July 8, 2002

Speech Act--performing an action through speech

Types:

assertion declarative conveys information; is true or false

question interrogative elicits information

order/request imperative causes others to behave in certain ways

performative verbs--verbs that can be used to perform the act they name

Direct Speech Acts--perform acts directly and literally--below characteristics refer to performative direct speech acts

• always have 'I' as the subject
• always take place in the present tense
• sounds OK with 'hereby'
• obeys felicity conditions
• in addition, may be subject to certain situational co-conditions (e.g. 'I now pronounce you man and wife' is binding iff uttered by qualified individual to hearers who have obtained the appropriate legal documents; 'I place you under arrest', etc.)

Questions: Why do you ask a question?

1. Speaker does not know truth about P (state of affairs)
2. Speaker wants to know truth about P
3. Speaker believes that Hearer may be able to supply info about P

1. Speaker believes Action has no yet been done.
2. Speaker believes that Hearer is able to do A.
3. Speaker believes that H is willing to do A-type things for S.
4. S wants A to be done.

Exceptions to felicity conditions for requests: there aren't really any! We may make a mistake (e.g. S might believe A has not yet been done, but it has) but purposefully violating one of the conditions is not socially acceptable (e.g. requesting A when S doesn't really want A to be done).

Indirect Speech Acts--what speaker means is different from what s/he actually says

• do not contain performative verbs
• sentence type is used in an atypical way (e.g. declarative sentence used to ask a question)
• felicity conditions might be violated for literal meaning of sentence, but will not be violated for intended meaning (e.g. Can you take out the garbage? --I know H is capable?)
• imagine context and H's normal response--is response typically to literal meaning or non-literal meaning? if latter, it's an indirect speech act

Cooperative Principle--speakers should say things in conversations which further the purposes of the conversations.

Maxims regulate conversation by enforcing the cooperative principle:

Maxims of Quality:

1. Do not say what you believe to be false.
2. Do not say that for which you lack adequate evidence. ['adequate evidence' not agreed upon for all speakersà causes problems]

1. Be relevant.

1. Make your contribution as informative as required.
2. Do not make your contribution more informative than is required.

1. Avoid obscurity of expression.
2. Avoid ambiguity.
3. Be brief.
4. Be orderly.

A: Is Gail dating anyone these days?

B: Well, she goes to Cleveland every weekend.

B's comment is relevant only if it's meant to imply that Gail goes to Cleveland for the purpose of dating someone or possibly for the purpose of dating someone. If B knows that Gail goes to Cleveland for work, then the comment is very misleading (and not relevant!).

If we were forced to draw only logical inferences, life would be a lot more difficult for all of us. Conversations would take longer since we'd have to say things which reasonable language-users currently infer.

Further, we can exploit the maxims for our communicative needs. For example, sometimes the truth is too painful to report (for either the speaker or hearer or both). Consider Professor Homer's letter of recommendation (saying that his student is polite, neat, and prompt). We can make true statements which appear to violate 'Be relevant', but that are actually the most relevant, true, positive statements we can make. Astute hearers (or readers) will recognize that this apparent violation signifies the latter case and not a blatant violation of Relevance.

Politeness can also cause us to exploit maxims.
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 

Information structuring--the organization and presentation of language in a text.

Given/new Given information is assumed to be familiar to the listener because it was previously mentioned in the discourse, because it can be inferred from something previously mentioned in the discourse, or because of commonly available knowledge about the world/culture. New information is assumed to be unfamiliar to the listener because it has not yet been introduced into the discourse.

topic/comment Topic is roughly defined as 'aboutness' (i.e. what the sentence is about); comment is what is said about the topic.

contrast Information is in contrast if it is in opposition to another entity or is selected from a larger set of entities.

definite/indefinite An NP is definite if it is familiar to the hearer and indefinite if it is novel or unfamiliar to the hearer

specific/non-specific/generic Specific information denotes a certain real-world entity. Non-specific denotes no particular real-world entity. Generic refers to a set (specific refers to members of the set).
 
 

fronting Moves given information to the front of the sentence. (cf. Yiddish movement) Fronted element may be contrastive, must be definite, must be most salient element in sentence. Does not change grammatical subject, but fronted element becomes topic.

left-dislocation Moves word or phrase to front; leaves pronomial copy in canonical position. Re-introduces given information that has not been referred to recently; this information becomes topic. An NP from any position can be left dislocated.

clefting Dummy it subject, form of be, clefted element, and a relative clause. An NP, PP, or subordinate clause may be clefted. New (most commonly) information is isolated and focus is on the end of the sentence (or comment).

pseudocleft Headless relative clause, form of be, and NP or VP. New information follows be, may be constrastive. Headless relative clause contains given information that hearer/reader must be thinking about and contains topic.

stress New and contrastive information receive stress and higher pitch. In neutral cases, the last major element is stressed.

passive Passives alter the functional relations within the sentence (i.e. the grammatical subject becomes the object of a preposition, etc.) This characteristic of the passive is used for various purposes (see Brinton, Ch 11).