. The form and interpretation of a given SF sentence is thus determined not only by the syntagmatic relations among its constituents but also by the paradigmatic relation between the SF sentence as a whole and the corresponding PF sentence, i.e. in terms of a systemic opposition. Since the distinctive property of SF sentences is the absence of a topic-comment relation between the subject and the predicate, SF marking entails the marking of the subject as a non-topic. I show that across languages this non-topic marking of SF subjects tends to be done via those morphosyntactic, prosodic, or behavioral features which are normally associated with the focal objects of PF constructions. The analysis confirms the necessity to treat the pragmatic relations topic and focus on a par with the grammatical relations subject and object and the semantic roles agent and patient. In seeking to explain the form-function fit in SF constructions in terms of the structuralist notion of paradigmatic opposition the analysis challenges both functional and formal generative approaches to grammar.

Levels of control and closure in complex semiotic systems

It is natural to advance closures as atomic processes of universal evolution, and to analyze this concept specifically. Real complex systems like organisms and complex mechanisms cannot exist at either extreme of complete closure or lack of closure, nevertheless we should consider the properties of closures in general, the introduction of boundaries, a corresponding stability, the establishment of system autonomy and identity, and thereby the introduction of emergent new system of potentially new types. Our focus should move from simple physical closure of common objects and classical self-organizing systems to semiotically closed systems that maintain cyclic relations of perception, interpretation, decision, and action with their environments. Thus, issues arise concerning the use and interpretation of symbols, representations, and/or internal models (whether explicit or implicit) by the system; and the syntactic, semantic, and pragmatic relations among the sign tokens, their interpretations, and their use or function for the systems in question. Primitive semiotic closures are hypothesized as equivalent to simple control systems, and in turn equivalent to simple organisms. This leads us directly to the grand hierarchical control theories of Turchin, Powers, and Albus, which provide an explicit mechanism for the formation of new levels within complex semiotically closed systems.

Information Structure and Sentence Form: Topic, Focus, and the Mental Representations of Discourse Referents

Preface 1. Introduction 2. Information 3. The mental representations of discourse referents 4. Pragmatic relations: topic 5. Pragmatic relations: focus 6. Conclusion Bibliography Index.

Identifying Congruent Pragmatic Relations in Procedural Texts

In this paper, we present a methodology for the contrastive analysis of comparable corpora of instructional texts in different languages. The methodology is insensitive to the fact that the texts under comparison differ widely in their semantic content, and it can be reliably applied by multiple analysts. We show the results of an empirical study of cross-linguistic variation between Portuguese, French, and English instructions which follows this methodology. Using consumer instructions for ordinary household products in the three languages, we examine expressions of the two semantic relations, generation and enablement (cf. Goldman, 1970), and their available surface syntactic expressions. We examine the role of discourse perspective, as realised by rhetorical relations such as those employed within the framework of Rhetorical Structure Theory (RST), in further narrowing down the range of choices. We demonstrate that the three languages of study tolerate different levels of ambiguity, and prefer different forms of disambiguation and pragmatic signalling, attesting to the value of empirical methods for contrastive discourse study. The analysis was conducted with the aim of informing all levels of decision, from meaning to surface syntax, in the automatic generation of sets of instructional texts in those languages.

Read it and believe it: How metaphor constructs ideology in news discourse. A case study

Although it may be argued that critical linguistics needs to examine language as discourse, i.e., as text embedded in the social conditions of production and interpretation, to be independently identified and examined as the text is subordinated to them (Fairclough, 1992; Hodge and Kress, 1988), we claim that a thorough linguistic analysis, employing all the methods and tools which the discipline provides, is in a large measure revealing of such conditions. However, to yield such results, i.e., to unravel these conditions and their contribution to the generation of ideological complexes, a linguistic analysis should not be restricted to viewing grammatical units as isolated sentences or smaller structures within the text, as has been the case in traditional approaches, but rather examine such grammatical and lexical structures as being incorporated in the overall formation of the text. Moreover, the focus should be primarily on higher-level organizational features as well as on rhetorical structures and semantic and pragmatic relations as they contribute to the general style of the text, thus yielding desired versions of reality and ideologies. We substantiate this claim by analyzing an article published in Time (October 12, 1992) entitled Greece's defense seems just silly. While paying close attention to both the grammatical and lexical structures of the text, our analysis views these structures within the framework of a constructed metaphor which not only permeates and dominates the whole article, but also forms the backbone of its argumentative structure. What is foregrounded, moreover, in this multi-level analysis is a preponderance of certain assumptions of an ideological nature, which, although they do not form part of the formal structure of the text, are aspects of interpretations surreptitiously cued into the subtext of the text.

Semantic and pragmatic sources of coherence: On the categorization of coherence relations in context

This article discusses a distinction present in many theories of relation categorization: the Source of Coherence, which distinguishes between semantic and pragmatic relations. Existing categorizations of both relations and connectives show a reasonable consensus on prototypical examples. Still, there many ambiguous cases. How can the distinction be clarified? And to what extent does it depend on the context in which relations occur? A more precise text‐linguistic definition is presented in the form of a paraphrase test, intended to systematically check analysts’ intuitions. A paraphrase experiment shows that language users recognize the difference between clear cases in context. More importantly, the type of context (descriptive, argumentative) appeared not to influence the interpretation of clear cases, whereas subjects’ judgements of ambiguous relations are influenced by the type of context. A corpus study further illustrates the link between text type and relation type: Informative texts are dominated by semantic relations, persuasive and expressive texts are dominated by pragmatic relations.

Modality: The Three-layered Scalar Square

This paper analyses the semantic and pragmatic relations between the notions of possibility and necessity and of their negations. In so doing it reconciles insights stemming from Aristotle and partially different ones expounded by Hintikka, Horn, and Lobner on the basic quadripartite, tripartite, and scalar nature of the field of modality. From Aristotle and his commentators it maintains the Aristotelian square and the view that possibility has two senses, from Lobner the duality square, from Hintikka the tripartite division of the field of modality with one sense of possibility extending over the other sense and over necessity, and from Horn the Gricean scalar analysis of the relation between the two possible senses. This paper further illustrates the basic geometry of modality notions with lexicalization patterns

Perceived necessity explains the dissociation between logic and meaning: the case of "only if".

The purpose of this article was to investigate why sentences of the form "p only if q" often appear to have a different meaning than sentences of the form "if p, then q," despite their logical equivalence. The results of 3 experiments indicate that when "if ... then" statements were equated with respect to necessity and temporal relations, different pragmatic relations (such as permission, causation, etc.) elicited similar "only if" judgments. However, different necessity relations elicited different "only if" judgments, regardless of the type of pragmatic relation expressed in the "if then" statement. These data suggest that "only if" judgements are primarily mediated by necessity and temporal relations and that pragmatic contexts may play a more indirect role, such as in the interpretation of necessity and temporal relations. Suggestions for how these findings might be incorporated into pragmatic schema theory (P. W. Cheng & K. J. Holyoak, 1985; P. W. Cheng, K. J. Holyoak, R. E. Nisbett, & L. M. Oliver, 1986) and mental models theory (P. N. Johnson-Laird & R. M. J. Byrne, 1991) are discussed.

Interpretational factors in conditional reasoning

Two experiments examined the role of necessity and sufficiency relationships in conditional reasoning. The results indicated that perceived necessity and sufficiency predicted variability in reasoning performance for four pragmatic relations (permission, obligation, causation, and definition), for both determinant and indeterminant syntactic forms, and for both a conditional arguments and a truth table evaluation task, as well as when the temporal relationship between the antecedent and consequent events was reversed. These data support the general utility of perceived necessity and sufficiency in the interpretation and evaluation of conditional relationships. However, the effects of necessity and sufficiency were smaller for reversed than for forward statements, which suggests that necessity/sufficiency-based interpretations may be more useful for evaluating some types of conditional relations than others. In addition, people were more likely to accept valid rather than invalid arguments, regardless of necessity/sufficiency relations, a finding that suggests that abstract, content-free representations may play a functional role in conditional reasoning.

Russian translatology

Abstract The article discusses Russian translatology after 1950. It first introduces some of the most important Russian works in chronological order and in so doing discusses the main points made (David Shvejcer, Gelii Chernov). It then deals with Russian approaches to key problems in translation such as equivalence, pragmatic relations, audience orientation, and problems of cultural transfer.

Interpreting conditionals: Time, knowledge, and causation

The paper seeks to characterize prototypical conditionality and to show how less central interpretations are arrived at. As a category, conditionals are defined with respect to two parameters: 1. (i) the presence of if, which signals non-assertiveness of the assumption in its scope, and 2. (ii) the syntactic frame if p, then q, which accounts for there being a semantic or pragmatic relation between p and q, such that q cannot be asserted without a prior assumption of p. Within this broad formula, conditionals can express more than one type of unassertability and several kinds of relations between p and q. The analysis below focuses on English conditionals, in which both these aspects of interpretation are signaled through verb forms used in both clauses; in particular, what the verb forms are claimed to reveal (apart from temporal reference) is the speaker's epistemic stance and the cognitive domain in which the relation between p and q holds. Thus the verb forms provide a basis on which a new classification of English conditionals is offered. The resulting distinctions seem to be applicable also to other languages, although not all of the verb form contrasts may be marked parallelly to English.

Ideational and pragmatic markers of discourse structure

This paper presents an integrative approach to the study of discourse coherence which follows the observation of Bühler (1934) and others that language use always involves both the representation of propositional content and the expression of attitudes and intentions. Consideration of only one of these functions is shown to be insufficient for an adequate account of discourse coherence. Coherence is regarded as arising from semantic relations between the ideas states and pragmatic relations between the actions performed in speaking or writing. Empirical evidence for this view is provided by the use of pragmatic and ideational structuring devices in film descriptions. Speakers who were describing a film to a friend used more markers of pragmatic structure than those whose listener was a stranger. At the same time, they were less explicit in indicating the ideational structure of their discourse. This trade-off between pragmatic and ideational structuring occurred not only in dialogues (two-way auditory channel where the friends gave more feedback, but also in monologues (one-way channel), where the two conditions differed only in the speaker's knowledge that the listener was a friend or a stranger.