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Cambridge UniversitY Press The Edinburgh Building, Cambridge CB2 8RU' UK Press' New York Published in the United States ofAmerica bv Cambridge University www.cambridge.org Information on this title: www.cambridge.org /97 80521294140
PreJace Achnolrledgementt Notation conoeitiont
@ Cambridge University Press 19E3 This book is in copyright Subject to statutory exceptrol and to the provisions of relevant collective licensing agreements' no reproduction of any part may take place without the written petmission of Cambridge Universitv Press' Filst published I 983 Ninteenth printing 2008 Printed in the United Kingdom at the Universitv Press, Cambridge
Library of CongressCataloguecard number: 82-14701 Bit/Jh Libmr! Cataloeuing in Prbli.ation data Levinson, StephenC. Pragmatics. 1. Pragmatics 2. Languages- Philosophl' l. Title. 401 P99.4.P72
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d. J66/o3
( t6.t,eq)
paperback tSBN 978-0-521-29414-0
accuracy Cambridge University Presshas no responsibility for thepersistenc€ or publication' of URLsLT external or third-partv internet websites rcferred to in this and does not gua rantee that any contenton such websites is, or will remain' accurateor approprirte.
r r.r r.2 r.3 r.4
The scope of Ptagmatics The origin and historical vagaries of the term pragmarics Defining Pragmatlcs Current interest in Pmgmatics Compuling context: an example
!x xiv
t
47
2 Deixis 2.o lntroduction z.r Philosophicalapproaches 2.2 DescriptiveaPProaches 2.a.r Person deitis 2.2.2 Tirne deixit Plac. deiris z-23 2,2.4 Dis.oulse deixis 2.2.5 Social d"ixis 2.3 Conclusions
54 54
implicatute Conversatioaal lntroduction 3 . t Grice's theory of implicature Revisions, problems and applications 3 . 2 . r Tettt Jor ;m,licatur. 3 . 2 . 2 Implicatute and logical lorm Kinds of imPlicature 3 . 2 . 4 Generalized Quantiry imqlicatt/res x.2. 5 M.taqhor : a case of maxim erqloitorion 3 . 2 . 6 Implicatum and langudge trlucture
97 97
3
5J
6r 68 79 85 89 94
l oo
rr8 r r8 t2 2 r26 r32 t47 r62
Contents Contcnrs
4 .o 4 .r 4 .2 4 .3 4 .3 .1 4 .3 .2 4.+ 4 .4 .r 4 .4 .2
4 .5 5 q.o i.r i.u 5.3 5.4 5.4.r s.,+.2 s.s <.6 i.l 6
6.o 6 .r o .2 6. 2.I o. 2. I . r 6. 2. r . 2 6. 2.r . 3 6, 2. 2 6. 2, 3 6. 3 o. 3. r 64.2 6. 4 6. 4. r 6. 4. 2 6. 4. 3 o. 5
Presupposition lntroduction Historical background The phenomena: initial observations The problematic Prop€rties DeJeasibility The Projection Ptoblem Kinds of exPlanation Setnantic Pr e suqqosition Pragmatic theories of PresuOposition Conclusions Speech acls lntroduction PhilosoPhical background Thesis: speech acts are irreducible to matters of truth and falsitY Antith€sis: th€ reduction of illocutionary force to ordinarY sYntax and semantics Collapse of Anrithesis Semantic Ptoblems Sintactit Problems lndirect speech actsl a problem for Thesis and Antithesis The context-change theory of speech acts B.yond theories of spe€ch acts Coivers.tionalattuclure Introduction Discourse analysis versus conversation analysis Conversation analYsis Some bosic findings Turtt- tohing Adjacency Patls Overall organization Some remarhs on fiethodolog! Sotne aqqlications Paeference orSenization Prefened secoad turns PreJerted segueaces Pre-sequences Geteral rcmorhs Pte-announcements Pre-requestr: a re-analysis ol indirect speechacts Conclusions
rb7 r67 r69 r77 r85 r86 t9r r99 r99 204 225
226 220
243 246 25r
zsr z6o 203 276 278 284 284 286 29+ 296 296 303 308 3r8 326
339 345 345 349 356 364
6.5.r 6.<.2
7 7.o 7.r 7.2 Z.l
364
Conoersation analysit and lingu;ttict Some rcmaining questioas Appendix : transcription conventions
367 369
Conclusions lntroduction Pragmatics and 'core' Iinguistics Pragmatics, sociolinguistics and psycholinguistics Applied Pragmatics: pragmatics and othet fields
37r 37r 372 374 376
Bibliograpby Subject ioder Inder of aames
379 4t 7
t
I a
1.
PR EF AC E
To Nicholas' grandparents
To squeezeall that goes under the rubric of pragmstica within the confines of a linguistics textbook would be neither possible nor desirable. Consequently this book is quite conservative in scoPe and approach, and considers the main topics in a particular tradition of work. This is the largely Anglo-American linguistic and philosophical tradition that builds directly, for th€ most part, on philosophical approaches to language of both the logical and 'ordinary language' variety (an exception is the set of topics treated in Chapter 6, which has a sociological origin). In contrast, the continental tradition is altogether broader, and would include much that alEogo€s under the rubric of sociolinguistics.But even within this much narrower field, this book is in some ways restricted, since its main aim is to provide an introduction and background to those topics that, perhaps largely for historical reasons, are central to the AngloAmerican tradition of work in pragmatics. The would-be pragmaticist must understand th€se issues in depth, if he or she is to understand the background to a great deal of current research in both linguistics and philosophy. One major way in which this book is perhaps innovative is the inclusion in Chapter 6 of a brief review of work in conversation analysis. Apart from its demonstrable importance for theories of language usage, work in conversation analysis contributes directly to many of the same issues that have preoccupied philosophers of language,and thence [inguists, while employing a startlingly different methodology. So both despite and becauseofthe fact that conversation analysis springs from a quite different tradition from theother topics reviewed, a summary of findings is included here. In the Chapter, I have presented explicitly a re-analysis of some issues in the philosophical theory of speech acts along conversation analytic lines,
Preface Preface bu tth e re a d e rs h o u l d b e a b l e to spotanumberoffurthel ' e-anal yses in the book' i*n with difterently elsewhere "' from coverage in this topics "i-"t".ia certain of the omission N;;;;", relativelv narrow explanation ln the first place' a b""L;;":;;;;;"t areconsidered factors and their linguistic correlates :;;;";t;;-;;"1 parameters basic of the some only * ,his book includes i,..!, tole and """*., including participants' identitY' .t *"i".t or^ take lor "tterance, "i,i" about what Participants know i"""ii"n, of tutns at sequence a ""t"-otions tfr" place of an utterance within nr-t"a, a number or w" know in fact that there are J"-"" ilil;;, ";; a d d i ti o n a l c o n te x tu a l p a ra m e tel sthataresystemati cal l yrel atedto of particutarlv principles of social interaction ;i.d;;";;;;;;,"tion, and r g Keenan 976b) (see e ' various sotts of both u "tlltutt-"petific such omissions r978)' L""i"'o"' & g Brown e universal kind (see namely to provide an introduction reflect the primary aim of the book' rather than to attemPt an ,"',ft" Oii*"Ottico-linguistic tradition' of linguistic of all th" contextual co-ordinates "";"."ge ";;;;J"" organization. topics omitted-thatare genetally Secondly,there are two parttcular constrtutes within a fairly narrow view of what a'. uac,tg "on"-'i" (or therne/rheme) "aiti,"a tn" topicfcomment ;"d; profusion and confusion' and underlying f.,-inological ii"i.,",ior,. point whe'e pl'gt'" the relevant literature to a ;;;;;;;;i""t"""".", examPlc' r977)'.For (but see e g Cundel' little may"*"be salvageable -be simplex a in topic a told how to identifv mav ;;;;;;t of topics tbe identify told how to declarativesentence,we are ncver a never.ol{€red are (i e we a sentence of arbitrary complexity the that think to principle) ln addition there is reason factors: to "r"i.lta" te reducible to a numbet of different ;;;;';;;"';"t on the one.hand'.and to of p."*pposition and implicature (and other) posrtrors on -u,a"." ,n"-1i""""r"" f,rn"tiu"" of utterance-initia[ is less defensible' namely the the other. The other ma.;oromission intonation and-stress ,r","-atic remarks on prosody' and of prosodic importance "i"*"".f clear the i" o"rii"rf".. The fact is that' giten There is understudied grossly iu"ao." ln pragmatics' the area is should factors such how aboul the fundamentalsof ;;;;;;t"t wholes ones' variable or be d-escribed,whether as discreteelements quite by evidenced (e.g. tonal contours) or parts (e g 'levels')' in way if the But on either side of the Atlantic . )ii"."r,, approaches
i i
unsettled' the pragmatic which the phenomena are to be recorded is quite un€xplored (see' functions of prosodic patterns are really textbook ..t. Brazil, Coulthard & Johns, t98o) Future ,i""rt, Meanwhile position' happier in a themselves *.i,""r"*itt ftop"t rtly find the omission should be recorded' reference lo The reader may also be disappointed to find little The partial exception) a z is (Chapter languagesother than English non-Indoespecially and f,"." is that other languages, or""Uf"i 'Eu.oo""n of ones, have simply not been subjected to the same kind investithose from analysis.This is the more regrettablebecause, & g;aior," ,1,"t have been done (e.g. Fillmore, 1975; Anderson"K"".run, that likely in press; Sadock & Zwicky ' in press), it seems pragmatic organization is subject to very interesting cross-linguistic we can uuri"tio.t. But until we have much more information in hand' of those only guess at the univetsal application (or otherwise) we respect' ln this developed been have that categories of analysis can hope for significant advances in the next decade or so' The book also contains no systematic observation and theory about course' the relations between pragmatics and syntax There are' of exist relations no such that theorists who hold, by theoretical,at, clear are there that remains (Lightfoot, rg1gt 43-4). The fact interactionsbetweenthe organizationofsyntactic elementsin a clause I978a' and pragmatic consttaints of various sorts (see e'g' Green' here' arise issues rqZ8tl Givon, r97ga;Cazdar, r98oa)' Two general of One is how such interactions ate to be described in models grammar: should we think in terms of a syntax that can refer to let pragmatic constraints(seee.g. Ross, r975), or rather should we generate pragmatic anomalies, which some pragmatic ,ha "ynr"* 1"t". filter out (see e.g. Gazdar & Klein, rq?7)? component "un Although current thinking would tend to prefer the latter solution' there have been few concrete proposals for such a pragmatic 6ltering device. and no serious assessmentof the degree to which such a devrce would simply duplicate syntacticmachin€ry' A secondgeneralissue that arisesis whether theseobservable interactionshave any systematrc just what kind of basis: can a pragmatic theory accurately predict processes are likely pragmatic constraintson what kinds of syntactic but at expectation, to occur? That would certainly be a reasonable collection the moment we can only list an apparently heterogeneous of such constraints, of many different kinds The present lack of
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Pteface
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Preface th-"-]fl' of,these questions interesting answets to either -":l:"'*interactrons oook' although possible treatment of these lssues ln tnls
u",*".,, o,"e,o",i": i""r"o -0 "".,.1,._*lt"l""l;:ilfT:Xrd,.,, as The acquisition of Pragmatlc on the groundstY:1"-:T'" partly excludedfrom considerationhere' was derivative from'.rather tnan *".t i" airi" atea (e'g Bates' r976) reviewed in this book Recefttly' contributory to, the basic concepts
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theoretical issuesin pragmatrcs \s a volume of larger work- would be valuable in l,'.rl;;;;-,his dimensions. "';;;';ttr,;."" back bevond I9,5],mav *hose linguistic sights extend and othcr 'proto,"f"t"""t to Malinowski' Firth o*' ,i"'r"i "l
;;;;,;;;;"';i:1. l::$,"iilff;,J:'ll"::", :l ::T::1, philolinsuistics, Pragmaticsls a rem
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linguistics-(while of chomskvan 'in """o" in part be attributed to can use in language
interest ;;;t,the re a c ri o n a g a i n s tth e e x t' e m e sofl ogi cal posi ti vi smand..l a^nguage was prlor to t957' it could be arg-ued' reformism'). Pragmattcs p ra c ti s e d (i fi n a n i n fo rm a l w a y)w i tho-utbei ngpreached." I.* 1" " ' t:,i^:^book it could be said mvopia' historical #;;;;;;;iis :hat of most of the current practrtroners it i"""ii" ttt" *ith the attitudes ", in the field - L^ ^r W i th th e s e l i mi ta tro n s re c o gni zed' thi sbookw i l l ' Ihope' be-ol use well as more advancedresearcirers' to advancedundergraduates'as
E , I i
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refers to Chapters Finally, the introductory Chapter constantly many pragmatlc concepts ln ahead- it is hard not to presuppose Indeed' if readersfind ii"".r."ing the scope and nature of the field' read just the last sectlon' the introduction hard going, they should return to Chapter t when ,i"r, ptung. into the body of the book' and of the field Duzzles arise about the general nature self-contained,there is no book this make to Althoueh I have tried if they already have some it of out get more doubt thai readers will two other books in this Here particular' in g.o.mai.tg in semantics and Logic in Liaguistics' Theory b" h"lpful,viz. Semantic ]"ri"" "ho.rld the many references is required, Where further reading on any topic will be of generaluse' will provide a guide, but two works especially most useful collections The n"-"ly l-yon", r 977a and Gazdar, t 979a' 1975; Rogers' Wall & of primary sources are Cole & Morgan, I979; Murphy, I977; Cole, r978; Schenkein, r978; Oh & Dinneen' (r978) una ioi", r 98r. The bibliographv by Gazdar, Klein & Pullum annotated has listings for various pragmatic topics, and thete is an on (r978) Articles Verschueren by pragmaiics of bibliography journals, but p.ugrnuti"" now apPearin most of the major linguistic rnay Beyond Pragmatics and the series and Pragmatics oJ the Journal be of specialinterest.
and other anthropolo^sv psvchologv' of crystallization a ""ai""' as i""gt'"g" u""' disciplines with an tnteresr "t Fven
; ;il;;
ii;'l'v
t*pli"ut"d in full' elsewhere issues presupposed,but rarelv the distortion of many philosophilosophersshould find-interesting phical ideas in a lingutsttc mrrror'
A note on how to use this book through the.Chaptersin the There is a logical progression ones' conceprs explained in carlter sense that each presupposes introduced earler vaT"-..:l:o*^ However, the reliance on concepts could almost stand alone' *tttvely self'contained'and 6 ,,-3'""Ji read ^* sensewithout having previously s.i,;i"o,". n *ul make little previouslv ofthe subject index toclarify concepts o.-rt 6i"o'*rl. ""e allow mo'st of the Chapters 1e Ss 1s3d alone' . introduced should xir
x|ll
N OT AT ION
A C K N O W L E DG E M E NT S
Textbook writers must in general be intellectual sponges and spongers. Those whose brains have been drained include so many friends, colleagues and students, that to acknowledge them all here, let alone at every relevant place, would be impossible. I hope they will forgive me if they find an idea or expression of their own borrowed without particular acknowledgement. But I must offer specific thanks to Penny Brown, Paul Drew, John Haviland, John Heritage, Peter Matthews, Marion Owen, Alan Rumsey, Jerrold Sadock and Deirdre Wilson who gave me very helpful comments on parts of the draft, and especially to Jay Atlas, Gerald Gazdar and my exttaordinarily diligent editor John Lyons who provided extremely detailed comments on the whole. The book has been improved immeasurablyby their care. I have not alwaystaken their advice,and where faults and infelicities remain, they are almost certainly my own. I should also record a debt to my original mentors in pragmatics, Charles Fillmore, John Gumperz, George Lakoff, Robin Lakoff, Emanuel Schegloffand John Trim. As an experiment, this book has been printed with the aid of computer files supplied by the author: however, without Colin Duly's re-organization ofthose files, it would be a heap of gibbcrish, and without John Haviland's help in converting the files from a Cambridge to a Canberra installation and back again, non-existent. Penny Carter, and other officers of the Press, were patient enough to see the process through. Finally, my thanks to the Department of Anthropology, Research School of Pacific Studies, at the Australian National University, for providing thefacilitieswhcrethis bookwasfinishedin congenialand stimulating company. If readers get anything out of this book, my thanks and theirs to the named and nameless here acknowledqed,
.
C ON VEN T ION S
(For elementary explications of logical symbolism see Allwood, Andersson & Dahl, rg77; fot transcription conventions' used mostly in Chapter 6, see the Appendix to that Chaptet') A ,B ,C p,q' f A(e') F, G a,b,c
x, J, z v V -
v l €
t, [)) K
sententialvariables (esp. Chapter 4) sentential variables ad hoc notation for a sentential variable that indicates the occurrenceof an expressionet in a sentenceA predicateconstants,as in F(x); also predicatevariablesin section 3.2.6 individual constants; also persons in expressionslike 'a knows that P' individual variables inclusive disjunction exclusivedisjunction negation material conditional biconditional identity negativeidentitY universal quantifier existentialquantifier is an element of a set sets ordered sets or n-tuples entailment presupposes implicates speakerknows that; thus KP : speakerknows that p
Noaation Conomt;or.s P
tr o f
epistemic possibility for speaker; thus Pp : p iscompatible with all that the sPeaker knows necessary;e.8. Ep : it is necessarythat p possible; e.g. OP : it is possiblethat p lambda-operator(ChaPter 4) gamma-operator(ChaPter 4)
The scope of Pragmatics
The purpose of this Chapter is to provide some indication oflinguistic pragmatics' First, the historical origin of the scope ofthe witl be briefly summarized, in order to indicate pragmatics term that ar€ divergent from the usagein this book ' term ofthe someusages some definitions of the field, which, while will review we Secondly, will at least serve to indicate the satisfactory, fully being less than pragmatics. Thirdly, some reasons for the rough scope of linguistic while a final section will be explained, field current interest in the In passing, phenomena' pragmatic of illustrates some basic kinds will be background useful some analytical notions that are introduced. The origin and historical vagaries of the ierm pragmatics The modern usageof the term pragrnatics is attributable to the philosopher Charles Moris (1938), who was concerned to outline (after Locke and Peirce)! the general shape of a science of signs, or semiotics (or semiotic as Morris preferred). Within semiotics, Morris distinguished three distinct branches of inquiry: syntactics (or syntax), being the study of " the formal relation of signs to one another", setnantics, the study of "the relations of signs to the objects to which the signs are applicable" (their designata), and pragmatics, the study of "the relation of signs to interpreters" (rqf8: 6). Within each branch of semiotics,one could make the distinction between pure studies, concerned with the r.r
I Ap.rt from this conn.ction, th.rc i3 only th€ sliahtest historical relstion (see b€tw.cn p.aamaiica end th€ philosoPhic.l doctrines of'pr.amrti6tD Morri s , te38 (r97' :43)i Lv ons , r97?!: ttq). Thete hl v c be€n r€c €nt rtr€mp&, how€ver, to rc.rst Mortis'sttichotomy in. P€irc€an(or Pragmatist) hotrld.which.renotcovercd in thisbook: s.G Silve.stein, r976; Bean. r97E
1'he scoPe oJ Pragmattcs str-rdies elaboration of the relevant metalanguage, and descriptive *hich applied the metalanguage to the description of specific signs and their usages (I938 (r97r:. z4)). rule, Morris As instances of usage governed by pragrnatical as L'ome here !, such commands noted that " interjections such as Ol.', ..- expressions such as Goc,l morning! and various rhetorical and poetical devices, occur only under certain definite conditions in the users of the language " ( r 938 ( I97 r : +8)). Such matrers would still today be given a treatment within linguistic pragmatics But Morris went on to expand the scope of pragmatics in accord with hts particular behaviouristic theory of semiotics (Black, r947): " It is a suffrciently accurate characterization of pragmatics to say that it deals with the biotic aspects of semiosis, that is, with all the psychological' biological, and sociological phenomena which occur in the functioning of s igns " ( r 938: I o8) . Suc h a s c o p e i s v e r y m u c h w i d e r t h a n t h e w o r k that currently goes on under the rubric of linguistic pragmatics, for it would include what is now known as psycholingu ist ics, sociolinguistics, neurolinguistics and much besides. Since Morris's introduction of the trichotomy syntax' scmantlcs and pragmatics, the latter term has come to be used in two very distinct uays. On the one hand, the very broad use intended by Morris has been retained, and rhis explains the usage of the term pragmatics in the titles of books that deal, for example, with matters as diverse as the psychopathology of communication (in the manner of G. Bateson and R. D. Laing - see Watzlawick, Beavin & Jackson, r967) and the evolution of symbol systems (see Cherry, r974) Even here though, there has been a tendency to use p/agndti.s exclusively as a division ol linguistic semiotics, rather than as Perlaining to sign systems in general. This broad usage of the term, covering soclolinguistics, psycholinguistics and more, is still the one generally used on the Continent (see e.g. the collection in Wunderlich, t97z, and issues of the Jorrnal oJ Pragmatics). On the other hand, and especially rvithin analytical philosophy, the term pragmatirs rvas subject to a successive narrowing of scope Here the philosopher and logician Carnap was particularly influential After an initial Morrisian usage (Carnap, r938: z), he adopted the following version of the trichotomy: lf in an investigation explicit referenceis made to the speaker, or to put it in more general terms, to the user of the language'
t.t
The otigin oJ the telm'plagmqtics
th€n we assignit [the investigation]to the lield of pragmatics ... I f we abstractfrom the userof the languageand analyzeonly and their designata,we are in the 6eld of the exDressions semaniics.And, finally, if rveabstractfrom the designataalso we are and analyzeonly the relationsbetweenthe expressions, in (logical)sYntax Unfortunately Carnap's usage of the terrJj.prqgmatics was confused by his adoption of Morris's further distinction between pure and descriptivestudies,and he cameto equatepragmaticswith descriptive semioticsin general,and thus with the study of natural (as opposed to logical) languages(Carnap, 1959: I3; see the useful clarification in Lieb, r97r). But Carnap was not even consistenthere: he also held (Carnap, r956) that there was room for a pure pragmatics which would be concerned with concepts like belief, utterance, and inteasion and their logical inter-relation. This latter usage,now more or less defunct, explains the use of the term in, for example, the title of a book by Martin (r959). Thus at least four quite different sensesof the term can be found in Carnap's works, but it was the definition quoted above that was finally influential. Incidentally, already in Morris's and Carnap's usagesthere can be found a systematic three-way ambiguity: the term prdgmatrcs was applied not only to branches of inquiry (as in the conttast between pragmaticsand semantics),but also to featuresof the object language (or languageunder investigation),so that one could talk of, say, the plagmaticparticle Oh I in English, and to featuresof the metalanguage (or technicaldescription), so that one could talk of, say, a pragmatic, versusa semantic,description of the particle Oh !. Such an ambiguity merely seemsto parallel the way in which the sister terms semanlics syntax are used, and to introduce little confusion (but cf. ^nd Sayward, r 974). The idea that pragmaticswas the study of aspectsof languagethat rcquired relerence to the users of the language then led to a vety natulal, further restriction of the term in analytical philosophy. For thereis one aspectof natural languagesthat indubitably requiressuch reference,namely the study of deictic or indexical words like the pronounsl and yoz (seeChapter z). The philosophical,and especially logical, interest in these terms is simply that they account for the potentialfailure ofgenerally valid schemesof reasoning.Forexample, " I am Greta Garbo, Greta Garbo is a woman, therefore I am a
I t 'fhe scoPe oJ P/og tatt(s is only necessarily truc if in addition to the lirst two premises being true, the speaker of the conclusion is the same speaker took as the speaker of the first premise. Bar-Hillel (t954) therefore and natural the view that pragmatics is the study of languages, both artificial, that contain indexical or deictic terms, and this usage was explicitly adopted by Kalish (rg6Z), and most influentially by woman",
Montague (r968). Such a usage has little to offer linguists, since all natural languages have deictic terms, and it would follow, as Gazdar ( r g79a: z) points out, that natural languages would have no semantics but only a syntax and a pragmatics. lf the trichotomy is to do some work wirhin linguisrics, some less restricted scope for ptagmatics must be found. I n fact, in the late r 96os, an implicit version of Carnap's de6nition investigations requiring reference to the users of a language - was adopted within linguistics, and specifically within the movement The history of that movement semantics. known as generative I98o), but its awaits a historian of ideas (but see Newmeyer' association with pragmatics can be explained by the resurgence of the interest in meaning which the movement represented Such an interest inevitably involves pragmatics, as we shall see. Moreovcr thts interest in meaning in a wide sense proved to be one of the best directions from which gcnerative semantics could assail Chomsky's theory. At the same time, there was a keen interest in philosophers' attempts to grapple with problems by linguists shown of meaning, sometimes from the point of view of the 'users of the language'. For a period, at least, linguists and philosophers seemed to bc on a common path, and this commonality of interest crystallized many of the 155ugsrvith which this book is concerned During this
( r 965) standard
period, the scope of pragmatics was implicitly restricted' Carnap's ' investigations making reference to users of the language' is at once too narrow and too broad for linguistic interests lt is too broad because it admits studies as non-linguisric as Frcud's investigations of 'slips of the tongue' or Jung's studies of word associations So studies in linguistic pragmatics need to be restricted to investigations that have at least potential linguistic implications. On the othet hand, Carnap's deFnition is too narrow in that, on a simple interpretation, it excludes parallel phenomena.2 For example, just as the paramcters rcfcr to users of rhc alt p.asmal;' 'z On another intc.preiarion. laneulse, if only be.ausc such patamctcts musr, in order to bc relevant. be knosn ot helter ed b) - Par r i ( i Panr s
i
t.z Defining Pragmatics
\
i. I i
you relies on the identification of interpretation of the words I and (or ') and their role in the speechevent' 'users particularParticipants for their interpretation on the place rely nou here and .o rh. *ords Carnap's definition might Therefore event. speech and time of the 'those investigationsthat linguistic like: be amended to something where the term context', of the to aspects make necessaryreference the participants' of identities the context is understood to cover (as we shall and event, the speech t-"-po.ut una spatialparametersof U"ti"ft, knowledge and intentions of the participants in that """)',t " event, and no doubt much besides' speech To summarize, a number of distinct usagesof the terlr:.plag'natics study have sprung from Morris's original division of semiotics: the of the huge range of psychological and sociological phenomena (the involved in sign systemsin generalor in languagein particular Continental sense of the term); or the study of certain abstract conceptsthat make referenceto agents(one of Carnap's senses)1or the study of indexicalsor deictic terms (Montague's sense);or finally the recent usagewithin Anglo-American linguistics and philosophy' This book is concerned exclusively with the last senseof the term, and it is to an explication of this particular usagethat we should now l urn, Defining pragmatics The rclatively restricted sense of the terrjf, pragmatics in Anglo-American philosophy and linguistics, and correspondingly in this book, deservessome attempt at definition. Such a definition is, however, by no means easy to provide, and we shall play with a number of possibilitieseach of which will do little more than sketch a range of possible scopes for the field This diversity of possible definitionsand lack of clear boundariesmay be disconcerting,but it is by no means unusual: since academic fields are congeries of preferrcd methods, implicit assumptions, and focal problems or subjectmatters,attemptsto definethem are rarely wholly satisfactory, And indeed, in one sensethete is no problem of delinition at all: just r.z
as,traditionally, syntax is taken to be the study of the combinatorial propertiesof lvords and their parts, and semanticsto be the study of meaning, so pragmatics is the study of language usage Such a definition is just as good (and bad) as the parallel definitions of the sisterterms, but it will hardly sufliceto indicate what the practioners
r.2 Defning
Tlrc scoPeof Pragmattcs discipline' one of pragmatics actually do; to lind that out, as in any m u s t g o a n d ta k e a l o o k . at least some l\evertheless, there are reasons for attemptlng it is simply place' the firsr ln pragmatics indication of the scope of rs not so easy place' it second the a sufficiently unfamiliar term ln do: there pragmatics in workers to just ' go and take a look' at what specialist one only u." 1utthl" ti-. of writing) no availabletextbooks, broader the covering that louroal (Journal of Pragmatics\ and and a monographs of Continenial usageof the term, only a handful work scattered few collectionsof papers.Nevertheless,there is much the variousjou rnalsof linguisticsand philosophy Thirdly' throughout -authors seem to suggestthat there is no coherent 6eld at all; some the thus Lyons (rg77a'. r4) states that "the applicability [of to the distinctton between syntax' semantics and pragmatics] or the description to contrast in languages, natural description of while uncertain", the least, is, to say construction of logical calculi, Searle, Kiefer & Bieru'isch (rq8o: viii) suggesrthat " Pragmaticsis one of those words (sociela1 aod cognilioe are others) that give the impressionthat something quite specificand technical is being talked about when often in fact it has no clear meaning " The pragmaticist is thus challenged to shorv that, at lcast within the linguistic and philosophicaltradition that is the concern of this book, the term does have clear application. l-et us thereforeconsidera set of possibledefinitionsof pragmatics' We shall lind that each of them hasdeficienciesor difficultiesof a sort that would equally hinder defrnitions of other 6elds, but at least in this way, by assaultsfrom all flanks, a good sketch of the general topography can be obtained. Let us start with some dellnitions that are in fact less than satisfactory.One possibledeGnition might go as follows: pragmatics is the study of those principles that will account ftrr why a certain set ofsentencesare anomalous,or not possibleutterances That set mighr i n c l u d e :3 t We shall us€ thesvmbol i ? ar the bes i nni neof ex am Pl es entenc es to i ndi c ate r h.t they ar e ( at lea s l putati v el v ) pr aam al i c al l v anom al ous , r es er v i ns 'for sentenc( slhar ar esr nr aer r eal l y i tl - for m tdor s em anr r c al l l anom al our ;as r nql t l eas t onc of thes e r hr ec l €v el s ' but i s initial ? indicates a nom al v on 'i non- com m it( al abou l thc natur e of thc anom al v
(t)
(z) (3) (4,|
(s) (6)
0',
Plagmqtics
I ?Come there Please! ??Aristotle was Greek, but I don't believe it ??Fred's children are hippies, and he has no children ?iFred's children are hippies, and he has children ??l order you not to obey this order ??l hereby sing ??As everyone knows, the earth pleaserevolves around the sun
might The explanationof the anomatiesexhibited by thesesentences ordinary, be provided by pointing out that there are no' or at leastno an contexts in which they could be appropriately used'' Although the kind approachof this sort may be quite a good way of illustrating do as will hardly with, it concerned pragmatics is that principl.s oi the set that reason the simple for the field of definition an explicit sociolinguistic) or syntactic (as to s€mantic, opposed of pragmatic s anomaliesare presupposed,rather than explained would be that Another kind of definition that might be offered p€rspectlve' functional a from pragmaticsis the study of language by structure linguistic of fac€ts ifr"i i", tnut it attempts to explain a definition' But such causes and referenceto non-linguistic pressures pragmatics or scope,for pragmaticswould fail to distinguish linguistic to approaches functional from many other disciplines interested in Moreover' language,including psycholinguisticsand sociolinguistics' is it may be plausibly argued that to adopt a definition of this sort goalt or to confuse tll,e mot;oes for studying pragmatics, with the generalshape of a theory (about u'hich more later)' One quite restricted scopefor pragmatics that has been proposed is that pragmatics should be concerned solely with principles of language usage, and have nothing to do with the description of linguistic structure, Or, to invoke Chomsky's distinction between pragmatics is concerned solely competence and perforrnance, use. Thus, Katz & Fodor language of principles with performance (or a theory of setting pragmatics of (r963) suggestedthat a theory .elies on the disrinction betw€en usc lnd mco.ior' ' This tine of arsument usagc and m€talinsuistic usase, for which s€€ Lvons' o. between 'ordinary' rqzza: sfi and references thcrein ln the scnse of this distincrion' sentcnces like (r)-(7) can be mentioned, but thev cannot Gasilv b. used t Another Droblem is that it is ofleo in f.ct possibl€ lo imaginc contcxts in the read€rcan trv with $,hich rhealtesed anomalies.re tfterall quite usabl. th. examDtes abov€. This probl€m will rccut when wc consider rhc concePt of appropriateness of en utterancc, discussed bclow.
1.2 DeJifting Pragnatics
7.h? stoqe oJ Pragttt(ttt( s rvith selection as they then called it) rvould essentially be conccrned \\'ere $'hich they tbe disambiguation of sentences by the contexts in merely select than tnore a lot do that conlexts it is clear uttcred. In fact example' for of sentcnces readings semantic betrveen available a c t u a lly creatc t h a t o f u s e k i n d s l i k e a r e th e ir ony , under s t at c m c nt and grammar that claim one could Still, neu interpretations in contexts. is (in the broad sense inclusivc of phonology, syntax and semantics) to linguistit: meaning of assignment concernecl with the context_free tnterpretatlon forms, while pragmatics is concerned with the further of those forms in a context: ot scntcnce typcs [Grammars] are theorics about thc structurt to explicate ihe nothing do ... Prug-oti. theories, in contrast, structure of linquistic constructions or grammatlcal propertles and relations ...'l'hey explicate the reasoning of sp-eakersan
This
impossible to draw a neat boundarY betwcen contcxt-independcnt Intcrprctatlon and context_dcpendent (competcnce) grammar illustrated by l(atz ' is unwittingly problcm This lpe.fo.man.e). pairs ra66il and .*pti.oti.rn of this boundary: he points out that the r of cach pair membe the secoud that in bu'nny, or dr.tgan
r s tht z e( ' or tlcr e conr ast sear lc ( r e79b: t !7) r " l - h
addresseeis a child is as the implication or inferencethat speakeror as it ls availablewhen 6lazy is written on an anonymous Postcard (Gazdar, tgTga:. context 3)' apPropriate concrete when said in some ot speaker of appropriate kind the is because course And that of term 6aazy' the by addresseeis encoded Here we come to the heart of the definitional problem: the term pfagrnat;cs covers both context-dependent aspects of language and principles of language usage and understanding that ",ru",,rr" to have nothing or little to do with linguistic structure' It is difficult this should But aspects forgea definition that will happily cover both not be taken to imply that pragmatics is a hodge-podge,concerned with quite disparate and unrelated aspects of language; rather, pragmaticists are specifically interested in the inter-relation of languagestructure and principles of language usage Let us now consider some potential definitions that are more plausible candidates. We may begin with a definition that is specifically aimed at capturing the concern of pragmatics with features of language structure. The definition might go as follows: (S)
and is the studyofthoserelationsbctweenlanguage Pragmatics contextthataregrammaticalized, orencodedin thestructure of a languaget
Or, putting it another way, one could say that pragmaticsis the study ofjust thoseaspectsof the relationshipbetweenlanguageand context that are relevant to the writing of grammats. Such a definition restricts pragmatics to the study of certain aspects of linguistrc structure, and stands in strong contrast to Katz's proposal,outlined above,that would restrict pragmaticsto the study of grammatically irrelevant aspectsof language usage. Such a scope for pragmatics would include the study of deixis, including honorifics and the like, and probably the study of presupposition and speech acts, i.e. much of the present book. It would exclude the study of principles of languageusagethat could not be shown to have repercusstonson the grammar of languages,and this could be an embartassment, of such sent€nccs only against a set of backaround assumprions aboul the contexts in *hich the senrence could be sppropriatelv uttered ' 1 Thr retm is used throushour this book in th€ broad sense s,annatnolt:rlton inthe again ins widesense coverin 8 thc .ncod ins of mea.ina d ist;nctions hxicon, morphology, synmx .nd phonolosy of languages
r.2 Defning Plagmatics
'fhe stoPe of Pragmatits because,at least at first sight, the extremely important implications called conversational irnplicatures would lie outside the purview of a pragmatic theory. On the other hand, such a scopefor pragmatics has the possibleadvantagethat it would effectively delimit the field, and exclude neighbouring fields like sociolinguistics and psycholinguistics - in short it would bound Morris's and Carnap'sde6nitions in a way that guaranteedlinguistic relevance. Now, any definition of pragmaticsthat excludesone of its ptesumed focal phenomena, namely conversationalimplicature, is unlikely to be attractive. Nevertheless,its adherentsmight appeal to the plausibility of the following general principle: any systematicprinciple of Ianguageusage is ultimately likely to have an impact on language structure. There is perhaps some basis for such an assumption (see e.g. Btown & Levinson, r978: z6off). And in fact conversational implicatures, which are inferences that arise on the basis of some general rules or maxims of conversationalbehaviour, can indeed be shown to have repercussionson linguistic structure (see Chapter 3 below). So the definition may in fact be much lessrestrictive than it appearsat first sight. Other problems concern the notions of context and grammaticalization that the de6nition rests on. Arguably, though, it is a strength of this approach that it is not required to give a prior characterizationof the notion of context. For, assumingthat we havc a clear idea of the limits of semantics,then pragmaticsstudies all the non-semantic features that are encoded in languages,and these featuresare aspectsof the context. What aspectsof the grossphysical, social and interactional aspects of the situation of utterance are linguistically relevantis thus an empirical question,and we can study the world's languagesto find out what they are. Of course,we would need to make an important distinction herc between universal pragmatics, the general theory of what aspects of context get encoded and how, and the language-speciffc pragmatics of individual languages;for example, the pragmatics of English might have relatively little to say about social status (beyond rvhat we need r honour and to describcthe appropriatecontextsfor the useof sir, yor.r the like), while in contrast the pragmatics of Japanesewould be greatly concerned with the grammaticalizationof the relative social ranks of participants and referents. On the other hand, the notion of grammaticalization,or linguistrc IO
]
to distinguish €ncoding,is thorny To be effective,we need to be able from mere correlation between linguistic form and context incorporationof contextual significanceinto the associatedlinguistic form. There is little doubt that there are clear casesof the one and theother; for example,the slurred speechassociatedwith drunkenness may be mere correlation, while the association of intimacy or solidarity with the French pronoun ,z is a grammaticalized feature of context. But there are many borderline cases. To make the distinction, perhaps the following criteria might be suggested:for a feature of the context to be linguistically encoded, (a) it must be intentionallycommunicated,(b) it must be conventionallyassociated with the linguistic form in question, (c) the encoding form must be a member of a contrast set, the other members of which encode different features, (d) the linguistic form must be subject to regular grammaticalp.ocesses.On thesegrounds one might hope to exclude, say, the associationof a particular dialect with a speaker from a particular area-such an association,perhaps, not being normally intentionally conveyed, not being associatedwith the linguistic featuresby arbitrary conventiqn but by historical'accident', and so on, On the other hand, featuresof 'baby talk ', of which thc lexical alternate bunny is a part, would presumably be considered to be encodedin English, becauseat leastsome of them seemto meet these criteria. However, it is unlikely that these criteria are sufficient to distinguishmany borderline cases,and the notion would need further explication.s In sum, the main strength of this definition of pragmatics is that it restrictsthe field to purely Iinguistic matters. Yet it is probably too restrictiveto reflect accuratelycurrent usage.The most unfortunate restriction is the exclusion of those principles of languageuse and interpretation that explain how extra meaning (in a broad sense)is 'read into' utterances without actually being encoded in them. It is a definition, then, that handlesthe aspectof pragmaticsconcerned with linguistic structure, but not the side concernedwith principles of language usage, o! at least only indirectly as they impinge on linguistic organization. In the definition above, the notion of encoding implies that pragmaticsis concerned with certain aspectsof meaning. One kind of definition that would make this central might run as follows: a Consider e.e. the Fr€nch1. which encodes that the speaker nalheweu'., 'ui' communicatcd? is femsle: in what s€nse sould this be i',ltatfiall!
r.2 Dertning Plagmatics
The sroPe of Pragnatits (9)
Pragmatics is thc study of all those aspects of meaning not capturcd in a semantic theory
O r , as G az dar ( I 979a: z ) has p u t i t , a s s u m i n g t h a t s e m a n t i c s i s l i m i t e d to the statement of truth conditiorrs: Pragmatics has as its topic those aspccts of thc meaning of utterances which cannot bc accountcd for by straightforward referenceto the truth conditions of thc sentcncesuttered.t Put ME A N IN G , ' I' R U TH PRAGMA'l'lCS crudely: CO NDI TI O NS. Such a definition is likely, at first, to cause puzzlement. Surely semantics is, by definition, the study of meaning in its entirety, so how can there be any residue to constitute the topic of pragmatics ? But here we need to note that the definition of semantics as the study of meaning is just as simplistic as the definition of pragmatics as the study of language usage. First, rve need to distinguish between some broad sense ofthe term settranricsused in a more or less pre-theoretical way (see e.g. the coverage in l,yons, rg77a),10 and a technical use of the term to cover a particular, deliberatcly restricted semantic theory in an overall theory of grammar, or language structure. Semantic theory in the latter sense is going to have a ve.y much narrower scope than the study of meaning in its entirety, as we shall indicate immediately below. Secondly, the intended scope ofthe terrr.r eaning in the definition is extremely broad, in a way that will need explication. So the answer to the puzzle is that, from the point of view of an overall integrated linguistic theory, there will be a great dcal of the general field of meaning left unaccounted for by a restricted semantic theory, and this could indeed constitute the domain of pragmatics. One objection to such a definition could be that the scope of pragmatics would seem therefore to vary considerably according t
qual i 6c ati on, C az dar ex pl ai ns , i s nec es s ar y bc c aus e oftc n der i v e i n par t fr om thc t.uth.ondi ti ons of
sentences uttered. scr Chapt.r I bcl(,s. r! A usaae in linsuist;cs unril the influence of formal s€manrics, scncul pr actisr d b,y phibsopher s , uas feh i n the te6os . Ir Ferrure-bas€d scmantic theo.ies are not of course i,ler?rrlr broade. rhdn i ruth -cond ational ones. Rur feat\r€-b.scd
thcories are usuallv asso.iated wirh
extent the nature of a pragmatic theory must admitted that to some kind of semantic theory adopted, but that will the llp"na .r,r.i"tty "n pragmatics that seeks an exclusive i"'a.,.r" fo. any deFnition of with semantics' But it non-overlapping and io-"in, "ornpl"-entary partial' for we now is only dependency i" i-Oor,un, to see that this senseto make broad in the know enough about the nature of meaning accommodated not be could it likely that there are substantial areasthat semantic theory built on homogeneous principles' *ithin ony "ittgle This knowledge is based on some substantial advances made in the are at least half last ten years or so, namely the discovery that there or a dozen distinct and different kinds of meaning component of natural meaning in the are involved (or that inference) implication each languageutterances. The distinctions are based on the fact that particular, ways ln in different behaves of inference kinds of these they behave differently in projection, i e. in the ways in which they are compounded when a complex sentence, whose Parts produce the inferencesin question,is built up. Someofthese meaningcomponents disappearunder speci6cand distinctive conditions, namely particular linguistic constructions. In addition, some of these meaning components are defeasibte, i.e. subject to cancellation by features of the context (a notion explained in Chapter 3 below)' Such features interact with or arise from assumptions made by participants in the context, and are particularly inappropriate aspects of meaning to incorporate within a semantic theory. The dilemma that these multiple aspectsof meaning pose for the semanticist can perhaps best be gauged from Table r. r ' Here we list seven such putative meaning components or inferential relations of an utterance, but it should tte borne in mind that these particular aspects of meaning are subject to revision and addition: some may well collapse into others, while additionalkinds ofinference ate undoubtedly waiting to be discovered (indeed,in the Chaptersbelow, we shall be much concernedwith how well each of these concepts is established). The problem posed for the semantic theorist is how much to bite off - certainly no single coherent semantic theory can contain all these divergentaspectsof meaning. I f the theorist admits just the first kind of meaning component, the truth-conditional content, then at least (a) ihere are no conflicting principles for the inclusion or exclusion e scope fot semantics th.t would includ€ all th. convcntional content of th€orics cannot have sentcnc€s. whercas (as we shall sce) truth-condiriontl such r broad scooe, r,a
t.z Defning Ptagmatics
The scoPeof Progndtics (onlcnl of an utlerdn'e Table r. r Elementsof the communicationol
-::-
r. z. 3. 4. 5. 6. 7,
truth-conditionsor entailmenls(Chaptcr z and passim) conventionalimplicatures(Chaptcr 3) (Chapter4) presuppositions felicity condirions(Chapter 5) (Chapler 3) implicature- generalized conv€rsational implicature- parricularized(Chapter3) con.,crsational strtrcture(Chapter6) inferencesbasedon conversational
Note: r-2, and possiblyalso3 and 4'a.e nmrcnlional;3-7 aredcfcasiblc or context-deDcndcnt. of phenomena and (b) semantic theory can be built on strictly homogeneouslines.Such a semanticswill be narrow, and leavea great deal to pragmatics. On the other hand, if the theorist is determined that semantics should deal with all the conventional content of an utterance'ssignificance(however exactly that is to be determined),r' then semantic theory will deal with aspectst and z, and quite likely 3 and possibly 4 as well- The inclusion of presuppositionis awkward, however, for ifpresupposition is conventional,then it is alsodefeasible or context-dependent, and matters of context are best left for pragmatics.Thus, such a semanlic theory (a) will contain confficting principles for the inclusion (conventionality) and exciusion (defeasrbility) of phenomena and (b) will have to be built on heterogeneous lines to include phenomena with quite different properties. Such difFculties might motivate a retreat to a semaDtictheory that deals only with aspecls t and z, i.e. conventional content that is nondefeasible,as an unhappy compromise. ln this book we shall assurre,for working purposes,that a semantic r ' Th.notionofconv.ntionr l c onl .nl i 3c l c ...r i nr ui ti v c l y th.ni l i s l h€or .ti c tl l y i hts th. conv.rliontl w.nl lo !:y thrr th? tcrm a.te, for Gx.rnplc. *. *o!ld i.t.ll
f.crors inlo rccouni. S.. of infctcncc uking cont.xtu.l philosophicel of thc conccpr of .nrlysis re6e for rn impo't.nr i hc ei ..ti r l l y ..bi tr i r y n.tur c of.ny c onv .nti on. conv.ntion, which.tr .r l c r n.a,;ns. S..,l.o Mors.n. rrlz8; Scerlc. r979b on th. nor;on lt.ral Lcwi..
principlcs
from the fact that it avoids the .r,.drv is truth-conditional' Apart
llll,iail--*, il;;;;;"tt
ov claimingonlv rhenarrowcstscopefor scmantics' for the following itself ro the praSmaticist rccommends
available th8t is prccisc ]--"..,.,". Fi.st, it i" the only kind of theory now enough to make investigable thc nature of ' l1?""."ii"it"" boundarv, or thc interaction bctwccn the two lli"iii""7p."g-"tics Sccondly, ir is arguable that most othcr theories' c'g' within it' in ""-0t""";. .t^." U"raa on scmantic components' can be subsumed it ts Thirdly' lines' logicel ."-r"r r",ft.y are built on consistentand linguistic in mosr support with the .""ri"p" ",lri rrt. kind of rhcory many dissenters and many undespite circles, piit""opttical Jna of the issues in pragmatics have l"-trr"a ptoUt"-". Finalty, many point' and to understand ,rL.n hiti"ti".tty from this particularvantage from thc same dircction' But ii"i orr" rn,rt, ", Ieast at 6rst approach well to remain agnostic'whatcver uiil-","1y, ,tt. p."gmaticist may do s€mantictheory is sssumed for working PurPoses' thcory Thc point here, however, is th.t whatever kind of semantic cannot simply broad scnse a in of meaning aspects many is adopted, and be.ccommodated if the theory is to havc an intcrnal cohcrcnce mcaning' of nature the about we know what now consistency.From the a hybrid or modular account seems inescapablc:thete rcmains pragmatrcs and a a scmantics components' hope that with two working in tandem, each can be built on relatively homogencous 'nd be sy.t"mati. lines. Such a hybrid theory will almost certainly heteroand amorphous single than a principled simpler and more
geneoustheory of semantics. So the notion that pragmatics might be lhe study of aspccts of meaningnot covered in semanlicscertainly has somc cogency' But we need to know how the broad sense of meaning, on which the definition relics, is to bc delimited. This broad senseshould includc the ironic, metaphoric and implicit communicative content of an utterance, and so it cannot bc restrictcd to the conventional contcnt of what is said. But does it include a// the infercnces thet csn be madc from (a) what is said and (b) all the available facts about the world known to participants? Suppose that Moriarty says that his watch broke, and from this Shcrlock Holmes infers that he perpetratcd thc crimc: although the infotmation may have been indirectly conveycd, we should be loath to say that Moriarty communicatcd it. For communicationinvolvesthe notionsof intention and agency,and only
L2 Dertfl;ngPlagmatts
The scoPe of Pragtnolt.s those inferences that are openly intended to be conveyed can properly be said to have been communicated To help us drau'a line between the incidental transfer of information, and communication propcr' we may appeal to an important idea of the philosopher Grice (t9571. Distinguishing between what he calls natural meaning (as in ?lose meaning or meaning-nn blach clouds mean rait), and non-natural (equivalent to the notion of intentional communication), Grice gives the follorlins characterization of meaning-nn:r3 S meant-nn z by uttering U if and only if: (i) S intended LI to cause some effec! z in recipient l{ (ii) S intended (i) to be achieved simply by ll recognizing that intention (i)
( r o)
Here, S stands for speaker (in the case of spoken communication; for sender or communicator in other cases)i H for hearer' or more accurately, the intended recipient; "uttering U" for ulterance ol a linguis t ic t ok en, i. e. a s en t e n c e p a r t , s t n t e n c e , o r s t r i n g o f s e n t t n c e s or sentence parts (or the Production of non - linguistic communicative acts); and z for (roughly) some belief or volition invoked in H Such a definition is likely to be opaque at first reading, but $'hat it essentially states is that communication consists of thc 'sender' t h i n k o r d o s o m e t h i n g , j u 's t b y int ending t o c aus e t he' r e c e i v e r 't o the 'sender' is tr-ving to cause ' tbat to recognize getting the receiver' that thought or action. So communication is a complex kind of intention that is achieved or satisned just by being recognized. In the process of communication, the 'scnder's' communicative intention i.c bec om es r : nut ual k nowled g e t o 's e n d e r ' ( S ) a n d 'r e c e i v c r '( H ) , (and so ad knows S knows that H knows that S knows that H state inhnitum) that S has this particular intention.r{ Attaining this of mutual knowledge of a communicative intention is to have successfully communicated. A simple illustration may help to clariiy the concept: it distinguishes between two kinds of 'boos', or
behind a tree' to frighten someone suppose I leap out from "rrempts in vou by an effect caused I have you' frighten il.l'"I ,n"", "utotise the behind I am know that You ,.r1ural ' m eans.I t ut now suppose all thal you know know I out' and to leap ,."-., rou ur" "*O"tting me you by leaping out' just by getting vou frighten (maybe) i """ "lff to frighten you' Only the secondis an instance to ,ealir" thut I intend his lmeaning-nn) in Grice's sense Grice intended oi we but "o--ur,;."tlo.t to cover such non-verbal cases' l"nni,ion of "ot"-unication where here (and henceforth) only with those cases i,ill b" "o.t"..n"d meanswhereby the communlcatlve linguisticbehaviour is part of the intention is recognized. reflexive A puzzle that immediately arises is how this complex recipient' by the recognized to be communicativeintention is meant by knowledge of Sur"ly, o.t" could argue, it can only be recognized we can do away case but in that someconvention that U means z; of communi an account with talk of complex intentionsand construct But thts signal cationbas€d directly on the notion of conventional means speaker missesGrice's essentialinsight, namely that what the all' by U is not necessarilyclosely related to the meaning of U at for the Indeed U may have no conventional meaning, which allows for thus ultimately and expressions, nonce terms, new of creation these of how (for an explanation change of language aspects some communicationsmay be understood,seeSchiffer' I97z: Chapter V)' But crucial for pragmatics,Grice's theory explains how there can be (Grice's interesting discrepancies between speaher-meaning is Linguistics For example, meaning-nn)and sentence-meaniog.rs to speaker by the intended may be lasdaating said ironically communicate'Linguistics is deadly boring'. Further' there appear to be generalconventionsabout the use of languagethat require (ot' perhaps,merely recommend) a certain degree of implicitness tn r!
meaning Ihis distinction is som€times ralked about in tetms of convcved ln rhis book, instcad ofthe not;on literal mean'n8' w€ meaninE content Ghe ot conv€atioral shall erefer the te.ms s€ntence'hecnirg s€ntcnccs)' la(er to cov€r linSuistic erPressions thar are not necess$ilv is The ahhoush it is hard to do *ithout tl"€ adjectiv'l uses of /tla'al'eade' t 9 7 9 a : (s c c e G a z d a r' c l c a r i s e n ri re l v s c o n c e p t s o f t h e s e * a rn rd t h a t n o n e b€tween rhe | 57ll; searl€, IeTeb: Ch.pter s) The'e is a Possible distinction buch'l norions sent€nce-m€anins and lireral meanina, sJjh thar e u- h,.h th' but onlv compositional) the othtr (on€ idioma!ic, t nss has two senlenc€_mean we shall o n e I i t e . a l m€ a n i n s (t h e c o mp o s i t i o n a t ' n o n -i d i o ma t i ' re a d i n s ) B u r vs. Iiterrl
r
l' hcr e is a slisht r ephr as i ns of ( ;r i c e's ( 'e5?) for m ul ar i r h htr t l es i ti m attd di s c us s i on I hope, by S.hiffcr's ( 1972: 'a) i n Lc r i s , r e&r , and Sc hi ffer . ' r The concepr of mut ual k now l edge i s di s c us s c d r e72: Joff, and is ofc ons i der abl e potenti al i m por tan.e to pr al tm 'r 'c thtor y ; wl\^r sPtaker and e-s. one may qanr to say that a speaker p/etuhbot.t s ec addr essee mutually k now ( atthous h i her e .r e di l i c ul ti ts w ,i h thi s v i es Chapter a belo*) . S c hi tr e. ( t e72: 39) !r gues thtr thc defi n'tx '. of '" ani ,s 'uu should in facr m ake ex pl i c i t r efer enc e r o the c onc ePt of m utual k nos l eds e For a r ecent collec ti on of paper s on l he s ubj e.t s et Sm i l h, '9t12.
r6
n o i € x D l o i t t h i s d i s ri n c t i o n b e l o w
The scoPeof Ptagmatics communication, with the consequencethat it is virlually ensuredthql what the speakermeans by any utterance U is not exhaustedby the meaning of the linguistic form uttered (seeChapter 3 below). How then is the full communicative intention to be recognized? By takirrg into account, not only the meaning of U, but also the precisq mechanisms(like irony, or general assumptionsof a certain level of implicitness)which may causea divergencebetween the meaning of U and what is communicated by the utterance of U in a particular context. Much of this book is concerned with spelling out these mechanismswhich, like other aspectsof linguistic knowledge,we use daily in an unconsciousway. I f we now adopt G rice's meaniag-nnas the scopeof meaning in the definition of pragmaticsin (9), weshall include most of the phenomena that we want to include, like the ironic, metaphoric and indirect implications of what we say (elements 5, 6 and 7 in Table I . r ), and excludethe unintended inferencesthat intuitively have no part to play in a theory of communication. lt should be added that thete are a number of philosophical problems with Grice's theory (see e.g. Schifrer, r 97z), but they do not seemto vitiate the value of the central idea. We now have some sketch of the scopeof meaning that is referred to in the definition, namely all that can be said to have been communicated, in Grice's sense,by the use of a linguistic token in a context. But can we give as a definition of pragmatics nothing but the complem€nt of, or the residue left by, semanticsin the freld of meaning? Is there no conceptualintegrity to the scopeof pragmatics itself? We might try to 6nd such a conceptual unity by making the distinction between sentence-meaningand utterance-meaning,and hope then to be able to equate semanticswith the study of sentencemeaning and pragmatics with the study of utterance-meaning. The distinction betweensentence and uiierance is offundamental importance to both semanticsand pragmatics. Essentially,we want to say that a sentenceis an abstract theoreticalentity defined within a theory of grammar, while an utteranceis the issuanceof a sentence, a sentence-analogue,or sentence-fragment,in an actual context. Empirically, the relation between an utterance and a corresponding sentencemay be quite obscure (e.g. the utterance may be elliptical, or contain sentence-fragmentsor 'false-starts'), but it is customary (after Bar-Hillel) to think of an utteranceas the pairing of a sentence r8
r.z Defning Ptagmatics which the sentencewas uttered' 4n.la context, namely the context in difficult, to maintain thts practice exceedingly in but i,'" i-oor,utta, As an index of the meaning slu( lY of lne ln distincrionat all tlmes oscillate between frequently thar linguists note iim"uf,v, one may ttuth condit;on illocutionaryJotce' presupposition, i.rign;.U n"tl"". tike contheoretical important or utterances' although lo"'"n,*".t follo* from the choice One may claim that the confusion "Iq.r"r,""" yet further distinctions: thus Lyons i"r" ,"",.rt," from the need for (rg77a) advocatesdistinctions between text-sentencesand systemsentence-types and sentence-tokens, utte4ance-types and ""rri"r,""", utterance-products lt ts utterance-tokens,and utterance-actsand make the unlikely,though, that we can handle all these if we cannot doubt find (and can no readet the alert systematically first distinction we teasons' For expositional book)' within this this sort mistakesof but in this book' various ways in word utterance use the shallneed to where it is used to contrast with settrerceit should be taken in the sense advocatedby Bar-Hillel, as a senlence (or sometimes string of paired with a context.r6And this is the senserelevant to sentences) the proposalthat semanticsis concernedwith sentence'meaning,and p.agmatics with utterance-meanlng. Many authors accept this equation implicitly, but there are a numberof problems with it. In the first place,in the (rare)caseswhere utterance-meaning(i.e.where the speaker sentence-meaningexhausts meantexactly what he said, no more, no less), the same content would be assignedboth to semanticsand pragmatics. In other words, we would need to restrict the notion of utterance-meaning in such a way that we subtract sentence-meaning, and in that case we are back to a definition of pragmatics by residue. But there are other problems: for there are aspectsof sentence-meaningwhich, at least on truthconditionalor other narrow semantic theories' cannot be accounted for within semantic theory Such aspects are conventional but non-truth-conditional elements of sentence'meaning,e.g. wbat we shall call comtentional implicatures and (at least on many theories) is made that wh't sPe'ke's Produce '' Here rhe simplifyins rssumPtion LyoB'3 !4./anc.-D.od!..t - tr. .quiv.lcnr to sntenc's' Lvons's rvrttn_ $.rtrn.?r or th.or.ric.t €ntitic!. Thc limititions of such !n $sumPtion will be made clelr in Chaptcr 6. Th. oihe. main wtv in which th€ rerm rrt"an" wilt be used is cs 6 Dre-th€o'.tical term to tab.l "anv sr"tch oftrlk' bv onc person, bcfore .nd !fte' qhich th€r€ is silcnce on bchalf of th't person" (H arri s , IqS r: 14; l doP t.d i n Lv ons , r977i :26)
r9
r.2 Defring Plagmatict
The scoPeof Pragrnatict presuppositions,and perhaps even aspects of illoeutionaty Jorca (concepts expounded in the Chapters below). On the assumption of a truth-conditional semantics, such aspects of sentence-meaning would have to be dealt with in pragmatics, and so there can be no direct equation of sentence-meaning and semantics. On the same assumption, there is another overwhelming problem for the proposall for it is not sentences but rather utterances that make definite statements,and thus can sensibly be assignedtruth conditions (as philosophers have long noted; see e.g. Strawson, r95o; Stalnaker, r97z). The argument rests in part on the pervasive nature of deixis (see Chapter z below) in natural languages,for sentenceslike (r r ) are true or false only relative to contextual parameters, thanks to the fact that .1,t olrl and the tense ofan are variables given specific values only on particular occasionsof utterance (i.e. ( I r ) is true only when spoken by certain speakers,those who are sixty-three, or true of individuals only at certain times, when they are sixty-three): (rr)
I am now sixty-three years old
These facts seem to establish that truth conditions must be assigned to utterances, i.e. sentenceswith their associatedcontexts ofutterancc, not to sentences alone (or, if one likes, truth conditions include context conditions). So again, it makes no sense to equate semantics with the study of sentence-meaning. There is another formulation of essentially the same proposal: semantics should be concerned with meaning out of context, or non-context-dependent meaning, and pragmatics with meaning tn context. The strong version of this, apparently held by Katz (I977), assumesthat there is some given, natural level ofcontext-independent meaning, and that sentence-meaning can be described independently and prior to utterance-meaning. But as we have argued, and will illustrate below, this does not seem to be the case. For, if one accepts a truth-conditional semantics then one is forced to state truth conditionson sentences-in-contexts, or ifone prefers(as Katz would) that semantics is concerned with aspects of meaning assigned by convention to linguistic forms, then one includes context-dependent aspects of meaning within semantics. A weaker version of the same proposal would be to consider that semantics is an abstraction away from context-dependent utterances, in so far as this is possible (as suggestedby Carnap, !959: r3; Lyons, rg77a: 59r). In any case,it does not seem that the distinction between sentence-meaning and 20
can be relied upon to clarify the distinction utterance-meaning pragmatics' and h.t*een s.-antic" "'W. left with the unreFned definition that pragmatics is "r" of those aspects of meaning not covered in concerned with the study such a definition fails to draw ]"ar.r,i"". Despite many advantages, pragmatic phenomena' Let itt"ntior, ao,h.,rttifying characteristicsof give the context-dependent would u, ,,r.n ,o another definition that nature of such phenomena more centrality: (r 2)
Pragmatics is the study of the relations between language and conteit that are basic to an account of language understanding
Here the term language understanding is used in the way favoured by workers in artificial intelligence to draw attention to the fact that understanding an utterance involves a gteat deal more than knowing the meanings of the words uttered and the grammatical relations between them. Above all, understanding an uttetance involves the makingof infereacesthat will connect what is said to what is mutually assumedor what has been said before. The strengths of such a definition are as follows. It recognizes that pragmatics is essentially concerned with inference (Thomason, t977): given a linguistic form uttered in a context, a pragmatic theory must account for the inference of presuppositions, implicatures, illocutionary force and other pragmatic implications. Secondly, unlike the de6nition in (8), it does not make the distinction between semanticsand pragmatics along the encoded/unencoded line; this is important because, as we shall see, there is still controversy over whether such pragmatic implications as presuppositions or illocutionary force are or ar€ not encoded or grammaticalized in linguistic forms. Thirdly, it includes most aspects of the study of principles of language usage, for there seems to be a general principle of the following kind: for each systematic set of constraints on the use of language, there will be a corresponding set of inference-procedures that will be applied to languageunderstanding(seeLevinson, I979a). The weaknessesare, unfortunately, equally clear. First, pragmatics will then include the study of the inte.action between linguistic knowledgeand the entirety of participants' knowledge of the world (or 'encylopaedicknowledge'). For example, in order to understand the little story in ( r 3), one needs to know the following assorted facts: presentsare usually bought with money; piggy-banks are used to hold money; piggy-banksare generallymade of a densematerial like metal
1.2 Defni g plagmatics
The scoPeoJ Ptagmatics or plastic; money inside a container of dense material will generally rattle, etc. ( r 3, 1
Jill wanted to get Bill a birthday present, so she went and foun;1 her piggy-bank; she shook it, but there was no noise; she would have to make Bill a oresent
This example comes from work in artificial intelligence (Charniak, r 972) which is concernedwith the attempt to translatethe signi6canc6 of ordinary utterancesinto an explicit representationthat might be used by a computer to produce 'intelligent ' responses.The immense difficulties of such translations have served to emphasizejust how great a role assumed knowledge plays in the understanding of ulterances. However, this interpretivedependenceon backgroundassumPtions hasbeen used as an argument againstthe possibility of any systematic study of language understanding: if the set of potentially relevant assumptionsis coincident with the total set of facts and beliefs held by participants,then to study this interpretive processwill be to study the total sum ofhuman knowledgeand beliefs (Katz & Fodor, t963). The argument is clearly fallacious:just as rules of logical deduction can be stated which will apply to ao indefinitely large set of propositions, so it is quite possible that the ptinciples that underlie the interaction between utterances and assumptions (however particular they may be) can be simply and rigorously stated. Nevertheless, if pragmatics is to be considered a cornponentrllithin linguistic theory (a question to which we shall return), it may be that to include such principles is indeed to include too much. But little serious thought has been given to this problem. Another difficulty facing this deEnition or scopefor pragmatics,is that it calls for some explicit characterization of the notion of coniext. In an earlier definition, where pragmatics was restricted to encodedaspectsof context, one could claim that the relevantasp€cts of context should not be specified in advancebut rather discovered by a survey of the world's languages.Here though, unlessone wants to claim that context is whatever (excluding semantics) produces inferences,some characterizationof context seems required. What then might one mean by context? First, one needs to disringuish between actual situations of utterance in all their multiplicity of features,and the selectionofjust those featuresthat are cultuially and linguistically relevant to the production and interpretation of
of course' Van Dijk, 1976: zg\' The term -..-.onces(seee.g 'oztert' been a have might (although context-description :'::;.;". latter can But (I97o: suggests)' 8o) Bar-Hillel as term, 1""r" boldlv "ootooti"t" ? Lvons to be likelv are features such what ::.::" i; "it"".. above universal principles li.,i.r" folr"*ing (rg?7at s7lJ, over and j.ilr-t" r^a languageusage: (i) knowledge of rcle and r'a't''r (where the speechevent' as speakeror addressee'and ior" ior".. uo,tt role in covers notions of relative social standing)' (ii) ,o"iA ."t", and status (iii)knowledge of formality inowledg" of sputialand temporal/ocatron, meditm (roughly the code or style the of knowledge (i") in"l, -"99r:opriur" to a channel, like the distinction between written and a language)' (v) knowledge of appropriate subject u"ri"ti"" .oot"n "f of appropriate ptottince(or domain determining (,ti\ koowledge riatter, Ochs (r979c), in an extended discussion a of language). the register scope of context is not easy to define "' "The notes of the notion, and psychologieal wotld in which the social one must consider the giDen time " (p r ), " it includes minimally' laiguage useropelatesat any about temporal, spatial,and assumptions languageusers' beliefs and actions(verbal,non-verbal), future socialsettings;prior, ongoing, and and the state of knowledge and attentiveness of those participating in the social interaction in hand " (p.5). Both Lyons and Ochs stress that context must not be understood to e:(clude linguistic features, sincesuch featuresoften invoke the relevant contextual assumptions (a point made nicely by Gumperz (1977) who calls such linguistic fe^tures contextualization cues\' Certainly, in this book, we shall need to include patticipants' beliefs abqut most of the above parameters, including the place of the current utterance within the sequenceof utterancesthat makesup the discourse.Other authorshave beenmore coy: " I have left the central concept of this paper, n^rr.ely pragmatic context,in rather thorough vagueness' and this for the simple reason that I see no clear way to reduce the vaguenessat the moment" (Bar-Hillel, I97o: 8o). Although, along the lines suggestedby Lyons or Ochs, we may be able to reduce the vaguenessby providing lists of relevantcontextual features,we do not seem to have availableany theory that will predict the relevanceof all such features,and this ls perhapsan embarrassmentto a definition that seemsto rely on the notion of context.lT t? For particuler Purp6es pragmaticists ar€ wont to restrict thc naturc of conr.xi in Iine with thc Problems in hand:thus in a wo'k d€.lins mostlt wirh are scts of propositions and implicature, "contexts presupposition
z3
r.z Defning Pragmatics
The scoPeof Ptagmatics Another line of attack on a definition of this sort would start by questioning the notion of language undetstanding, How is this to be construed? A reasonable,and perhaps the only plausible, response would be to say that to understand an utterance is to decode or calculateall that might reasonablyhave been meant by the speaker of the utterance (cf. Strawson, r964). Here the notion of speakermeaning is best explicated, once again, by reference to Grice's concept of meaning-nn, for we are interestedonly in the inferences overtly and intentionally conveyed. So the de6nition really amounts to: pragmatics is the study of the role context plays in speaker-(or utterance-) meaning. But since we have failed to produce a clear notion of context, what we include in context is likely to be whatever we exclude from semanticsin the way of ieaning relations.And so we seem to be back to the idea that pragmatics concerns whatever aspectsof meaning are not included in semantics.(In which case,rt may be objected, the problematic concept of context has been gratuitously introduced.) Certainly the two defrnitions((9) and ( I211 are not far apart; but it might be claimed that at least the one that focuseson the nature of context makes clear that one of the goals of a pragmatic theory should be to explicate that nature. Let us now turn to one of the definitions most favou.ed in thc literature, albeit mostly in an implicit form. This definition would make central to pragmaticsa notion of appropriateness or felicity: ( r4 ,
Pragmatics is the study of the ability of languageusers to pair sentenceswith the contexts in which they would be appropriate
Such a definition shotrld have a nice ring to it, from the point of view of those who wish to place pragmatics on a par with other aspectsof linguistic inquiry. For if pragmatics is to be consideredan aspectof linguistic competencein Chomsky's sense,then like other aspectsit constrrined comprisc
only by consistency contexts
are to
... The consistent sels of propositions
that
be int.rpretcd
as the unique speaker's own 'commitm€nt slate' in the sense of Hamblin (r s7t: rj6)" (Cszd^r, t97sa: t30) ; while in a wor k c onc er ned w i r h l i t€r ar y i nter pr etl r i on, " a c ont.x t i s conskued e. . 'complex .vcnt', viz. as sn orde.ed pair of events of which the 6rst ceuses the sccond. Thc fiist .vent is roushly rhe production of an unerance by the sp€aker, thc sccond the interpret.tion
of the utrerancc by rhe hesrer " (Van Dirk, re76: z9). Bur clearly ! sencral th€ory of aspecrs of conaext relcvsnr to production and inrerprct.tion musr be broade. rhan
24
ability' Further' such a view d1s! consislof some abstractcognitive just as a semantic theory nice parallel with semantics:for ],'"Ja"" " of truth conditions assignment recutsive the say, with i" with the recursive ""t1".""0' pragmatics isconcerned so ,oin.it-f"t-"a fo.-ulae, to the same set of of appropriateoess-condiiions ;;t;;-"* other words' a In interpretations' ."","""""" with rheir semantic and every predict for each principle in o.lg-uai" theory should t*"ti-for-"a teading' semantic particular a on of a language, ""tt,""ce which it would be approprlate' set of contexts in the "'6u"f, enjoys much support' not only among linguists (see u "1"* & Dahl, r 977: I 53; e.s. V an Dijk, 1976: zg; Allwood, Ander sson (originally Austin' philosophers Itron", ,nrr^,574) but also among it is beset with many rq6z and Searle, r969). But unfortunately pragmatics will of oroUl"-". First, as we shall see, most definitions this definition but .,"casionorrerlapwith the field of sociolinguistics, sociolinguistics with a would have as a consequenceexact identity of com' construed,in the manner of Hymes (r97I), as the study fundamental Secondly, it requires a competence' municalive homogeneous speech communlty a culturally of idealization of z pragmatic theories for each construction the or, alternatively, of culturally distinct subnumber the is where I language, in South India, where there a village in For example, communities. honorific particle may have a single castes, distinct may be say twenty just one meaning (e.g. speaker is inferior to addressee) but have twenty distinct rules for its appropiare usagei members of one caste may use it to their cross-cousins,others only to their affines,etc' (for the actualdetailsseeLevinson, I977). Thirdly, speakersofa language do not always comport themselves in the manner recommended by the prevailing mores - they can be outrageous, and otherwise ' inappropriat€'. So such a dehnition would make the data of pragmatics stand in quite an abstract relation to what is actually observablein languageusage,whereasfor many linguists one of tne 'major contributions of pragmaticshas been to dilect attentlon once again to actual language usage. Fourthly, it seems to be a fact that pragmaticconst.aints are genetally defeasible,or not invariable So supposewe attempt, for example,to phraseaccountsofthe pragmatic notion of presuppositionin terms of appropriatenessconditions, we shall6nd that they wrongly predict conditions of usage.For instance, the verb /egle, seems to Presuppose that its complement is true, and 25
t.2 Defn;ng plagmatics
The scoPeof Prugmatics so we could try the following characterization : the sentence Jo[a doetn't regret cheating can only be used appropriately in contexts where it is known (or believed) that John cheated.But unfortunately we can then easily imagine a context in which that sentence mighl be appropriately used, in which it is ro, assumed that John cheated: for example, you thought he had cheated, asked me whether he now repents,but I tellyou he neverdid, and persuadeyouaccordingly, and then I say So John doesa't regret cheating (Gazdar, r979a: ro5). The problem is quite general: when the pragmatic implications of an utterance do not match the context, then in general the utterance ls not treated as in any way infelicitous or inappropriate or bizarre rather the pragmatic implications are simply assumed not to hold. But the use ofthe notion of appropriateness-conditions would in that case simply make the wrong predictions. Finally, and decisively, there is another problem with the use of the notion of appropriateness as a primitive or basic concept in pragmatics. For, there is a widespread phenomenon that Grice has called exploitation: in general, if there is some communicative convention C that one does A in context Y, then suppose instead one does B in Y, or does A but in context Z, one will not normally be taken to have simply violated the convention C and produced nonsense. Rather, one will generally be taken to have exploited the conventions in orderto communicate some further pertinent message. For example, if I normally doffmy cap only to my superiors,but on anoccgsion doffmy cap to an equal, then I can efrectively communicate an ironic regard, with either a joking or a hostile intent (the non-linguistic example is intended to draw attention to the great generality of the phenomenon; for a study of a particular linguistic practice and the jokes thus made available, see the study of the openings of telephone calls by Scheglof (r979a)). Irony is a good example of this exploitation and the difficulties such usagespose for a pragmatic theory based on appropriateness, for ironies take their efrectandtheircommunicativeimport, and thustheirappropriateness, precisely from their inappropriateness. So the problem is in general that, in being grossly inappropriate, onecan neverthelessbe supremely appropriate! ilrue, one may need some notion of 'normal practice' (in preference perhaps to appropriateness) even to describe such phenomena, but it would be a mistake to limit pragmatics to the study of that normal practice or appropriateness. Pragmatics should be z6
precisely with such mechanisms whereby a speaker 6uch concerned more than, or something quite different from, what he ."n--""" by inventively exploiting communicative conventions' il ,r"tty ""yt, d. that, despite its initial attractions, the proposal that i" -u", "ott"lt be based on a notion of appropriateness should be or"g-",i"" to allow a pragmatic theory ii"J"ta"a t language usage is too elastic one accepts that the goal instead If a concept. such J b" b"""d on in the btoad Gricean predict the meaning, is to of a pr"gm"ti. th"ory then none of these cont€xt' in a specified utterance of "tt ""nrl, difficulties arises. pragAt this point, someone searching for a simple definition of to an possibility is to retreat matics is likely to be exhausted. One the provide list of a or exteasional definition, i.e. simply to ostenshte (cf Stalnaker, ohenomena for which a pragmatic theory must account follows; run as might definition a Such iqzz).
(rs )
Pragmatics is the study of deixis (at least in part)' imPlicature, presupposition, speech acts, and aspects of discourse structurc
This list would certainly provide a reasonable indication of some central topics in pragmatics, but the definition scarcely helps those unfamiliar with these topics and has other more serious drawbacks' For in common with all extensional definitions, it provides no criteria for the inclusion or exclusion of further phenomena that may come to our attention; at best one can say that what warrants pragmatic treatment for some new topic is simply linguists' consensus based on intuitive 'family resemblance'to more familiar pragmatic topics' But surely such intuitive resemblance must be bascd on some underlying implicit common themes - our difficulty is that when we try to spell these out we arrive at the various problems experienced in our earlier attempts at definition. At this point, we might step back and attempt some conceptual clarification from other angles. Katz & Fodor (t963) tried to delimit the scopeof semanticsby a boundary drawing exercise:the 'upper bound' of semantics was provided by the borders of syntax and phonotogy, and the 'lower bound' by a theory of pragmatics, uriderstood as a theory ofcontextual disambiguation. Using the same strategy, we could say that the upper bound ofpragmatics is provided by the borders of semantics, and the lower bound by sociolinguistics (and perhaps psycholinguistics too). Indirectly, we have already 27
The scoPeoJ Plagmotics explored this way ofthinking in our consideration ofthe proposal that pragmatics is 'meaning minus semantics', and the idea that some distinction from sociolinguistics is necessary was responsible for some of the dissatisfaction with a number of the definitions above. We have already seen the dimculties of drawing a neat dividing line between semantics and pragmatics; given the ctoss-cutting crit€rla of conventionality and non-defeasibility (see again Table I.t), the best strategy seems to be to restrict semantics to truth-conditional content. Assuming that this is accepted(and many linguists would resistit). we can turn our considerationto the lower bound, the border between pragmatics and sociolinguistics. Here things are even more problematic. Let us take two paradigmatic kinds of sociolinguistic phenomenon, and ask how they fall with respect to two of our definitions of pragmatics, namely, the most restrictive and the broadest definitions. Consider honoriffcs, most simply exemplified by the polite singular pronoun ofaddress in European languages(like trousvs. ,a in French * Iet us call this the V vs. the T pronoun). There are a number of sociolinguisticinvestigationsof such honori6cs and their usage(e.g. Brown & Gilman, r96o; Lambert & Tucker, r976). If we take the view that pragmatics is concerned only with grammatically encoded aspects of context (see definition (8) above), then we might propose a tidy division of labour between pragmatic and sociolinguistic accounts of honorifics : pragmatics would be concerned with the meaning of honori6cs (e.g, with the specification that V encodes that the addressee is socially distant or superior), while sociolinguistics would be concerned with the detailed recipes for usageof such items (e.g. the specification that amongst some segment of the speech community, V is used to aunts, uncles, teachers and so on, or whatever the local facts are). Such studies would be exclusive but complementary. Now, however, consider what happens if we take pragmatics to be the study of the contribution of context to language understanding: suppose normally an aunt gives her nephew T, but on an occasion switches to V, then in order to predict the intended ironic or angry meaning, a pragmatic theory must have available the detailed recipe for usage that tells us that V is not the normal usage, and thus not to be taken at face value. So on this broader scope for pragmatics, the neat division oflabour collapses - pragmatic accounts of language understanding will at least need accessto sociolinguistic information. 28
1.2 Defining Plagmatics phenomenon' Taking another paradigmatic kind of sociolinguistic with social associated realizations phonological n"m.ly the variable of our definitions ask how let us Labov, rg72a), Jirf""t, (r"" e.g. that view, most restrictive the On such facts. treat i."n-uti"" with linguistically encoded aspectsof context, i""on""rned lr"i-rti"" to lie outside the purview of pragmatics' Such lu"i f""t" *orrld "eem of etcodi4g that an exclusion would tety on the restricted sense question are (a) intentionrequ]ned,inlet alia, that the significances in (b) conventionally ally conveyed (and we can now say' meant-nn) and associatedwith-the relevant linguistic forms. For, as we noted, the phonoassociationof particular accents (realized by proportions of logical variables) with panicular social or geographical communities is generally not part of an intentional message(Labov (1972a) argues that such variables are only very partially under conscious control), nor are such social significances associated with linguistic forms by arbitrary synchtonic convention so much as by regular historical and social process, However, if we take the broader scope of pragmatics representedby the definition that relates context to language understanding, there may well be cases where sociolinguistic variables would be of relevance to language understanding. Gumperz (r977)' for example, has argued that such variables can be used to invoke domains of interpretation, e.g. to mark transitions from chat to business. Or, consider the case of a comedian telling a joke about a Scotsman, an lrishman and an Englishman - he may well rely on mimicked features of accent to track which protagonist is talking' In short, drawing a boundary between sociolinguistic and pragmatic phenomena is likely to be an exceedingly difficult enterprise. In part this can be attributed to the diverse scopes that have been claimed for sociolinguistics(seeTrudgill, r978: Introduction), but in part it comes about because sociolinguists are interest€d in inter-relations between language and society however these are manifested in grammatical systems: sociolinguistics is not a component or level of a grammar in the way that syntax, semantics, phonology and, quite plausibly, pragmatics are. Anotherangle from which we might attempt conceptuai clarification of the issues is to ask: what are the goals of a pragmatic theory ? The terrr. goal is used here in the special way current in linguistic theorizing, and is to be distinguished from the ultimate goals or motivations that might prompt interest in a theory. Those ultimate
I. 2 Def.ning Ptagmatics
The scoPcof PraEmattcs motivstions will bc the subject of the next section, but here we arc intcrested in exactly what it is that wc expect a pragmstic theory to do. Onc abstractway of thinking about this is to think of a pragmatic theory as a 'black box' (an as yct uncxplicated mecl,anism), and to ask: what should be the input to such I theory, and what should be the output (or: what is thc theory meant to predict, given what particular information) ? We can thcn think of a theory as a tunctron in thc mathcm8tical sense, which assigns onc set of cntities (the doarain) to anothcr set ofentitics (the razgc), and the question is, what ar€ thcse sets of entities ? Thinking the same way about syntax, we can say ihEt a givcn set of rules (a syntactic analysis) is a function whosc domain is thc sct of possible combinatioos of morphemes in thc languag€ L, and whose range has just two elements, denoting the grsmmatical end the ungrammatical in L;rt or thinking about semantics, w€ might say that a s€mantic analysis of L has as its domain the s€t of wcll-formed sentences of L, and as its range the set of semantic represcntations or propositions representing the meaning of each of thosc scntences. It is by no mcans so obvious what th€ input rnd output of a pragmatic rheory should be. Two authors, at lcast, have been explicit on this subject. Katz (1977:. rg) suggeststhat the input should be the full grammatical (including scrrantical)description of a sentence,together with information about the context in which it was uttercd, while the output is a set of rcpresentations (or propositions) which cspture the full meaning of thc utterancc in thc context specified. Since a sentence plus its context of use can be called an utterance, Katz's suggestion smounts to thc idea that a pragmatic thcory is a function whose domain is the set of utterances and whose range is the set of propositions. Or symbolrcally, if we let S be the set of sentencesrn language L, C the set of possible contexts, P the set of propositions, and U thc cartcsian product of SxC -i.e. the set of possible combinations of mcmbers of S with members of C, gnd we let the corresponding lower case letters stand fo. elements or members of e a c h o f th o s e s e ts (i .e . s € S , c € C , p e P , u e U )l (16) fful = P (ott f(', c) = Pl r. Oi,in.l...n ivcprrt.nc.,.fundion/,o,nrhct.rofmorph.m.combin..ions ,o rh€ *Gll- v.. ill-form.d &n..nccr, or . funcrion rh.r ,ndr, thc r.i of morph..n. cohbinrrio i"o rhc lf.[- v.. i tt-formcd ,cnrcoc.s. ScGAltqood. And.'r.on & D.ht (r977: 9fr) fo. ct.mcnr..y crpodtion.
3o
i.e./is a function that assignstoutterancesthe propositionsthat expresstheir full meaning in context ways (rg79a 4-5), on the other hand, wishes to capture the Gazdar he are uttered; they which in the context ciaage utterances in which goal, and with that is incompatible formulation that Katz's shows rherefore suggests instead : J@) : c (or:.f(s'c') = c) 1l7\ i-e- / is a function from utterances to cont€xts' nsmely the contextsbrought about by eachutterance(or:if assignsto each sentenceplus the context prior to its utte.ance,a secondcontext causedbY its utterance) The idea here is that the shift from the context prlor to an utterance to the cohtext post uttetance itself constitutes the communicational content of the utterance. It suggeststhat pragmatic theory as a whole should be basedon the notion ofcontext change (seesome applications in ChaPters4 and 5 below). Both these formulations are consistent with the definitions of pragmaticsas 'meaning minus sernantics'or as the contribution of ,o language understanding Our other definitions might "on,"*, require slightly diflerent formulations. Forexamplg, where pragmatics is construedasthe study of grammaticallyencodedaspectsofcontext, we might want to say: (r8)
l(s) = c where C is the set of contextspotentially encodedby elements of S i.e. / is a rheory that 'computes out' of sentenc€sthe contexts which they encode
Or, alternatively, where pragmatics is defined as the study of constraints on the appropriatenessof utterances,we could say: (rs)
. f ( u) : o where,4 hasjust two elements,denotingthe dPPropriatcvs the indq/l oqriate utterances i.e./ is a theory that selectsjust those felicitous or appropriate pairings of sentencesand contexts- or identifies the set of approprrateu!terances
Or, where pragmaticsisdefined ostensivelyasa listoftopics, we could say: (zo)
J@) : b where each element of B is a combination of a speechact' a 1I
The scoPe oJ Ptagmaltcs set of presuppositions, a set of conversational implicatures, erc, i.e. / is a theory that assigns to each utterance the speech act it performs, the propositions it presupposes,the propositions it conversationally implicat€s, etc.
Clearly, there are other possibilities, and it is far from obvious, at thrs stag€ of the development of the subject, just which of the many possible formulations is the best. But as the subject develops we ca1 expect researchers to be more explicit about exactly how they expect a pragmatic theory to be formulated. l-et us sum up the discussion so far. We have considered a number of rather different delimitations of the field. Some of these seern deficient: for example, the restriction of pragmatics to grammatically encoded aspects of context, or the notion that pragmatics should be built on the concept of appropriateness. The most promising are the minus semantics', definitions that equate pragmatics with'meaning or with a theory of language understanding that takes context into account, in order to complement the contribution that semantics makes to meaning. They are not, however, without their difliculties, as we have noted. To some extent, other conceptions of pragmatics may ultimately be consistent with these. For example, as we noted, the definition of pragmatics as concerned with encoded aspects of context may be less restrictive than it seems at first sight; for if in general (a) principles of Ianguage usage have as corollaries principles of interpretation, and (b) principles of language usagc arc likely in the long run to impinge on grammar (and some empirical support can be found for both propositions), then theories about pragmatrc aspects of meaning *'ill be closely related to theories about the grammaticalization of aspects of context. So the multiplicity of alternative definitions may well seem greater than it really is. In any case, we embarked on this defrnitional enterprise with the warning that satisfactory definitions of academic fields are rarely available, and the purpose was simply to sketch thc sorts of concerrrs, and the sorts of boundary issues, with which pragmaticists are implicitly concerned. As was suggested at the outset, if one really wants to know what a particular field is concerned with at any particular time, one must simply observe what practitioners do. The rest of this book will largely be concerned with an overvierv of some of the central tasks that pragmaticists *restle with3z
r.2 Defning Pragmatics to a discussionofthe motivations that lie behind Beforeproceeding the field in recent years, it would be as well to clarify -'-"-;;.,911l of Deseen to play within linguistic theory rherole that Pragmatlcsmlgnr see pragmatics as *fr"fa. There is no doubt that some workers and concerns' " methods linguistic ". l.unni.g commentary on current with the usage juxtaposition language of actual as the i,r based' ".J is theorizing -f" data on which much current iighiy id"ulir"a ways in the pragmatics to delimit Vi""rr"a in this way, attempts not be a would pragmatics would make little sense; "U""" afresh way of looking ""ptor"a theory but a lo|ootr"n, or level of linguistic In that case'pragmaticswould linguistics' of iirn. a"," "na -.,hods than semantics lt is therefore l" fi"ld mo.e ukitt to sociolinguistics " of this view, there is a the merits whatever that, seeing worthwhile can take its plaqe beside need fo. a kind of pragmatic theory that within an overall theory of phonology and ,yn,"*, ""-"n,i"" grammar. of The need for a pragmatic component in an integrated theory way is to ways One various for in be argued can linguistic ability trichotomy pragmatics-semantics-syntax the consider the relation of Chomsky to the competence-performance dichotomy advanced by grammars ate view' In Chomsky's (seeKempson, I975: Chapter 9). a language of is knowledge modelsofcompetence, where competence idealized away from (especialty) irregularity or error and variation; (see to this, Katz influentially added idealization away from context Lyons, tg77at 585-9I, for discussionof kinds of idealization)' On such a view, insofar as pragmatics is concerned with context, it can be claimed that by definition pragmaticsis not part of competence' and thus not within the scope of grammatical descriptions' But suppose now we require that adequat€ grammatical descriptions include specifications ofthe meaning ofevery word in a language, and such a requifement has normally been assumed' then we 6nd words whose meaning-specifications can only be given by reference to contexts of usage. For example, the meaning of words like well, oh andanyway in English cannot be explicated simply by statements of context-independentcontent: rather one has to refer to pragmatlc conceptslike relevance,implicature, or discoursestructure (this claim will be substantiatedin the Chapters below) So either grammars (models of competence)must make reference to pragmatic information,or they cannot include full lexicaldescriptionsof a Ianguage. But if the lexicon is not comPlete, then neither is the syntax'
L3
The scoPeof Plagmatics semanticsor phonology likely to be. There are other arguments thar have been made along the same general lines, to the effect that ro capture regular processes(e.g. syntactic regularities)one must refer to pragmatic concepts(seee.g. Ross, r 975), arguments that will arise from time to tim€ in the Chapters below. Another more powerful kind of argument goesas follows. In ordcr to construct an integrated theory of linguistic competence, it is essentialto discoverthe logical ordering ofcomponents or levels.For example,Chomsky has elegantly argued that syntax is logically prior to phonology, in that phonological description requires reference ro syntactic categories,but not vice versa; syntax is thus aulonomous with respect to phonology, and phonology (non-autonomous wit\ respectto syntax)can be envisagedas taking a syntacticinput, on the basisofwhich phonologicalrepresentationscanbe built up. Accepting for a moment this kind of argument, the question is, is it possibleto argue that there is some accepted component of grammar that rs non-autonomous with respect to pragmatics (i.e. some component requiring pragmatic input) ? If so, pragmaticsmust be logically prior to that component, and so must be included in an overall theory of linguistic competence. It seemsfairly clear that it is possibleto make this argument in a convincing way. For example, we have already noted the argument (and seeChapter z below) that if semanticsis to be truth-conditional, then the truth conditions can only be assigned to utterances, not sentences- in othea words, contextual speci6cationsare a necessary input to a semanticcomponent, and thus pragmaticsis (at leastin thrs respect)leprior to semantics. Gazdar (rg79a: 164-8\ assemblesa number of detailed arguments to this effect (and philosophers have long noted further such arguments -see e.g. Donnellan, r966; Stalnaker, r97z; Kaplan, r978; etc.). One of these, due to Wilson (r975: r5r), will have to suffice here, and holds notjust for truthconditional semanticsbut for virtually any semantictheory independent of pragmatics. Consider the following sentence:
having a child Getting married and having a child is better than and getting married
(zr)
be given in Chapter 3 to suggest that the word Good arguments will mean (have the semantic content) ' and then', a-J of itself does not to a temporal dimension' So' there is no lui i, tt"",t"t with re$pect p ar.dqandq andt' or between liff"r"n"" i. ,r-onrtc content between :getting married and having a child' and 'having a child and getting explain that (22) does not mean the ,i"ttl"J'. How then are we to sameas (2r) ? getting Having a child and getting married is better than married and having a child
(22,
lines' We have to provide a pragmatic account, along the following can be The'and then' reading of both azds in the first sentence events of shown to be systematically'read in' to conjoined reports tell them events: of reporting gove.ning the principle pragmatic by a this is accepted' lf occurred will or have which they in ln th" o.a"t (zz)) would only then the semanticcontent of(2I ) (and identically for (where A is composed A than is better A that allow the interpretation But such a to ordering)' with respect p, neutral q and ol p and q or in any case and or meaningless, false necessarily reading is either the right be assigned can only Th€ sent€nce semantically anomalous. semantic given the correct be truth conditions, or alternatively representation, if the pragmatic significance of azd in this sentential context (namely the 'and then' interpretation) is taken into account before doing the semantics. This amounts to a concise argument that semantics is not autonomous with respect to pragmatics, and that pragmaticsp.ovides part of the necessaryinput to a semantictheory' But if pragmatics is, on occasions, logically prior to semantics, a general linguistic theory simply must incorporate pragmatics as a component or level in the overall integrated theory. Curreni inierest in pragmatics There are a number of convergent reasons for the growth of interestin pragmaticsin recentyears. Some of theseare essentially historical; the interest developedin part as a reaction or antidote to Chomsky's treatment of languageas an abstract device, or mental ability, dissociablefrom the uses,usersand functions of language(an r,3
'i Therc arc also simpl. ergumcnts that pr.Smatics rcquires sem.ntic input: for exampl€, !n ironic anrerpr€lation of an utt.r.nc. can only bc calcutateo if the semr ntic ( or ' lneral ') r c adi ng i s al r c r dy av ai l abl c . So the r eo k i nds of.raumcnts tog€thcr sccm to show thrt n.ithcr scmantics nor pragmatics is eutonomous componeht
34
with rcspect to €a.b othcr - info.mrtion must bc available to th. othe..
provided
by the one
Cu/rent intelest in plagmatics
r.3 Cuftent inletest in plagmatics
The scoPeof Pragmabcs
I
abstractionthat Chomsky in part drew from the post-Bloomfieldian structuralismthat predominatedimmediatelybeforetransformational generative grammar). In looking for the means to underrnlns Chomsky's position, generathte temanticists were then attracted to a considerablebody of philosophical thought devoted to showing rhe importance of the usesof languageto an understandingof its naturs (work by Austin, Strawson, Grice and Searlein particular). To this day, most of the important conceptsin pragmaticsare drawn directly from philosophy of language.Once this broader scopefor mainstream pragmaticssoon took on a life American linguisticswas established,20 of its own, for the issuesraisedare interestingand important in their own right. But there have also been powerful motivations of a different kind, In the first place, as knowledge of the syntax, phonology and semanticsof various languageshas increased,it has becomeclear that there are speci6cphenomenathat can only naturally be describedby recourseto contextual concepts.On the one hand, variotts syntactic rules seem to be properly constrainedonly if one refers to pragmatic conditions; and similarly for matters of stressand intonation.2rIt rs possible,in responseto theseapparentcounter-exampleslo a contextindependent notion of linguistic competence,simply to ietr€at: the rules can be left unconstrainedand allowed to generateunacceptable sentences,and a performance theory of pragmatics assignedthe job of filtering out the acceptablesentences.Such a move is less than entirely satisfactorybecausethe relationship between the theory of competenceand the data on which it is based (ultimately intuitions about acceptability) becomes abstract to a point where counterexamples to the theory may be explained away on an ad hoc basrs, rnlessa systematicpragmatics has already been developed. Alternatively, pragmaticsand other linguistic componentsor levels can be allowed to interact. Arguments between these two positions have never been fully articulated, and because of their highly theory-dependentnature are dealt with, in this book, only in passing. s Ir is wo.th notina th.t m.ny other .chools of linSuistic rhought had always t.ken for srrnt€d s'Jcha b.o.der scop€, e.s. th€ Pr.gu.3chool, the so-call.d London school, .nd ev.n th€ glosscm.tici.ns. For a t.eaiment of th. historic.l dcvelopm.nts i. Americ., se€ N.wm€ycr. r98o. r r Au se fu lse n e .a llisto fpr.am.ti cconstrai ntsonl i nsui sti cformcanb€found in Ga zd a r ,
36
'e8oa
( sceabo G.een, re78r).
Ross' tg75; Gazdat & Klein' 1971' (Bur seeGordon & Lakofi, 1975; t979: 43-4 ) Lishtfoot' - "On hand, concurrent developments in semanticshave other th. presuppositions' ;.olated intractable phenomena of a parallel kind: implications, together with context-dependent other .o"""h ".," ""a and discourse particles that ,roubl"to-" phenomena like honorifics ofgenerative grammarlans the work shrift in given short hadlong been and how one might the lexicon, of the nature Further, thought about item has revealed lexical of 'possible concept ;onstruct a predictive (see r97z; Horn' pragmatic constraints " McCawley, the importanceof the study from issues, arising ,978i Gzzdar, r979a: 68ff). It is these concerned' of meaning, with which this book is centrally In addition to these particular problems that seem to require pragmatic solutions, there are also a number of general motivations for the development of pragmatic theory. One of the most important of these is the possibility that pragmatics can effect a radical simphfication of semantics " The hope is based on the fact that pragmatlc principles of language usage can be shown systematically to 'read in ' to utterances more than they conventionally or [iterally mean. Such regularlysuperimposedimplications can then become quite hard to disentanglefrom sentenceor literal meaning; in order to prise them apart, the theorist has to construct or observe contexts in which the usual pragmatic implications do not hold For example, it seems perfectly natural to claim that the quantifier rorze in (23) means 'some and not all' :
(zr)
Some ten cent pieces are rejected by this vending machine
and that would be the basis of the natural interpretation of a notice with this message,attached to the machine. But suppose I am trying to use the machine, and I try coin after coin unsuccessfully, and I utter (23); I might then very well communicate: \24)
Some, and perhaps all, ten cent pieces are rejected by this vendins machine
and indeed I could say this without contradiction. Faced with these factsthe semanticist must either hold that sorzais ambiguous between the readings'some and not all ', and 'some and perhapsall ', or allow a pragmatic account of the different interPretations. (Parallel !r H€nce the tcrm 'dftal tetm tudial '.^ortit
in the ritle of Col€, t 98 r, ahhoush ,rcsaati.s, 's mrght bc morc apProPriate
the
r,.l ('u/ren, intelest in Ptagma,ics
The scoPeof Pragmattcs arguments can be made for the word all, and indeed most of the lexical items in a language.)This pragmatic account would explain how principles of language usage allow addresseesto 'read in' the ' not all' implication. Since such a pragmatic account is available,n5 will be seen in Chapter 3, we can let the semanticsjust provide a reading compatible with 'some and perhaps all'. Not only will sucl a division of labour approximately halve the size of the lexicon (by accountingfor different intetpretationsof words by a generalexternal principle), it will also immeasurably simplify the logical base of semantics- the word sorzecan be equateddirectly with the existential quantifier in predicate logic (while the reading 'some and not all' taken as basic leadsto seriousin ternal contradictions: seeHorn' r 973 and Chapter 3 below). In this way, by unburdening semanticsof phenomenathat are resistantto semantic treatment but tractableto pragmaticexplanation,there is considerablehope that pragmaticscan simplify semantic theories. Another powerful and general motivation for the interest in pragmatics is the growing realization that there is a very substantial gap between current linguistic theories of languageand accountsof linguistic communication. When linguiststalk of the goal of linguistic theory as being the construction of an account of a sound-meaning correspondencefor the infinite set of sentencesin any language,one might perhaps infer that such a grand theory would eo ipso give an account of at least the essentialsof how we communicate using language.But if the term n eazrzgin this correspondenceis restricted to the output of a semantic component, those interested in a theory of linguistic communication are likely to be greatly disappointed.For it is becoming increasinglyclear that a semantictheory alonecan give us only a proportion, and perhapsonly a small ifessential proportion, of a generalaccount of languageundetstanding. The substantialgap that remains to be bridged between a semantic theory (together with a syntactic and phonological theory) and a complete theory of linguistic communication will be demonstratedthroughout this book. Where are we to accountfor the hints, implicit purposes,assumptions, social attitudes and so on that are effectively communicated by the use of language,not to mention the figures of speech(e.g. metaphor, irony, rhetorical questions, understatement)that have preoccupied theoristsof rhetoric and literature ? These communicated inferences can be quite diverse in kind. Consider, for example, the following r8
where the responses to an ,viracts from recorded conversations,z3 the indicate thar for participants the utterance carried ;,;;;;""" . . (or something like them) indicated in brackets: l-^pii"",iont (25)
' A: t could eat the wholeof that cake [imPlication : I comPliment you on the cake'] B: Oh thanks coffee A, Do yo,, have coffee to go?'{ [implication: 'Sell me to go if you can'] B: Cream and sugar? ((starts to pour)) B: H i Jo h n A: How're you doing? B: Say, what're you doing [implication: ' I've got a suggestion about what we might do together'] A: Well, we're going out. WhY? B: Oh I was just going to say come out ...
in a There are also cases where the location of a verbal exchange inferences: specific to warrant activity seems of kind particular f28)
(zs)
(In a clossroom) Teacher: Johnnie, how do you spell Ann? Johnnie: A, N, N ((intervening material)) Teacher: Okay, lsobel, do you see a name on that page you know ? Ann Isobel: Teacher: That's the one that Johnniejust named [implication: 'That doesn't count'] (Beginning oJ a telephoxe conoersationl ((rines)) Caller: Receiver: Hello Hello [implication: 'I know who you are, and you Caller: can tell from mY voice who I am'] Receiver: Oh hi [implication: 'Yes, I know who you are']
Each of these, or examples like them, will be treated in the pages below, togetherwith more familiar examples of pragmatic implication' The point here, though, is that the existence of a great range of such implications, some of which have only the most tenuous relationship !! Dr.wn. *ith orthosr.phic simpli6c.tions' from the folloqins sou'cesi (2s)' aurhor's transcriPt; (26) frcm Merritt' t9?6; (2?) f'om At*imon & Dtcw' 1979: ra3; (28) from GumP c rz & H €ras i m€huk , 1975: to9ff; (29) f' om Scbesloff, r979t. Doubl. parenth.scs enclos€ d'scriPtion3 that are nol p'rr of the vcrbal tc.ord; further conventions cre devcloped in Chapter 6' r' American idiom fo. 'coffe€ to take tw!v' mther th.n drink on Pr€mises '
r.3 Culrcnt intelest in Ptogmalics
The scoPeoJ Pragmatics to the semantic content of what is said, emphasizesthe need for a theory or theories that will complement semanticsin order to give a relatively full account of how we use languageto communicate. Finally, another very important general motivation for the recent interest in pragmatics is the possibility that significant functional explanationscan be offered for linguistic facts.Most recent linguistrc explanationshave tended to be internal to linguistic theory: that is to say, some linguistic feature is explained by reference to other linguistic features, or to aspects of the theory itself. Bur there is another possiblekind of explanation,often more powerful, in which some linguistic feature is motivated by principles outside the scope of Iinguistic theory: for example, it seemspossiblethat the syntactic processesknown as islaad constrainls (Ross, r967) can be explained on the grounds of general psychologicalprinciples (see e.g. Grosi, r97z). This mode of explanation, by reference to external factors (especiallycausesand functions), is often galled functionalism (see e.g. Grossman, San & Vance, r975). Now the possibility exists that languagestructure is not independent (contrary to Chomsky's wellknown views) of the uses to which it is put. That is to say, it may be possible to give powerful functionalist explanationsof linguistrc phenomena by referenceto pragmatic principles. Indeed, to many thinkers such explanationsseemto be obviously of the right kind (cf. Searle,r 974; Givon, r 979a, r 979b). For example,one might observe the fact that nearly all the world's languageshave the three basic sentence-types:imperative, interrogative and declarative(Sadock & Zwicky, in press). On the grounds that these seem to be used paradigmaticallyfor ordering, questioningand asserting,respectively, one might argue that it is pointless to search for internal linguistrc motivationsfor thesethree sentence-types:they recur in the languages oftheworld becausehumans are, perhaps,speciGcallyconcernedwith threc functions of language in particular - the organizing of other persons' actions, the eliciting of information, and the convcying of information. (Such an explanation is of course suspiciouslyport ioc: we would need independent evidence that these three activities are indeed predominant in social life.) Or one might note that most languageshave some, and many languageshave elaborate,ways of encodingrelativesocialstatusbetweenparticipants:again,a functional explanation in terms of universal (or near universal) principles of social organization seems called for (see e.g. Brown & Levinson, 4O
in the way of functional .^.tl- lndeed, one might hope for still more to , much of the syntacticmachinery of a languageseems "iji"n",i"n in of material with the linear re-organization ll"'|o"""-"a re-organization a l'j""."r,"." ("t in p""sive or topicalized constructions)' (truth-conditional) the affect to substantially seem not ar." *ii"i then' is the purpose of such elaborate i"rnrn,i" "on,."a What, may be that it exists essentiallyfor the lt machinery? a..it",i"""f with pragmatic principles: sentence-construction l".rose of meshing and'backgrounding' informational fot't"regrounding' iol-"*"^pt", in the terms preferred in this book, for eliciting certain "o"i"nt;t"., pragmaticimPlications)' ' then be On" of the motivations for research in pragmatics might structure' language on of language to establish the eff€cts of the uses of the crplicans' But such researchrequires a fundamental clarification of linguistic produce explanations i.e.the functionat matrix that is to work have such of structure, Unfortunately, many recent examples (seeMvague quite utilizedexplanatoryprinciples that have been left be sufficiently there Atkinson, r98z). It is important, therefore, that make such well-defined pragmatic principles and structures to testable' precise and functional explanations a way How, therefore, should we think of the uses of language, in We structure? of linguistic accounts functional that could provide (see 'functions of speech' to the might turn to traditiooal approaches the summary in Lyons, ry77a 5e4). Perhaps the most thoughtful (see of these is Jakobson's (196o) modification of earlier schemes can of speech functions that the especiallyBiihler, r 934). He suggests communicational ofthe be to focus on any ofthe six basic components function focuses on the referential thus the referential content of the message,the emotive function on the speaker's state' the conative function on the speaker's wishes that the addresseedo function on the code or think such-and-such, the metalinguistic being used, the phatic function on the channel (establishment and maintainanceofcontact), and thepoetic function on the way in which the message is encoded. Any such scheme, though, is of dubious utility to the pragmaticist in search of functional Principles: the categoriesare of vague application, they do not have direct empirical motivation, and there are many other rival schemes built upon '3
See Givon,
r9 ? 9 a ; Fo l e y & V a n V a l i n , i n p rc s s .
4r
r.3 (:urlent intelest in pragmatics
The scoqeof Pragmat.cs slightly different lines. Perhaps the only clear utility is to remind us that, contrary to the preoccupationsof many philosophersand a grear many semanticists, language is used to convey more than the propositional content of what is said. Certainly, very few linguistg have produced analyses of linguistic facts that make use of gro5s functional categoriesof this sort (but cf. Halliday, t973). A very similar sort of ente.prise has been engaged in by philosophers interested in the notion of speech act (addressedin Chapter 5): eithet by examining a specialsetofverbs calledperformative verbs, or by more abstract conceptualanalysis,they arrive at classifications of the basic purposesfor which languagecan be used (seee.g. Sea116, 1976). Again, such schemes seem to be far too broad to relate to detailed aspectsof linguistic structure. How else, then, might we proceed? One possibility, which has scarcelybeen explored, would be to take some large sample of the world's languagesand ask what basic pragmatic distinctions are needed to describe their grammatical structures. (The procedure requires, of course, acceptanceof the view that not all encoded features of meaning are semantic simply by definition.) We would note that many languages have, in addition to the three basic sentence-typesmentioned above, others that appear to be similarly circumscribed in use; exclamatives that are used paradigmatically to expresssurprise, imprecatives to curse, optatives to expressa wish, and so on (again, see Sadock & Zwicky, in press).26Some languageswould motivate distinctions that, from the point of view of European languages,are quite exotic. For example,to describethe lexicon, morphology and syntax of Javanese one would need to distinguish three levels of respect to addresseesand two levels of respect to referents (Geertz, r96o; Comrie, r9?6b); to describe the particlesofa number of South American lndian languagesone would need to distinguish between sentences that are central versus those that are peripheral to the telling of a story (Longacre, r976a); to describe the third person pronouns of Tunica one would need to distinguish not only the sex of the referent, but also the sex of the addressee(so there would be two words for'she' depending on whether one is speakingto a man or a woman; Haas, r 964), while rn !' But c.uiion Ssnslrit
4z
is necessary hcre r.g. what are rradilionally callcd opBtives in .nd Creek do not necessarily, or perhaps cvcn primarily, express
languagesthe pronouns encodethe moiety or section -^-" Australian )li-"i,. airi"io"l of the referent' or the kinship relation between words one of which means t..t. there are sometimes two )l*r"*r ,.^,,-a""f of the same moiety'and another 'you-dual in different Dixon, r98o: z-3; Heath et al' I98z); to ,ll;.,i.r r.o- each other'; one needs to make a distinction demonstratives Ouif""te lj"l..ii".ft. ' v to the speaker (Anderson & not ano 'isible vlslble b€tweenobJects so on' Keenan,in Press); and material one then might From this profusion of language-specific just aspects of the context of which idea of U" ,Ut" ,o Uuita up some pressures on functional to exert J,r"r"n"" ur" likely in general and simply directly are Further' taking features that ilt""t" the same to find be able well i" one language, one may the in either ways ""*aJ visible in more subtle and less i""-,*"" ""."a"a do we although For example' ,,ru",ur" ot,tt" ""e ofother languages that respect of ofthe levels noif,"u" in Ottgt;tlt the grammaticalization degreesof respect' expressing of means have we do exist in Ja.,anese, thus (3 t) would generally l"rg"ly by choi""s in the useofexpressions: be a more Polite request than (3o):
(ro) (3r)
I rxant to see you for a moment I wondered if I could possibly see you for a moment
of So by taking at first just the grammaticalized or encoded features like both something have would we contextin the world's Ianguages, a 'discovery procedure' for relevant functions of language, and a constraint on the relatively vacuous theorizing that often attends speculationabout the 'functions of speech'. We can then go on to ask how in other languageswithout such grammatical means, the same functions are achieved (if indeed they are) Such a way of proceeding has much to recommend it, but scant progress has been made in that direction. To all such approaches to the uses of speech' a strong objection might be made along the following lines: rather than look for a series of static functions or contextual parameters' one should attend directly tothe singlemost important dynamic context oflanguageuse, nam€ly conversation, or face-to-face interaction. :lhe centrality of this functional matrix for languageuse hardly needs arguing: faceto-face interaction is not only the context for languageacquisition' but the only significant kind of languageuse in many of the world's 43
The scoPeoJ Pldqmat.(s communities, and indeed until relatively recently in all of thenr. Those interestedin functional explanations9f linguistic phenomels ought then to have a considerable interest in the systematicsof face-to-faceinteraction. The question is how best to approach tle study of such interaction. There are perhapstwo basiclines of attac.: straightforward empirical analysis,and analysis-by-synthesis. It is the 6rst kind of approach that has so far yielded the mosr insight, but it is worth considering the possibility ef the analysisof interaction by synthesis. Interaction, in the abstract senseintended here, can be understood as the sustained production of chains of mutually-dependent acts, constructed by two or more agents eacn monitoring and building on the actions of the other (in this sensethe mathematical theory of games studies one kind of interaction; see Luce & Raiffa, 1957). Such an approach might begin by adopting Goffman's (r976) distinction between syatems-constraints and where the first labels the ingredients essential to ritual-constraints, sustaining any kind of systematic interweaving of actions by more than one party, and the second those ingredients that, while not essentialto the maintaining of interaction, are neverthelesstypical of it - they are, if one likes, the social dimensions of interaction. Concentrating on systems-constraints,one may then ask what necessary and jointly sufficient conditions must be met in order for that highly co-ordinated kind of inter-dependent behaviour that we call interaction to'come off'. Suppose, for example, we had as our task the programmingof two robotsin sucha way that theycould systematically aid one another in an open range of tasks: what properties beyond the specific abilities required for the tasks would they need to have ? (It may be helpful to think in terms of some specificco-operativetask, like the production of a building or a machine.) First, it is clear that they would need to be mutually oriented; they would each need to be aware of what the other was doing at any time. Secondly, they would need to be aware of the interactional domain (e.g. their scope for movement, and the properties of objects around them), and be constantly updating this as it was affectedby their actions. Thirdly, they would need, in some sense, to be rational - to have an efrective means-endsreasoningthat told them how to implement eachdesired goal. Fourthly, eachwould need to be able to produce actsconditional on the other producing acts, thus securing the chains of interdependentacts typical of interaction.This would seemto require the 44
r .3 Currct l inte/est in Plagmatts goal from each other's behaviour the probable ' :t:..' '^ reconstruct interthe (otherwise' achieve was intended to i"n*-"r llli?n" not be likely to culminate in the achievement *ould 11L'""1"r,, "",;"n" task). Fifthlv, there would need to be some specific :;-:;;litt their overall soals (if interaction is asonistic' or in ::t,';l;;;:t**" of the theory of games' zero'sum' then their goals li'" ,"-rJ""t"tt then there 1,,- n. l"""t""fy related; if interaction is co-operative have would ' goials)' Sixthly' each robot must be some sPeclhcsnareq knew ]^i-."* ,h", ,n" other had these properties, and know that each they could hardly rationally plan actions dependent ,ir,, ",ft"t*". plans' tt is just possible that these properties would ,i".aft"r't "" ,og"ther with the abilities required by specific tasks' to i" ",rffi"i.rr,, co-ordinated interdigitation of actions that would J"r*a"t " The purpose of this thoughtir"Lo,"ty) t"""-Ule human interaction that a number of pragmatic the fact to attention .rperim"nt i" to dtaw to just these sorts of reference can be explicated by ot "no-"n"fo, can be thought ofas based as we shall see,deixis i""tur"" ' "tu-ple, of mutual orientation, presupposition on the on th" u"".r-ption speech assumption of shared knowledge ofa domain and its updating, actson themaking explicit, for other participants,ofone's interactional goals, conversational imPlicature on the assumption of interactional lo-operation, and so on. Thus, if such an approach were developed' hope that all the essential concepts for the analysis of on" -igh, would be traceable to the fundamentals of phenomena pragmatic (for computer simulation of conversation along actual an interaction theselines see Power, r979). In fact, though, such an approach is still likely to be much too abstract to provide systematic functional accounts of the minutiae of linguistic structures. For a start, it would need to be complemented by the study of rituol-consttain s' the social and cultural constraints on interaction. Amongst these, there are cross-situational constraints enjoining appropriate social decorum, while there are others appropriate just to specific interactional moments or specific kinds of cultural events.lt might be thought that such socialconstraintswould be likely, simply by being social, to be culturally variable, and thus of no great interest to a general (or universal) pragmatic theory' However, this does not seem necessarily to be the case. For example, there are clear pan-cultural principles governing the production of 'polite'or socially appropriate interaction, and these can be shown 4S
L4 Comqutingconlett : an et am/le
The scoPeof Pragnattcs to havesystemaiiceffectson the linguistic structure of many languqgss (Brown & Levinson, r978; Leech, I98o). It is also clear that there are highly speci6c ritual constraints of a universal, or near univsls6r nature: for example, nearly all cultutes seem to have greeting 3n4 parting routines (see Ferguson, r976). More speculatively,it is alsq likely that in all cultures there are socialeventsdemarcatedas./orr4a1 eueals(Irvine, r9?9; J. M. Atkinson, I98z), and that some aspec$ of formality have universal linguistic realizations.Here again thslq has been very little systematicexploration, although such univers3l features of the organization of interaction are good candidatesfor potentially important functional pressures on linguistic structure. Whatever the attractions of universal featuresof interaction for the explanation of universal pragmatic phenomena,there are also clear language-specificpragmatic phenomena,as in the domain of social deixis and elsewhere,where functional accountsof languagestructure would need to relate these to culture-specificaspectsof interaction. Finally,l'here there are important divisions betweenkinds ofculture and society,one might well expectsystematicdifferencesbetweenthe associatedlanguages for example, it is likely that literacy has systematiceffectson the lexical, syntactic and semantic structure of languages,even if these have ncver been spelt out (seeGoody, 197?). Here it is evident that an interest in language usage motivated by functionalist approachesto linguistics would take us well beyond the confinesof pragmatics (as sketched in the de6nitions above) into the domain of sociolinguisticsand beyond. However, in so far as such social featuresare part of the meaning of utterances,they ought also to be treated in pragmatics; yet within pragmatics, these social constraints on language usage and their systematic effects on language structure, have been very much understudied, pcrhaps as a result of the philosophicaland linguistic bias (no doubt reflectedin this book) towards what Biihler ( r 934) called the representat;onal, and Jakobson (t96o) the rcferential,function of language. The other more promising line of investigation is to explore directly the nature of conversationalinteraction.The basic concepts of conversation analysis, as employed in a branch of ethnotnethodology, are the subject of Chapter 6. Here it will suffice to note that this kind of investigation,employing techniquesquite alien to the dominant tradition in linguistics, has revealedthat convetsational interaction has an elaborateand detailedstructure of which wc tb
awareness'I n this area'at least'the would-be r"'e very little conscious is ofiered the kind of rich and intricate structure that l:::r;;;;ii", of linguistic structure' and so ll" 1n"aft rhe detailed organization stand in a causal relation to it' For to plausibly T',1i"-"f"i-"a (under a ,rt. probable universal existence of tag-questions ll'"J". operation to the universal be related perhaps il"",ion"f a.n"itron) can as one option the ending of current Li'.I-t", or,rtn-,"ting that allow of a next speaker. But, as yet, few .""""U"r'" ,r* by a selection n"t" applied the insights from conversation analvsis to ii""rt"" studies of linguistic structure' functionalist '"ii"Aft, there is another kind of empirical approach to the study on linguistic structure' that might be of interaction,and its eflects ," have a distinct advantage This is the study of the li"i-"a of language by cbildren' During the early stages of ""oui"i,i"n interactional matrix for language ,"quititio", children establish an linguisticmeans for promoting to utilize learn slowly then learning,and to distinguish more easily the enabled thus are ;n,"ru",iorr. We structure) from the (intet^ctional explicans wonld-be functionalist's is that children's advantage A second (language). explicandum competences in what adult us reveal to 'etrors' or incompetences just as cross-linguistrc Thirdly, verbal interaction must involve. by contrasts of Ianguage comparisons can reveal general functions in another, so not between what is encoded in one language and comparisonsacross stagesof acquisition can be revealing in the same way(Ochs, r 979a). There has been much recent work by psychologists and linguists on these early stages of acquisition that has direct relevanceto pragmatics, but is not teviewed in this book (see e g' Ervin-Tripp & Mitchell-Kernan, t977; Snow & Ferguson, 1977; Ochs & Schieffelin, r979; and the critical account of such work in M. Atkinson, rq8z). Computing context: an exarnPle Abstract discussionsabout the scope of pragmatics like those we have reviewed above, may well leave the reader with little feelingfor the nature of pragmatic phenomena. Here an extended examplemay help to clarify the kinds of facts with which pragmattc Let us takea simple three-sentenceexchange theoriesareconcerned.2T r.4
't
Th.
modc of cxplicarion, t973.
and a number
of thc points,
sre deriv€d
f'oh
Fi l l mo re .
47
The scoPeof lrragqatics between two parties, and ask what information it provides us q,i11., above and beyond what might be given by the semantic content o[ the component sentences. More specifically, we can ask wl1, implications are carried by the sentencesabout the contexts in which they are being used. The example is constructed the reader is warned because good reasons for preferring naturally occurring conversationaldata will be given in Chapter 6, Here is the exchange: (32)
(i) A: So can you pleasecome over here again right now (ii) B: Well, I have to go to Edinburgh today sir (iii) A: Hmm. How about this Thursday?
It is not difficult to see that in understanding such an exchange ws make a great number of detailed (pragmatic) inferences about tfic natu.e of the context in which (32) can be assumed to be takinp place.23 F'or example, we infer the facts in (33):
(3 3 )
r. It is not the end of the conversation (nor the beginning) A is requesting B to come to A at (or soon after) the time of speaking; B implies he can't (or would rather nor) comply; A repeats the request for some other time 3 In requesting, A must (a) want B to come nou, (b) think it possible that B can come, (c) think B is not alrcady there, (d) think B was not about to come anyway, (€) cxp€ct thar B will respond with an acceptanceor rejection, and if B accepts,then A will also expect B to comc, (0 think that his (A's) asking may be a possible motive for B to come, (g) not be, or be pretending not to be, in a position to order B to 2.
A assumesthat B knows uhere A is;A and B are not in the s am eplac e;n e i t h e r A n o r B a r e i n E d i n b u r g h ; A t h i n k s B h a s been to A's place before 5 The day on which the exchange is taking place is not Thursday, nor'Wednesday (or, at least, so A believes) 6. A is male (or so B believes); A is acknowledged by B to have a higher social status than B (or to bc playing the role of a suDerrorl may per hap s be s om e equi v oc .r i on her € betw een r nfer enc es thar ' r ' lher e par tic;pan( s, i.e. A and a, m r s ht m ak e, and ;nfer enc c s ( hat obs fi l er s o. analysts or r .ader s of ( 32) m i s hr m ak e. F or ex am pl e, s i nc e A and B m .r wcll prrrla? rhe fa.ts in 4, 5. and 6, we mishr *anr ro say thar rher didn'! infe. them; yet, from the fact ths( pr.iicipants would bc expecrcd ro correcr er r or s tn such p.r su m pti ons , w e c an c on.l ud€ that they m us r nel c i thel es s makc the inf€rcnc€s to check thar rheir prcsumprions hold. Elcn thr infer ence r har thc c onv er s ai i on i s not abour r o ter m i nar e i s . es s r s hel l s c r
48
t.4 Comqulirtg context : a examqle the point of tediousnessthough some of these inferences Obviousto 2ethev are not, on a reasonablecircumscription of semantic e-' --, h. IIra! content of the three sentences Rather' li.lo, o"r, of thc semantic out of utterancesin sequencethe to compute ability ]1""."n"., our the facts about the spatial' imply: they l'oi''r*,u"t assumptions participants' and thcir between relationships social ll-"".ut una certain verbal undertaking in intentions U"ll"f" and ,.qiri,. part (or of the ' literal' all) not are not But if the inferences ""ln"nt"" convcntional content of what is said, from what sources ". the sentencessimply invoke -"oning ao th.y uti""l One possibility is that say, the word pTog'osis hearing, way that mentalassociations,in the that does not seem to But here might make one think of hospitals are decodable by they 6""rh".""". The inferencesare systematic, without most of them the lifferent interpreters in the same way, and cannot be understood; most ofthem must therefore be part exchange meant-nn' But of what is communicated, in Grice's strict senseof trigger aboveall, we can traceeachof theseinferencesto the facts that juxtaposition of the utterances and the form of aspects namely, them, and we can go on to specify the regular principles that, themselves, of utterances,Produce the inferencesin question' aspects givensuch will eachbe concernedwith particular principles below ihe Chapters here just identify the asp€ctsof the utterances but let us of this kind, that trigget each of the inferences. First, we know ((33) r) that it is not the end of the conversation becauseutterance (iii) is not a possible closing utterance: for one thing, it requiresa responsefrom B, and for another it is not a token of one of the regular closing forms that persons use ln conversatlon (Ohay,seeyou later or the like). That is, some turns at talking come in pairs, such that one part of the pair requires the second patt in response,while conversations have overall sttuctures with wellboundedbeginningsand endings.I n short we havestrongexpectatrons about the structure of conversation which wartant many different kindsof inference(seeChapter 6). We also incidentally know that it is not the beginning (although that, being known in advance by i n C h a p re r 5 , p o t c n l i ! l l t , c o . s t a n i c o n s i d € ra t i o n f o r P ! rt i c i p a n t s S o a r l c a s t most of thrse infrrcnces a.e ones that A and B must calculate e' A.tuoll), qualification of a rather tcdious all thcse inferrhces nc€d furth$ s o rt : e . 8 . t h e i n f c rc n c e 6 i n (3 3 ) t h a t A i s ma l e , o r a t l e a s t t h a t B b c l i c v c s thlt A is malc, should have the additional qurlilication a s i f h c o r s h e rh i n k s A i s ma l c ' , e t c .
'or ar leas(, B is acrina
The scoPeof Pragmatics participants, is not part of what is communicated), becausethere rs no token of a conversationalopening (like hello\, and the particleso with which urterance(i) begins has thc function of tying the prs5q^, utterance back to prior utterances. We know the facts in (33) z in a rather more complicated way. Whereas the interrogative form of the 6rst utterance might be claimed to encodea question, that is not all that is intended: it would be strikingly unco-operativeif B were to say teJ (meaning just 'yg5 I am able to come') and then not go to A. Somehow, the interrogative form can also convey a request, and this interpretation is strongly reinforced here by the presenceof the word please(see Chapter 5). Much more difficult is to see how B's response in (ii) can be understood as a request refusal, for there is no overt relation at all betweenits semanticcontent and that function. The implication rclies on somevery generalexpectationof interactionalco-operation,which allows one to assumethat if one utterance calls for a response(and the request in (i) does so), then one may assume(other things being equal) that a following utteranceis a relevant response(seeChapters 3 and 6). Such an assumption is strong enough that when one comes acrossa responsethat is apparently irrelevant (as (ii) overtly appears to be), an inference is triggered that would preservethe assumption of relevance.Here, in (ii), the utterance provides the clue: B has to go to Edinburgh; thus if A and B are both far from Edinburgh (and mutually know this), so that it will takc the rest of the day to travel and do things there, then B is busy today; so B is indirectly producing a reason why he or she can't easily come to see A, and in so doing can be understood to be refusing A's request. In actual fact there rs just one overt trigger for this inference: the particle tael1in Dnglistr servesto warn the recipient that some inferencing must be done to preservethe assumptionof relevance.lt can be plausibly claimed that, like so and many othe! words, ruell has no semantic content, only pragmatic specificationsfor usage. (See Chapter 3; an alternative accountof this inferenceand the role of ael/ can be constructedusing the notion of dispreferred lesponse in Chapter 6.) In (33) z we also have the inference that utterance (iii) counts as a repeat request. To account for this, we would need first of all to cxplain how the form ftora about VERBing is mote or less restricted to usagesin suggestions(again, this looks like a linguistic form that has pragmatic rather than semantic content, a problem discussedin Chapter 5). So A is suggesting that someone do something on
t .1 Computing contexl : an ex
1.4 ('omquting context: an examPle
Tltc s.ot e of Praglidlics the word cozre(at least with the tense and aspect in (i)) denotes eitht. motion towards the speaker at the time of speaking (as in Coze to breahfast, Johnny) or motion towards the addressec's location at thc time of speaking (as in I'm coming, Mummy). Note that as u'ith lere the meaning of cornacan only be explicated by reference to Piagmati; or contextual parameters (speakers, addressees, times and places 61 speaking). I n utte rance (i), corre cannot denote movemen t to$'ards the addressee, because the subject of coze is yoz, and the addressee can hardly move to where the addressee already is. So it must denotc movement towards the speaker; but again, the addressee can hardly move towards the speaker if there is no significant distance between them; therefore A and B are not in the same place. Here we might note that they are also not in Edinburgh: wc know this for B because B claims to have to C'o to Edinburgh, and go here means movement away from the place of the speaker at the time of speaking; we know it for A also, because if A is in Edinburgh, then B's having to go to Edinburgh can hardly be an excuse for B not going to A today. We make all these inferences on the basis of the deictic words, come,go and here (not to mention zor!), togethcr with reasonings about the nature of our physical world (see Chapter z). A natural interpretation (by an observer or analyst) of this deictic set-up is that A and B are talking on the telephone. Finally, we know that (A believes that) B has been to A's present location bef
pr agm at;c al l y i d.nti 6c d.
e g by
the same token, we cannot say this Thutsday ;nsteadsay loddy' By i- *"arr""aut, becausewe ought to say lo'nottoTo So the exchange nor on Thursday' (There i,l',.r) ,ut ". place neither on Wednesday varieties rom. diff..ent restrictionson usagehere in different -,Yb" ' some interesting ambiguities; see are also of English' and there Fillmore' I975 ) and below 2 Chapter in (33) 6 that A is male' and of Finally, we have the inferences than B' These are basedmost soundiy status ..oarently higher social what that word seemsto mean' that is for sir, l'n,ha uo"utiu" item of semantics,those meanings theory ional Again, on a truth -condit want to say that B's assettion in would not .""nno,Ua captured - we assumedmistakenly ii;t *as falseif B had simply misidenti6ed A and (that truths relative to would make ,6u1 6 was a male superior in an intuitive way' the whomsoeverthey are addressed).3rFurther, what is asserted; of msaningsof rir here are not part of the content the they are background assumptions about lhe context, specifically rit kind of person B is addressing. We may therefore say that cooventionally implicates that the addressee is male and socially higher in rank than the speaker(see Chapter 3)' Th"r" ur. no doubt many other pragmatic inferencesthat can be wrung from an €xchange as short and insignificant as this' But these will serve to indicate the general nature of the phenomena that pragmaticsis concernedwith. The point is that we can compute out of utterances,taken togethet with background assumpof sequences tions about language usage, highly detailed inferences about the natureof the assumptionsparticipantsare making, and the purposes for which utterances are being used. In order to participate in ordinaty language usage, one must be able to make such calculations, both in production and interpretation. This ability is independentof idiosyncraticbeliefs, feelings and usages(although it may refer to thosesharedby participants),and is basedfor the most part on qr'rite regularand relatively abstractprinciples Pragmaticscan be taken to be the description of this ability, as it operatesboth for particular languages and languagein general.Such a description must certainly play a role in any general theory of linguistics. Bur some assertions, €.s. thosc wirh rrol as sreumeni of a predicate' do indeed have.iusr such a relatility. The point her. tests on the frct that the vocative ;tem rt/ is not such in arsument (e.8. subject or objtcr of a verb); thns the b€anins of rit secms .ot lo b€ Part ofth. proPosition cxpressed bv (ii)' and rh , N n o r n . rt o f t h e t ru t h c o n d i ri d n s 5J
z.t
2
Deixis
Listen, I'm not disagreeing with yot but with yoa, and not about tirt but about ,htJ
(2')
find a bottle in the sea,and inside it a messagewhich Or, supposewe reads; Meet me here a week from now with a stick about this big
(i)
2.o
Introduction The single most obvious way in u'hich the relationship between language and context is reflected in the structures of languagesthemselves,is through the phenomenon of deixis. The term is borrowed from the Greek word for pointing or indicating,ano has as prototypical or focal exemplarsthe use of demonstratives,6rst and second pelson pronouns, tense, speci6c time and place adverb5 like zoro and here, and a variety of other gtammatical featurestied directly to the circumstancesof utterance. Essentially deixis concernsthe ways in which languagesencodeor grammaticalize features of the context of utterance or speech event, and thus also concerns ways in which the interpretation of utterancesdependson the analysisof that context of utterance.Thus the pronoun tirs does not name or refer to any particular entity on all occasionsofuse;rather it is a variable or place-holder for some particular entity given by the context (e.g. by a gesture).The facts of deixis should act as a constant reminder to theoreticallinguistsof the simple but immensely imporiant fact that natural languagesare primarily designed, so to speak, for use in face-to-faceinteraction, and thus there are limits to the €xtent to which they can be analysed without taking this into account (Lyons, r977a: 589ff). The importance of deictic information for the interpretation of utterancesis perhaps best illustrated by what happens when such information is lacking (Fillmore, r975: 381). Consider, for example, finding the following notice on someone'somce door: (r,
I'll be back in an hour
Becausewe don't know when it was written, we cannot know when the writer will return. Or, imagine that the lights go out as Harry has just begun saying: 54
PhilosoPhical aqProaches
whete or when to meet him or her' or We do not know who to meet, ,r;ru Dig a stick to bring' 'The many facetsofdeixis are so pervasivein natural languages,and to think ofthem asanything sodeeplygrammaticalized,that it is hard If semantics is taken to part of semantics. essential an other than then perhaps most meaning, of aspects conventional all include However, by semantic. properly considered are phenomena deictic t, deixis in Chapter we reviewed views that of the at least some concerns it directly because ofpragmatics, domain belongswithin the the relationshipbetween the structure of languagesand th€ contexts in which they are used. But all such categorizations are theory' dependent,and on the view that we have adopted for convenience, namely that pragmatics concerns those aspects of meaning and language-structure that cannot be captured in a truth-conditional semantics,the grammatical categoryof deixis will probably be found to straddlethe semantics/pragmaticsborder. Theimportant point, whereverthepragmatics/semanticsboundary is drawn, is that deixis concerns the encoding of many different aspectsof the circumstancessurrounding the utterance, within the utterance itself. Natural language utterances ate thus 'anchored' directly to aspects of the context. Philosophical approaches The topic of deixis, or as philosophers usually prefer, may be usefully indexical expressions (or just indexicals), approachedby considering how tiuth-conditional semantics deals with certain natural languageexpressions.Suppose we identify the semanticcontent of a sentencewith its ttuth conditions, then the z.r
semanticcontent of (4,,
Letizia de Ramolino was the mother of NaPoleon
will amount to a specificationof the circumstancesunder which it would be true, namely that the individual known as Letizia de Ramolino was in fact identical to the individual who was the mother
z. r PhilosoPhical aqqtoaches
Deixis of Napoleon. The truth of (4) in no way depends on who says it, bu1 simply on the facts of history.r But now suppose we try to analyse:
.tr r) wilf be true just in caseat so?nelirne pliol to the time of speahing been true: (ro) would have
(s)
(r r)
I am the mother of Napoleon
We cannot assess the truth of this sentence without taking into account who the speaker is; for (5) is true just in case the person uttering the sentence is indeed identical to the individual who is the mother of Napoleon, and false otherwise. In which case, in order ro assess the truth of (S) we need to know, in addition to the fac-tsof history, certain details about the context in which it was uttered (heic, the identity of the speaker). The expression ,I is not of course the only such troublesome feature of English; the following examples all present us with the same sort of problems (with the relevant deictic italicized,
expression Chapt er ) :
(6 ) \7 1 (8)
(e)
a
conventlon
followed
rhroughout
thi5
Yo& are the mother of Napoleon Tlis is an eighteenth-century man-trap Mary is in lovc with rial fellow over lhere I t is z or u r z . r 5
The sentencesare true, respectively,just in case the addresseers indeed the mother of Napoleon, the object currently being indicated by the speaker is indeed an eighteenth-century man-trap, Mary rs indeed in love with the fellow in the location indicatedby the speaker, and at the time of speaking it is indeed r2.r5. In each case the context-dependencycan be traced to specificdeictic expressionsor indexicals.Sentencesthat contain such expressions,and whosetruth valuesthereforedependon certain factsabout the context of utterance (identity of speakers,addressees,indicated objects,placcsand times, etc.), are not of coursc in any way specialor peculiar. For just about every utterancehas this context-dependency,due in no small part (at least in many languages) to tense. For, roughly, the following utterance will be true ( ro )
There ir a man on Mars
JUst in case d! the time of speahing there is a man on Mars, wheleas I' fhe
contr ast her e b et* e€n c ontex t- i ndep€ndenr and c onr ex r - dependenr modcs of r.fcicnc is not really quite so simplc - uhimarcly, pcrhaps, many kinds ofrefercntial expressions r.ly on contextu.l informarion. a point.aised
5o
There arar a man on Mars
.J1erehasbeen considerable philosophicaI interest in expressionsthat property' Iike demonstratives,first and t auethi" conte*t-dependent morphemes indicating tense lt was .""ond p"t"on pronouns, and signs, and p";1s" *to first terrned such expressions indexical referent by an existential relation ureu.d that they determined a referent (see Burks, r949). Peirce's category in fact i"i*""n .igtt "ttd expressions included rather more than the directly context-dependent particular system of his and or indexical, deictic called now are that linguistic crtegories has not been put to much eftective use in Bean, r97E). (but e.g. see pragmatics ' the Part of the philosophical interest in this area arose from to reduced can be expressions (a) indexical all whcther of questions pragmatic final (b) this whether and thence one, primary a single residue can be translated out into some eternal context-free artificial (a) was language.RLrssell,for example, thought that the reduction in preferred, egocentric (or he as possible,by translatingall indexicals particulars) into expressionscontaining rhrr, where the latter referred io a subjective experience. 'Ihe pronoun / would thus be rendercd 'the personwho is experiencingthis' (for severedifliculties with such a view, see Gale, t968). Reichenbachargued, also in support of (a) andwith an ultimate view to (b), that all indexicalsinvolve an elemcnt i.e. refer to themselves, so that, for example, of token-reflexivity, f means'the person who is uttering this token of the word 1'. This view may be initially attractive, but it has many difficulties (Gale, r g68). Further, while there are indeed token-reflexive or self-referring in natural languages,as in (rz) and, arguably, in (I3) (see expressions Chapter 5): (t2)
(rr)
This sentencecontains 6ve words I hercby apologize
thesepose formidable problems for logical analysis,and nothing ts gained by assimilating indexicals to token-reflexives if this can possiblybe avoided. From a linguistic point of view, the question in (b), whether ultimately deictic expressions can be translated into context-
2 -| Philosoqhical aPProaches
Deixis independentterms without lossofmeaning, is perhapsaphilosophical red-herring. Natural languages,after all, just do have indexicals,arrq it is the task of Iinguistic analysisto model these directly in order te capture the ways in which they are used lt is worth pointing out, however, that there are some good arguments to the effect thqg ultimate reduction is impossible (Bar-Hillel' t9?o: 77-8i Lyotrs, ry 7 7 a :6 3 9 -4 6 ). However, if it is intended, as part of a general programme of semantic analysis,to extend logical techniques to handle sentences containing indexicals, provision must somehow be made for their context-dependency.The syntax and semantics of classicallogrcs (say, first order predicate calculus) make no such provision. F{6v,,' should indexicals be accommodated,so that the nqtion of logical consequence, as it applies for example to the inference from (r4) to (r5), can also be applied to the inference from (t6) to (I7) ? ( r4 ) (r 5 ) (t6 )
(ru)
John John I am I am
Henry McTavitty is six feet tall and weighs zoo potrnds Henry McTavitty is six feet tall six feet tall and weigh 2oo pounds six feet tall
Clearly, in order for ( I7) to be a valid inferencefrom ( I6), the referent of f must somehow be fixed - the inferencedoesn't follou' if ( r 6) ano (r7) are said by diflerent speakers.There are various different ways in which logics can be relativized to contexts of utterance in order to achievethis. Suppose,as is now common in logical semantics,we view a proposition as a function from possiblcworlds to truth values (i.e. as an abstract assignmentof the value t/t/e tojust those statesof affairs which the proposition correctly desctibes- see Allwood, Andersson& Dahl, r 977 : zo-3 for elementaryexposition).Then one way in which we can accommodatecontext-relativity is to say that the proposition expressedby a sentencein a context is a function from possibleworlds and that contextto truth values.A context will here be a set of pragmatic indices, co-ordinates or reference points (as they are variously called) for speakers,addressees,times of utterance,placesof utterance,indicated objects,and *'hatever elseis needed. Sentencescan therefore express difterent propositions on diffelent occasionsof use. ilhus the inference from ( r 6) to ( I7) will be valid only if the speakerindex and the time index are held constanr (seee.g. Montague, I968; Scott, r97o; Lewis, r97z). Another way of handling indexicals is to think of the speci6cation S8
two stageaffair: the 'meaning' of content of an utterance as a ^f the (setsofindices)topropositions' ll,,r,"r"n". ;" tu"ction fromcontexts " possible worlds to truth values from functions in turn :-:;"; ".. pragmatics (at least this view On r Statnaker' 972). aMontague,r97o; in a context' that uttered given a sentence )"^r""if" about how, the sentence proposition what in specifying .onr.", pt"yt a role is then not Semantics of utterance. 1i..""""" on this occasion ' with the but onlY at all, language I wlth natural concerneddlrectly jointly contexts and propositions, which scntences ]i",r"", "n,;,1"" pick out. ' What thi" approach makes especially clear is that while we might across different want to say that the meaning of (r7) remains constant if Joe Bloggs it expresses proposition that the utterance, of occasions utters it' Bloggs picks if Sue it out one from the difierent is it uttels generel do not in in the abstract that sentences clear makes It also of them in is only utterances alt; it propositions at definite express the specific contexts that express specific states of affairs, where that patameters pragmatic the in by filling this c;ntexts achieve indexicalsare variables for. On this view, pragmatics is logically prior to semantics;that is, the output of the pragmatic component of the theory is the input to the semantic component. However, as we remarked in Chapter l, to identify pragmatics wholly with the truth-conditionalapparatusthat will handle indexicalsis to leaveus with no term for all those aspectsof natural languagesignificancethat are not in any way amenable to truth-conditional analysis.Where indexicals can be routinely treated truth-conditionally, we will therefore continue to think of the theory that handles them as part of semantics.However, it is clear that not all aspectsof deixis can be treated truth-conditionally, as we shall see below, and there are considerableproblems even for the apparently tractable cases.So we shallpostponeconsiderationofjust where the semantics/pragmatics borderlinecuts acrossthe field of deixis until 2.3 below. Before leaving philosophical treatments of indexicals, we should just point to a subject of deep theoretical importance which lies well beyondthe scopeof this book - namely, the connection of indexical teference to the fundamentals of refetence in general. Initially, philosophersinterested in rcference(with some notable exceptions) did not pay a great deal of attention to indexicals (Bar-Hillel, r97o: 76); tben they beganto treat them as very specialkinds of expression
J.2 DesctiPliae a\Proaches
Deitis requiring contextual co-ordinates or indices, as sketched above. Now they have bcgun to wonder whether many kinds of referring exp1q5sions are not in fact covertly indexical in at least some usages. Quine's (r96o) views on ostension, and Strawson's (rg5o) treatmenq 61 referring expressions broached this issue (see Bar-Hillel, r97o: 3*. Atlas, r975b). Searle's (r969) treatment of reference as a particulai species of action (rather than as some mysterious correspondencc, however indirect, between words and sets of objects) also indirectly advanced the view that indexicals are closely linked to other kinds of reference. That children early in language acquisition produce isolated acts of refeience, seems to support the view of reference as a speec[ act (see Chapter 5) that is prototypically 'demonstrative' (l,yons, r97S; Atkinson, r979). Since demonstrative pronouns typically involve a gesture, it seems easy to assimilate such acts of reference to general theories of action; if one can then show that other kinds of referring expression are related to demonstratives, the case for viewing reference in general as a species of action is made plausibte. In this connection, l,yons (r975) proposes that deictic reference is ontogenetically prior to other kinds of reference, and provides the basis for their acquisition (but see Tanz, Ig8o)" However, it is only recently that the connection of refercnce in general to indexicals has begun to concern those philosophers with an investment in logical semantics. Donnellan (r966) began by noting a distinction between (inter alia, noun phrases in desctiptions two usages of definite English with the determiner ,re):
(r8 ) ( r9 ,
The man drinhing cho,npogne is Lord Godolphin The man uho can liJt this stone is stronger than an ox
'I'he 6rst would most naturally have a referential use, where the description might in fact be wrong (e.g. the man is actually drinking lemonade)but the referencesucceedin any case; the secondwould most naturally have an attributive use where thc speakerwould not have any particular individual in mind (we could paraphrase( I9) as 'whoever can lift this stone is strongerthan an ox '). But in many cases an utterance is potentially ambiguous between these two usages.It is the speaker'sintention and the addressee'ssuccessfullocation of the intended referent that matter in the first usage, not the exact aptnessof the description, so thal we could call this usagespeaker reference (as opposed to semantic reference; Donnellan, rg78; 6o
just-as with a demonstrative' so with the (aplan, l9Z8). Indeed, i--f,,'ite description in (r8), the addresseeis invited io look up and But then it is a small step to begin thinking of iJ"nrifv,ft" referent (20), and thus containing demonstrative or to similar u"ty irg) ut indexicalelements:' Thet man ((the speakerindicatesthe man drinking champagne)) is Lord Godolphin
(zo)
if definite referring expressions may in And so it begins to look as speaker reference or in semantic (or either in used e"n.."l be it is only the context of use that tells us and ittributive) reference, (Donnellan, r978; Kaplan, t978) lf them understand which way to (in the indexical sense)in fixing pragmatics role of this is so, then the is greatly increased. expresses, the proposition that a sentence does justice to philosophical approaches However, none of these that occur in expressions the complexity and variety of the deictic to consider linguistic natural languages,and we should now turn approachesand findings. Descripaive approaches Given the undoubted importanceofdeixis to philosophical, psychological and tinguistic approaches to the analysis of language, therehas been surprisingly Iittle work of a descriptive nature in the area,with a consequent lack of adequate theories and frameworks of analysis.In the absenceof significanttheories,in this sectiona series of tentativecategoriesare advanced,together with some illustrations of their application. The most important of the earlier linguistic works in this area are B0hler, r934: 7g-r48; Frei, r944; Fillmore, 1966; Lyons, 1968; but much of this has been summarized and systematizedin Lyons, t977a, 1977band Fillmore, r97Ib, I975, and it is lo these latter works that most of what follows is directly indebted.There is also, though, a growing body of literature on the acquisitionof deictic terms by children, most of which is referenced 2.2
r l,incuists,
too. have poinied out that rh.r€ is a close relation between pronouns on the one hand, and thr dcfinite article and thi.d demonst..tivc person pronouns on thc otber: in meny of the Indo-European languages the laner derive diachronically from the former (Lyons, rqZZa: 646 ?)i thc
on usase are closely .elated (Hawkins, and, as mcntioned '978); above, carly in lansussc rcquisition the two kinds ofref€r.nce a.e not clearly d i f l e re n t i a t e d (L y o n s , | 9 7 S , I s 7 1 a : 6 4 8 f r). conditions
ot
2.2 Des0iPtiae aPProathes
Deixis in Wales, r979 and Tanz, rg8o, while a useful collection of q1q.,linguistic observationscan be found in Anderson & Keenan, in p1q.a. The traditional categoriesof deixis are person, place and time. Briefly, as we shall devote a section to each below, these categori€s are understood in the following way. Person deixis concerns11. encoding of the role of participants in the speechevent in which tl,c utterance in question is delivered: the categor)'first person is the grammaticalization of the speaker's reference to himself, secaq6 person the encoding of the speaker's reference to one or more addressees,and third person the encoding of referencc to persons of the utterance and entitieswhich are neither speakersnor addressees in question. Familiar ways in which such participant-roles 619 encoded in languageare of course the pronouns and their associated predicate agreements.Place deixis concerns the encoding of spatinl locations felat;7te to the location of the participants in the speech event. Probably most languagesgrammaticalizeat least a distinction betweenproximal (or closeto speaker)and distal (or non-proximal, sometimescloseto addressee),but many make much more elaborate distinctions as we shall see.Such distinctions are commonly encoded in demonstratives(as in English this vs. that, and in deictic adverbs of place (like English Aere vs. thele). Time deixis concerns the encoding of temporal points and spanslelatioe to the time at which an utterancewas spoken (or a written messageinscribed). This time, following Fillmore (r97rb), we shall call coding time or CT, rvhich may be distinct from receiving time or RT, as example (t) made clear. Thus, just as place deixis encodes spatial locations on coordinates anchored to the place of utterance, so time deixis encodes times on co-ordinatesanchoredto the time of utterance.Time deixis is commonly grammaticalizedin deictic adverbsof time (like English nou and then, yesterday and this year), but above all in tense. To these traditional categories,we should now add (following L y o n s , r9 6 8 , r9 7 7 a ,a o d Fi l l more, r9?rb, t975) di scourse (ortexl ) deixis and social deixis. Discourse deixis has to do rvith the encodingof referenceto portions of the unfolding discoursein thich the utterance(which includesthe text referring expression)is located.s Instances of discourse deixis are the use of ,rd, and rLr in the followine: ' ' Ib ke n - r e fle xivityisthusaspeci al sub-caseofdrscourscdei xi s;bothrr'al an ( :r ) a n d r r lr r in ( 2 2 )aredi scours€dei cti .,butonl ythet.rteri stoken-renexi ve
62
PufI pufl pufr: trat is $hat it soundedlike Ilis is what phoneticianscall creaky voice
6')
rdi')'
of socialdistinctions that soc;utati*is concernsthe encoding fin'alty, -Jurit" aspects of the social particularly ro participant-roles' i-or speakerand addressee(s) rt"fai^g betweenspeakerand lir,i.^.ftip '-^-. r"fer"nt. In many languages,distinctions of fine gradation ' er and addresseeare systematically ol speaK hatweenthe relatlveranks ttrto"grtout, for examplc' the morphological system' in Iod"a are also *.. we talk of honorificsl but such distinctions ;;; or forms in choices betw€en pronouns' summons lgu-fr.tV .n""a"a titles of addressin familiar languages' ""a "o""u,iu"", are not arbitrarily organized 6"i"ti" ryrt"-" in natural languages different kinds of medium many of the any ofjust aroundth" f"utu,"" there is an essential Rather used are languages which inJ"on,"*a in context in which conversational face-to-face basic of that lss,.rmption l-yons or as {rg77a:637 8) has put it ht.l-unt acquire language, "ll rathermore PreciselY: and lexicalizationof deixis is best The grammaticalization what may be termed the canonical to relation understoodin situationof utterance:this involvesone-one'ot one-many' signalling in the phonic medium along the vocal-auditory channel,with all the participantspresentrn the sameactr'al situationableto seeoneanotherand to perceivethe associated and each non-vocalparalinguisticfeaturesof their utterances, 'l'here is assumingthe role of senderand receiverin turn be explained can only that languages much in the structureof on theassumptionthal theyhavedevelopedfor communication inreraction.'l'hisis clearlyso as far as deixis is in face_to-face concerned,r l'urther, it is generally (but not invariably) true that deixis ts organizedin an egocentric way. That is, if (for the purposes o f semanticor pragmatic interpretation) we think of deictic expressions asanchoredto specificpoints in the communicative event, then the '
lansuases of A d i re c t i l l u s $ a ri o n o f t h i s i s p ro v i d e d b v q u n e a n u mb e r o f a basic distincrion berween obje'ts visible and diff.r.nt stocks that.ncode i n p re s s ) Th i s d i s ri n c t i o n n o n -v i s i b l e t o p l rt i c i p t n t s (s c e A n d e rs o n & K ' e n a n ' u P ' n d e mo n s t ra t i v e s pl.ced.'x's.as'ttendstoshos ' s o f t e n s u b s u me d u n d e ' orsanization t'ut it is in fact an independent and parallel dime'sion of deictic io that ousht to be added to the major five cttesories of deixis considered rh i s C h a o re . .
6j
z.z DescriPtire aPProaches
Deixts anchorage points, constituting the deictic centre, atr typically assumcd to be as follows: (i) the central person is thr speaker, (ii) the central time is the time at rvhich the speaker produce. unmarked
the utterance, (iii) the central place is the speaker's location ar utterance time or CT, (iv) rhe discoursc centre is the point which the speaker is currently at in the production of his utterance, a161u; the social centre is the speaker's social status and rank, to whicb the status or rank of addressees or referents is relative. No$ there q1s various exceptions to this: for example, some languages have detnq4stratives organized in part around the location of other particip6nl, than speakers. There are also various derivative usages, in which deictic expressions are used in u'ays that shift this deictic centre ro other participants, or indeed to protagonists in narratives- I-yor,s (r977a: 57g) calls this deictic projection, I"illmore (r975) shifts in points of view. The processes involved in such shifts are essential to an understanding of the diachronic development of various deictic (see e.g. the remarks on rorae below) and to usages in non-conversational discourse (see Fillmore, r98 I ), but are beyond tl'c words
scope of this Chapter. It may help readers to visualize this unmarked deictic centre if they space, composed of the thrce can imagine a four-dimensional dimensions of space plus that of time, in which a speaker stands qg the centre. Radiating out from the speaker are a number of concentric circles distinguishing different zones of spatial proximity; through the speaker passes a 'time line', on which events prior to his present utterance, and events prior to those, can be linearly arranged, and similarly events at points and spans in the future; while the discourse to which the speaker contributes unfolds along this same time line. To capttire the social aspects of deixrs, we u'ould need to add at least one further dimension, say of relatrve rank, rn which the speaker is socially higher, lower or equal to the addressee and other persons that might be referred to. Now when speaker and addressee switch participant-roles, the co-ordinates of this entire world switch to the space time-social centrc of the erst$'hile addrcssee, now speaker. Such a picture makes the acquisition of deictic terms seem a n,tiracle, and children do indeed have tror.rble rvith them (Tanz, r98o). It is essential to distinguish different kinds of usage of deictic expression. lndeed by deictic eJrplessiorwe mean those linguistic units or morphcmes that have a deictic usage as basic or central, for most 6t
have.non-deictic usages ln addition to deictic vs'
(41
Tiir one's genuine, but tlis one is a fake
grsecondor third person pronouns used with some physical indication gaze), as in I of the referent (e.g' direction of
(z+l
I/e's not the Duke, ie is. [Ie's the butler
There are usually a few words in a language that can only be usec qesturally:for example there are ptesentativeslike French uoici, and toastslike British English cheers-sln contrast, symbolic usages of (in deictic terms require for their interpretation only knowledge of parameters of speech event the spatio-temporal the basic particular) (but also, on occasion, participant-role and discourse and social parameters).Thus it is suftcient to know th€ general location of the participantsin order to interpreti
(rs)
Th;s city is really beautiful
andto know the set of potential addresseesin the situation in order to interDret: (26)
You can all come with me if you like
and to know when the interaction is taking place in order to know which calendar year is being referred to in \27)
'We can't afrord a holiday
this yeat
We could formulate the distinction thus: gestural usages require a momentby moment physical monitoring ofthe speech event for their interpretation, while symbolic usages make reference only to I For a description of thc incrcasins of usc. of this term see Trudsill, 'anee rq78:8.
65
Deixis
2,2 Desc/iPtioe aqProaches
contextual co-ordinates available to participants antecedentto the utterance. It will then follow that the following are gestural usages, though the senseof gesture is here, of course, vocal: (28) (?9)
Harvey can only speak al>out this loud Don't do it nou, ttttt NOWI
These two kinds of deictic usagecontrast with the non-deictic \rsq*a of the same words or morphemes. Some examples will help to rn61" the three-way distinction clear; in the following the a case5q,. ge.rlrral usages,the b casessymbolic usages,and the c casesnon-deicttc usages: (30)
(3 r)
\3 2) (33,,
(:+)
a. You, you, but not you, are dismissed b. What did yor say I c. You ctn never tell what sex they are nowadays a . This finger hurts b . Tiri ciry stinks I met trrr'Jweird guy the other day a . Push not zot{r, but nora) b . Let's go roar rather than tomorrow Notl;, that is not what I said Not ,ia, one, idiot, that one b . Tlar's a beautiful view Oh, I did this and rla, a . Move it from lhere to there b . Hello, is Harry rlere ? c. Thete we go
(Note that, in most cases,the three kinds of sentencesonly favour the three kinds of interpretation.) Here are some further contrasrs betweenjust two of the usages,each labelled a, 6 or r as before:
(3s) (3 6 ) (37 ) (3 8 )
a.
((ln responseto: "Who wants another?")) / do b. ((ln response to: "Wilt thou have this woman ro thv wedded wife ?")) 1 will b . I did it ten years ago c . Harry had done it ten years cgo b. John lives opposite c . John fives opposite Bill b. We can't see the chimp because it's behind rhe tree When Harry's front axle buckled. he was behind a truck
A few brief comments on eachofthese: in (35a)the pronoun I is used gesturally to self-nominate from a group, in (fSb) it just has the symbolic usage; in (36b) the word ago places the time at which the b6
relative to the time of speaking, in (36c) the time is --ridn occurred ln ]]i"ri". a ttt. time at which the events in the narrative occurred is understood )"'lss oooot;t"Gna ,qually aeafty ' aroufld thc corner, etc ) to the place of utterance, in (lzc) it is relative to Bill's )l'Jr,ir. chimp on the opposite side of the L"ii.n. It tggUl Oeiizd locates the (l8c) in it locates Harry at the rear end participants, the rle from of the truck' perhaps the most important distinctions in the use of i- Tl,"ra "." but they are not the only ones' As we shall see when deictic terms, we shall need *,e consider discourse deixis, within non-deictic usages usages.' All the c from non-anaphoric anaphoric to distinguish but non-deictic interpretations, most natural in their are, casesabove term where some is usage anaphoric usages. An alsonon-anaphoric (ot class of objects) that some Dicksout as referent the same entity picked Thus, in the following, ie can out. orior term in the discourse naturally be interpreted as referring to whoever it is that Jo'lrn refers
(3e)
John came in and he lit a fire
We will return to anaphora, but just note here that it is perfectly possible,as Lyons (r977a:676) points out, for a deictic term to be usedDoti anaphoricatlyand deictically- For example, in: \40)
I was born in Lotdon and have lived trt€le evea since
t/ralerefers back to whatevet placeLondoz refers to, but simultaneously contrasts with here on the deictic dimension of space, locating the utteranceoutside London. Note that it is also quite possible for the gesturalusage to combine with the non-deictic anaphoric usage too: (4r)
| .!t
a frnger: this ore
Here tir's oze refers to whatever a.76ngerrefers to, but simultaneously must be accompanied by a presentation of the relevant finger. Clearly the proliferation ofdifferent kinds of usage of deictic terms is a source of considerable potential confusion to the analyst. The following summary of distinctions may help to keep them clear I thc d.ictic ' On. w,y of thinkina.bout rh.sc non-d€ictic us.g€s is to think of t.rms .s beins r.lstiviz.d to th€ t.xt instcsd of to thc situ.tion of uttcrance. In th.t wey, anaphoric usagcsc.n b€ s.cn to b. r.lgt.d to vrrious non.naphoric non-d.ictic us.s.s,..8. to shifts in dcictic interprciat;on duc to indirect discou.s€. Sce Anderson & Kccnrn, in press; also Fillmor., t98r.
6?
2.2 Desc/iPtiae aqqroaches
Deixis \4 2 )
D;frerent usagesoJ deiclic telnrs a. gestural |. deictit-. b. symbolic 2. nofl-deictic. c. non-anaphoric d. anaphoric
These difliculties are compounded when the phenomenon of deictic projection, or shifts from the egocentric centre, ate taken i11o account; and they are further multiplied by the interaction of tle semanticsof non-deictic categorizationsof (especially)spaceand timr with deictic modifiers. We shall now take up each of the five major categoriesof deixis in turn: person, time, place,discourseand social deixis,in order to illustratethe complexitiesthat arise.An appreciation of these complexitieswill indicate how involved and unexploredthe phenomenonof deixis really is and how the philosophicalapproaches to indexicalscan handle only a small proportion of these problems, Person deixis As speakers switch, so the deictic centre, on which the rest of the deictic system hangs, is itself abruptly moved from participant to participant. The difficulties that a Martian or child might have with such a system are neatly illustrated in the following Yiddish story: 2.2, I
A melamed [Hebrew teacher] discovering that he had left his comfortable slippers back in the house, sent a student after them q'irh a note for his wife. The note read: " Send me your slippers with this boy". When the student asked why he had written "your" slippers, the melamed answered: "Yold! lf I wrote 'my' slippers, she would read 'my' slippers and vrould send her slippers.What could I do with her slippers ? So I wrote 'your' slippers, she'll read 'your' slippers and send me mine". (Rosten, r968: 443-4)
? joke above depends' of course' on r ,vinson, in prep ) The Yiddish bel-weensource.andspeaker' which becomesimmefi" ii.,in.,io" a^."1.,oertinent if one reads aloud ''?-ol.u.t, tn. U"sicgrammaticaldistinctionshere are the categories were producing a componential nf frrst, second and third person. I f we r 968: 47q-8I ) of pronominal systems' see Lyons, (for whicn inalysis to need for the known systems would ii" i""aut"" that we seem person' speaker inclusion ( * S); for second for first clucially include: ( and for third person, speaker and inclusion +A); pcrson,addressee (see (-S, Burling, r97o: t4-r7; lngram, -A) exclusion "ddr"""." person is quite unlike first third note that 1978).It is important to to any specific correspond does not or s""orrd person, in that it (Lyons, rg77at 638). event Da icipant-role in the speech of manifestations obvious Pronominal systems, which are the most (Ingram, r978)' person,generallyexhibit this three-way distinction But some pronominal systems exhibit as many as fifteen basic pronouns(ignoring honorific alternates)by superimposing distinctionsbasedon plurality (dual, trial and plural), genderand so on. Here it is important to see that the traditional category of plural is not symmetrically applied to first person in the way it is to third: roedoes not mean plural speakers in the same way that ,rlPy means more than one third person entity (Lyons, I968: 277)' In addition, in many languages,there are two first person 'plural ' pronouns, corresponding '. ' and ' we-exclusive-of-addressec to ' we-inclusive-of-addressee perhaps it is but directly, in English manifested distinction is not This indirectly : for the contraction from let s to let's only seems felicitous if the ar is understood inclusively, as illustrated below (Fillmore, r97rb): (43)
Uc\
Let's go to the cinema ?Let's go to see you tomorrow
person deixis is reflected directly in the grammatical categories of person, it may be argued that we need to develop an so independent pragmatic framework of possible participant-roles, that we can then see how, and to what extent, these roles are grammaticalized in different languages. Such a framework would
Other languageshave pronominal systems much richer than the English one: in Japanese,Pronouns are distinguished also with respect to sex of speaker, social status of referent and degree of intimacy with referent, so, for example, the sccond person pronoun
note that the speaker or spokesman can be distinct from the source of an utterance, the recipient distinct from the target, and hearers
? Thus it can be argucd that in en8lish the s€ntence Bi i. i' to com. ia aor') g.ammstically €n.odcs (smongst oth.! things) thal th. recipient is nol th€ tarset (Biffic is), in contns. to Bi !, con. in ,ou wher. rccipieDr ind tarset are coincid€nt. (The exampl€ comes from Gazdar, 19794.) Rut see also
Although
or bystanders
distinct from addresseesor targets, and that sometimes are grammaticalized in non-obvious ways (see
such distinctions 68
exsrnplc (so) b€low.
o9
2,2 Des.liPriae aPPloaches
Deixis Aizi can be glossed 'you, addressedby this intimate male speaker' (U y e n o , r9 7 r: r6 -1 7 ; H a rada, 1976: S I I); and vi l l ageTami l hasuo to six singularsecondperson pronouns accordingto degteeof relative rank betweenspeakerand addressee(Brown & Levinson, I978:206). We shall return to some of these facts below when we considei socialdeixis.Here we should simply notethat thesevariousdistinctions are often encoded in verbal inflections in an isomorphic manngl. Sometimes, though, morphological agreement can make furthsl distinctions not overtly made by the pronouns themselves.A simplq example of this occurs in languagesthat draw their polite second person singular pronoun from their plural one, where there will be no overt distinclion betweensecondpersonsingular polite and second person plural pronouns. Here, 6nite verbs will agree in both cases with the superficially plural pronoun. But with neminal predicatcg the distinction is morphologicallymarked: such predicatesagreewit\ the real-world number of the referent (Comrie, t97s). So, in French, (45) is ambiguousas to whether there is one or more addressecs,bur (46) can only be addressedto a single addressee: (45'
(+6)
Vous parlez frangaisi Vous €tes le professeur?
In a similar sort of way, as Fillmore ( r 97 r b) notes, the editorial are of, for example, the New Yorher takes plural verb agreement(thus .oe ate not &e an\, but in the reflexive the underlying singularity shows through in phrases like as for owsef. Finally, as we have noted, pronouns are often used non-deictically; but the actual variety of usescan be sholvn to be far greater than one would easily imagine (W a ts o n , r9 7 5 ; Sa c k s ,r 9 7 6). In addition to pronouns and agreeing predicates, person or participant-role is marked in various other ways. As is well known to anthropologists,kinship terms, and other kinds of title or proper name, often come in two quite distinct sets, one for use in address (as vocatives in second person usage) and the other for use in reference(i.e. referring to individuals in third person role). Even when the lexemesare the same, they may be zred very differently in addressand reference(see e.g. Beck, rgTz: zgofr for Tamil usage), or only a sub-set of the referenceterms may be used in address.The latter is the casewith English kin terms - one can say both Fleary rs my uncle and Henry rJ n1,,couJrn, but only Hello, Uncle ! not, in modern .70
Australian English, Hello, Cousin! Further' in some (as opposed are up to four distinct sets of primary **" (a) a set of vocative terms' (b) terms: kin ]], .".."iut "r.lppt"-entary) first person possessivefeature 1"."i ri Ltt .'*nl"h have an implicit (c) a set of terms which have etc')' 1,""'-"""n '^, rnother's brother', 'your mother's brother (i'e mean l""""tj o..tl. o"ssessivefeature " possessivefeatures person third terms which have 1,"-i fal *i "f ""1 " Australian Some etc)' or her mother's brother', li"'-"-"rt" have ' triangular ' kin terms' such that a term X even l;;"";;"" i"altiaual .xis only usableifr is (say)the speaket'sfather a"nTtiig "" Such suppletive sets of terms Ini-tt.- uaar.""..'s grandfather' in what are essentially terms ih"r"for" "rr"od" person-deictic features (see Heath et al'' r982)' for reference,not address interesting grammatrcal category' agaln are an general in Vocatives phrases that refer to the addressee' underexplored. Vocatives are noun incorporatedasthe arguments orsemantically butarenot syntactically prosodicallv from apart set tather pr"al"ui"; thev are ll" !:d" ii " can be divided into Vocatives them' ofa sentencethatmayaccompany as in (47), and addresses' as in (+8) (Zwicky' r"ll", o. "o--ooses, r974)1
ttjltr"t." -"ndard
Q7) (+8)
Hey you, yow jvst scratched my car with your frisbee rr." ir"itt i". Madam, r'othing is as good nowadays
symbolic The distinction is precisely that between gestural and usages,applied in this domain. Summonses are naturally utterancecan be initial, indeed conversation-initial(seeSchegloff, I97za), and their own in (see Chapter acts speech 5) of as independent thought of right. Addresses are parenthetical and can occur in the sorts summons all Not occupy' can parentheticals locations that other in forms can be used as addresses(e.g hey you in (47) cannot occur that all be it may (+8)), although in the slot occupied by Madam addressescan be used as summonses(Zwieky, rg74l.79r) Vocative forms in difierent languages appear to be highly idiosyncratic and complex. Note that greetings,partings and various 'ritual' formulae (e.g. 6/ers1ou said after a sneeze) can be thought of as vocative in natute. A further point to note in connection with person deixis, is that whcre face-to-face contact is lost, languages often enforce a distinct mode of, for instance, self-introduction Thus, whereas in a
t, z l)escliqtioe aqPloaches
Deixis face-to-face meeting I can say -I'rzJoe Bloggs,on the telephone I rn15, say This is Joe Bloggs or Joe Bloggs is speahingwith third person v616 agreement(but seeSchegloff, rg79a); in contrast in Tamil we would have to say on the telephone the equivalent of Joe Bloggs om speah;ng, with first person verb agretment. ln conclusion, it should be noted that the two basic participanl roles, speakerand addressee,are not the only ones that can becorn. involved in grammatical distinctions. Various languages(e.g. the Philippine languageSamal) have demonstratives(discussedbeloyl that specify location near other participants - in this caseattending but not speaking parties, and present but non-participating parties. The Australian languageDyirbal has an entirely separatealternativc vocabulary to be used in the presenceof'taboo' kinsmen, whethrr or not they are participants (Dixon, r97z: 3zf). Moreover it 15 common in many languages(e.g- German; Hymes, 1974:56) f61 mother to say to father, in the presenceof little Billie, somethinglike:
(+s)
Can Billie have an ice-cream, Daddy ?
taking the point of view, for the purpose of vocative selection, of ths audience. These distinctions make it important that we do nor confuse, as is often done in the linguistic and philosophical literaturc, the categories of addresseeand hearcr. (Incidentally, note that as so often in the analysis of deixis, these various examples involve the overlapping organizations of the Iive basic categories of deixis: thus greetings usually involve tempofal, person and discourse deixis; demonstratives both space and person; vocatives both person ano social deixis: and so on.) In addition to speaker, addressee and audience (third person, being, of course, definable in terms of the first two), there are a number of further distinctions in person deixis that probably need to be made. We know that, interactionally, important distinctions are often made between overhearers, unratified vs. raiified participants, those of the latter who are addressees and those who are non-addressed participants, and so on (see Goffman, r976l. z6o; Goodwin, rg79a, t98I). Also, as we have noted, we sometimes need to distinguish speakc! from source and addressee from target. Thus if the air-hoitess announces
(so)
You are to fasten your scat-belts no\r'
sheis the speakeror spokesman,but not the sourceofthe instructions,
to be encoded in rhe use of the infinitive form' In ond this seems (e g a chief) nor 7l]""r1, i^ formal ceremonies,neither the source were necessarily (e.g. the i"-r"rt., lt"*?t !Ht-,"".-t:11-spirits) will perhapsbe found reflected distinctions )'li l.ril-" "fthese t",' ( ^- ^-^.L-another /"--u"t language or categories ol in the g.ammatica,l lrvinson' In PreP r' Time deixis Both time and place deixis are greatly complicated by the with the non-deictic conceptualinteractionof deictic co-ordinates these aspects of deixis in zation of time and space. To understand good understanding of the depth it is first necessary to have a general, but these topics semanticorganization of space and time in Fillmore, lie beyondthe scopeofthis book (seethough, Leech, I969; rg75; Lyons, r977a: Chapter I5). Briefly, though, the bases for systemsof reckoning and measuring time in most languages seem to be the natural and prominent cycles of day and night' lunar months, seasonsand years. Such units can either be used as measures, relative to some fixed point of interest (including, crucially, the deicticcentre), or they can be used calendrically to locate events in 'absolute' time relative to some absolute otigo, ot at least to some part of each natural cycle designatedas the beginning of that cycle (Fillmore, r 975). tt is with theseunits, calendricaland non-calendrical, 2.2,2
that time deixis interacts. Like all aspectsof deixis, time deixis makes ultimate referenceto participant-role. Thus as a first approximation (but see below), zoar can be glossedas 'the time at which the speaker is producing the utterancecontaining zora'. lt is important to distinguish the moment of utterance (or ins cription\ or coding rirrte(or CT) from the moment of reception ot teceioing liare (or RT). As we noted, in the canonical situation of utterance, with the assumption of the unmarked deicttc centre,RT can be assumedto be identicalto CT (Lyons ( I977a: 685) Complexities arise in calls this assumption deictic simultaneity). thc usageof tense, time adverbs and other time-deictic morphemes wherever there is a departure from this assumption, e.g. in letter writing, or the pre-recording of media programmes. In that event, a decision has to be made about whether the deictic centre will remain on the speaker and CT, as in (5I), or will be projected on the addresseeand RT, as in (52) (Fillmore, t975):
2.2 Descriqtiae aqqlodches
Deixis (5r) (s2)
a. This programme is being recorded today, Wednesday {p"1 rst, to be relayed next Thursday b. I write this letter while chewing peyote a. This programme was recorded last Wednesday. April 1sg,1o be relayed today b. I wrot€ this letter while chewing peyote
Linguisticconventionsmay often specifythe proper usagein situations where RT is not coincident with CT. For example, the Latin 'epistolary tenses'used pasttensefor eventsincluding CT, pluperfect for events prior to CT - in other words the deictic centre was projected into the fu tu re, the recipients ' RT ( Lakoff, r 97o: 847). Bur we shall have to skirt these issueshere (see Fillmore, r975). There are a number of aspectsof 'pure ' time deixis, where the.e is no direct interaction with non-deictic methods of time reckoning. These include tense (to be discussed below), and the deictic time adverbs like English zou.,, lhen, soon, recettly and so on. We can improve on our previous glossfor zoz
(s3) (54)
Pull the trigger aozr,! I'm zoru working on a PhD
Nora contrasts with ,Aez, and indeed t,lrezcan be glossed as 'not now' to allow for its use in both past and future. ?iez is sometimes claimed to be necessarily anaphoric in nature, and to have no gestural deictrc usage, but rather complex usages show this is not so - consider, for example, the following said pointing at a 1962 model Chevrolet ( Nunber g, r 978r 33) :
(ss,
I was just a kid then
As an initial step tow'ards seeing how time deixis interacts with cultural measurementsof time in an absolute or non-deictic way, considerwords lik e toda!, tomorrotu,yesteu day. Such terms presuppose a division of time into diurnal spans.Roughly, then, ,o/al glossesas 'the diurnal span including CT', yesterdoy as 'the diurnal span preceding the diurnal span that includes CT', and so on. Ho*ever, as Fillmore (r975) notes, these have two kinds of referent: they can 74
to the entite_span itself, as in (56), or to a point within eitherrefer sPan' as In (57r: the relevant t-A\ il;;
Tomorrouis WednesdaY Dennis hit Murphv with a baseballbat vesterdav
tomorrou pre-empt Nore that the deictic words yeslerdoy,todoy aod days Thus relevant to the ways ofreferring ubsolute thecal"ndtical,r. 'I'hursday, can only be referring to next said on ri" follo*i"g, more remote Thursday), otherwise the iiurrOuv (or perhaps some s id todarl ha\/e speakershould (i8)
I'll see you on Thursday
to pre-emptive The same holds if it is said on Wednesday, due names of days deictic how many such in differ Languages btnortou.s named days has four Chinantec language Amerindian the are: there today, and back from days names three of today; Japanese eitherside (i e' yesterday and tomorrow word for same has the Hindi two ahead; CT'); including the day to day adjacent it glossesas 'the relevant and so on (Fillmore, I975). Further aspectsof the interactionofcalendrical reckoningand time deixis arise when we considcr complex time adverbials like /as' lvlonday, next year, or this afternoon. These consist of a deictic modifier, rifu, text, last, etc., together with a non-deictic name or measureword. Now, interpretation of such adverbials in English is systematicallydetermined by (a) the calendrical vs non-calendrical (and specificallydeictic) modes of reckoning, and (b) the distinction between common noun units, like weehs,moxths, yealt' and proper name units, like Mond.ay, December,and perhaps afternoon, which cannot be used as measures (Fillmore, r975). Thus this year ts ambiguousbetween the calendricalunit that runs from January ! to January r and which includes CT,'9and the measureof 365 days that begins on the day including CT. In general, the phrase tltis X, where words is a 8cn..6l tcndencv: ' Perhapsthis pr.-emptive natur. of Pure dcictic it takcs special conventions ro make it aPP.oPri.r€ fo. a speskcr lo ref€r to himscff by n&me, rnd it would be strengc to say Do it ot 1046 inst zd ot Do il no@,wh€n now is 10.36. Exceptions, thouah,.r€ title uscd instdd of second p€rson pronouns, as in yer Honout thould do at k l,ish.t, with tull third percon .a.e.mcnt; cnd on€ c.n s.y Lo'do' instesd of rr" if on€ is in ' Thereareoth€rpos s i bi ti es too,du.l ooth.rk i nds ofc .l €ndri c al fi x edP oi nts ' e.g. the tax year, the acadcmic ycar, ctc.
2.2 DescriqtiL)eaqProaches
Deixis 'X' rangesover the terms weeh, month, year, will refer to the unit X including CT, and will be ambiguous between the calendricaland non-calendricalinterpretations.r0 Similarly, next X will refer to the unit X which follows the unit of the same order which includes CT, and so on. In contrast, tirs Y, where 'Y ' is a proper name for a unit included in the larger calendricalspan Z, will often mean 'that unir Y which is included in the larger span Z which includes CT'. Hence, this August does not necessarily mean the month that we are now in, in the way that this u)eekordinarily means thc week that we are now in. Rather, this August means the August of the calendar year thar includes CT; and thismotning rneansthe morning of the diurnal unrr that includes CT. Thus I can say this morning either during tne morning or the afterpoon, and refer to the same span; whereas In Chinantec, I must use a different word for referring to the morniug in the morning (i.e. when the span includes CT) from the one I use to refer to the morning in the afternoon (i.e. when the span referred to excludes CT, but is within the same larger diurnal span as CT * Fillmore, rgTSt 4j\. ln the applicationof z€.rtto calendricalnamcsofdays, an ambiguity arisesr zer, Thursday can refer either to the Thursday of the week that succeedsthe week that includes CT, or that Thursday that lirst follows CT. Note that on a Friday or a Saturday, thesewill coincioc; and given the rule that today and tomolro.o pte-enpt calendrical day names, on Wednesday and Thursday, nexr Thursdat can only mean the Thursday of next week. It follows that, if one starts the week ()n Monday, next Thutsday is ambiguousonly on Monday and Tuesday (Fillmore, r97rb). The example nicely raisesthe issueof the degree to which a generallinguistic theory is committed to giving an account of languageunderstanding: for here we have a complex interaction between deictic words (clearly a linguistic problem) and a culture s temporal reckoning systems(not so clearly a linguistic problem), and the pre-emptive usage of deictic words (which lies somewhere rn between).On the wider programme for pragmaticswhich we reviewcd in Chapter r, namely that pragmatics should provide (in connection with the rest of linguistic theory) a full account of languageunderstanding, inferenceslike this must be fully explained. Finally, we should turn briefly to tense, although the complexities 'o Notc thar this usc ofr,[r! is perhaps boftowed from its proximat usase, herc to indicate spans ctose to or includine CT.
16
r,la.e dcjcrrc
In those subject lie well beyond the scope of this book' ^f this main of the one is r"""r""""" that unequiuocably exhibit it, tense deictically are all sen'tences when uttered factorsensurtngtha( nearly rr some ,o a lontext of utterance Confusion over whether part stems in "l]or"d like the following are tenselessor 'eternal' ""ni"n""" equivocation ov€r the term deep from a 'ezJe'
(5e) (60)
Two and two is four lguanas eat ants
distinguish the semantic or let us, following Lyons (r977a: 682), call metalinguistic tense may we which lh"o..tical category of tense' that a traditional inflections verbal the o, trftuo"" foi short, from tenses' language's that call may qrammar of a particular language deictic purely a given be can fii"tr *" may;all L-ienses. M-tense as question empirical is an it r,.;",ty t"-poral interpretation,but Then "nJ way same the in L-tenses can also be treated ,o *h", "*t"rr, that (59) and (6o) are L-tensed, but M-tenseless and *"" -", "", (although they may be non-deictic in different ways; see non-deictic properties-of Lyons, rg77a:68o). Now' we may investigate the in isolation from their partial and imperfect Iula"n"" "y"r"-, logics (see realization in L-tense systems' as is done in tense and Reichenbach,tg47; Prior, I968). Obviously, though' if M-tense the analysis L-tense get too far aPart, M-tense may be of little use to pasr distinguish easily we can system an M-tense of language. In (events completed prior to CT), from present(events whose span can further includes CT), fro.rr future (events succeeding CT); we can also we and 683); (Lyons, 1977a: distinguish pointsfrom spazs plxperJect',by tt'e like tenses complex make hrst approximations to representing events that are prior to other events, which ar€ themselves prior to CT (Reichenbach,tg47: 288ff; seealso Allwood' Andersson & Dahl, r977: IzIff). Thus (6r) will be true' on this account' Just iher" i" so-e reference time (say, another event) prior to CT' in """" (while (62) such that at that reference time, (62) would have b€en true anchorins in allsent€nces' r€quirc other formsofd€ictic 'r But some lansuases rcquires virtuellv lndian laneuage Kwalwela Thus the North Amdic.n to th€ sp€rkei cv€ry noun phrGe to bc coded a. €ithcr visible o' non-visible while S E Asim lansuases like press, Bors), sftc. in A X..na", teni*""" deixis' and other languagcs Korean and Japanese enforce the codinsofsocial in almosl thc encoding of discoursc deixis (in .h€ fo'm of discou's' toPic)'
z.z DescriPtive aqProaches
Deixrs is in tutn true, just in case(63) would have been true at some poinr p ri o r to th e C T o f (6 2 )): (6 r) (62) (6i)
John lad seenMary John raro Mary John seesMary
But such M-tensesdo not match up simply with L-tenses,for L-tense" nearly alwaysencodeadditional aspectuala.d rnodalfcaturestoo (sec Comrie, t976a; Lyons, I977a: 7o3f{, 8o9ff;. For example, l,-futr.rretensesprobably invariably contain a modal element, and the nearesr M-tense correlates of L-tenses are to be found in the distinction between past and non-past (Lyons, rg77a: 628). Any theorist who wants to claim that, for example,the English L-present and L-futurc coincide with the M-present and M-future, will 6nd cataloguesof insuperableodds in Huddleston, r969; Lakoff, IgTo; Lyons, r9771. 8ogff; andthe referencesthey cite. Neverthelessa puredeictic M-tense system seemsto be an integral component, together with aspectual, modal and other notions, of most L-tense systems.Clearly,just whal M-tense concepts are needed for linguistic description will differ from language to language. Further, ne can expect interactions between pure deictic M-tense concepts and cultural divisions and measuresof time to show up in L-tenses. Thus, in the Peruvian language Amahuacan, thcre is an L-tense aflix (call it "I") which means difierent things at difrerent times of the day- llohn hicAed-T Bill said in the afternoon means 'John kicked Bill in the morning', but said in the morning it means 'John kicked Bill yesterday'. ln other words 'T' seemsto mean that the event described took place in the largest unit of the daylight span that precedesthe unit which contains CT, whether or not night intervenes.(For this, and other 'exotic ' elements of time deixis, see Fillmore, t975.) It is sometimes claimed that there are languageswithout true tenses,for exampleChineseor Yoruba, and this is correct in the sense that such languagesmay lack L-tensesmorphologically marked in the verb, or indeed systematically elsewhere (Comrie, rg76a'. 82fr; Lyons, r977a: 678-9). But we can confidently assumethat there are no languages where part of an M-tense system is not rcalized somewherein time-adverbialsor the like, not to mention the implicit assumption of M-present if no further specification is provided (L y o n s , r9 7 7 a : 6 8 6 ). 78
is relevant to various r;nally, we should mention that time deixis elements in a language Thus greetingsare usually o,i.r'1.;.,t. so tnar time'restricted' (64)
Good morning
Curiously' while (6+) only be used in rhe morning' and so on English), (65) can onfy U" used as a greeting (at least in British "rn be used as a Paftrng: only ",n
(6t
Good night
of time and discourse deixis' sothat we have here an interaction Plaee deixis Placeor spacedeixis concernsthe specificationoflocations Th€ importance of to relative anchorage points in the speech event. gauged from the fact that general can be in specincations locational - by describing to objects of referring ways two basic to be thereseem them on the other locating and by hand, on the one them or naming to other relative specified can be locations Now, (Lyons,r977a:648). points, tn: as obiectsor fixed reference 2.2.3
(66) (67)
The station is two hundred yards from the cathedral Kabul lies at latitude 34 degrees, longitude 7o degrees
Alternatively,they can be deictically specifiedrelativeto the location of participantsat the time of speaking (CT), as in (68) (6e)
It's two hundred y^rds awat Kabul is four hundred miles West of iete
ln either caseit is likely that units of measurement,or descriptions of direction and location, will have to be used, and in that caseplace deixis comes to interact in complex ways with the non-deictic organizationof space (see Leech, 1969; Fillmore, tg75: 16-28; Lyons, r977a: 69off; and referencestherein) There are, though, some pure place-deictic words, notably in Englishthe adverbs/rereand there, and the demonstrativepronouns this that. The symbolic usage of here, as in (7o), can be glossed ^nd as 'the pragmatically given unit of space that includes the location of the speakerat CT', (70)
I'm writing to say I'm having a marvellous time ,ezc
79
Deixis
z.z Descriptive apploaches
The gestural usage must be glossed a little differentlvpragmatically p r a g m a tica llv "..-,tht " '" given sive n sn ace proximal nr^w i h.l | space, -. to speaker,s fo"u,io.,-u'r'ci '^ ---^r.^-'.lh. -' ' ' ' that i n c l u d e s the_ includes th e point D o i n t or o r location t o.ari ^- g"st,rrully irai"",.J. ,, Noa"'rij,,h* --.-,--ri ., "'ct w e cannot ca n n o t eradicate e r a d icr r c rthe h F h^.t,a-modifier ,pragmatically gi,
u"f in th",u 'rr ther. definitions: an utterance of(7r) m n1"t q"ftt d;gerent implicationg of precision of orecision if ca;r r^ . if saidto a crane ^-^-:^t ^-^-- op.."to, in O t)
Place it here
"ont.u",
Again, we have the interaction b and linguistic knowl"ag", *hi"h,"t-lLl"-1'
,"
"i"i,"*""ffi
encyclopaedicknowledge'
inquestion. Thisisan-other po'":::'fil:."'fiilT;ff.:ii:::::::.
of indexicats offer us no heip. The o,roJ;;;;";:;;;;;',"iltlt, utteranceof (7 r ), as with the referent of next Thursday,O.peii, :; complex interactions between deictic and .,o.,-d"ictic'f""tor". The adverbs Aezeand thete ate <
oraproxima r/dis,"I di;";;;;, ::::ilHlHt tocatlon. as in:
o2)
il"'f,i: ilff
:
Bring that hete and take this thcre
But this is only sometimes so, for although tiere basically mearrs 'distal from speaker'slocation at CT,, it can rlr" b";"";-i"';;;, 'proximal to addresseeat RT'. Thus, "''" ir, .,o.r_"rr"plro.i",.r"""i (7 3 ) How are things trtere ? does not generally mean ,how are things at some place distant frorn the speaker',but rather ,how are things where the;;*;;:.'i1,. gestural usage of there favouts the first interpreta,i"n, ,n" usage the second. There are also of course "f-U"ii" a."Ofr*i" (cf. (4o.)above), and this explains "*a".'"irAl* why there is no neces*rr"O;;;;;" anomaly in:
Q+) uth.e.rethere refers to the place we previously mentioned as our goal (Fillmore, rg7 16; zz6).tz 'r We scem atso. thouah, to b€ abl€ to say (7a) if thc refe.ent of rr.," is nor acruary menrion€d but pragmaticaly ei"en. Lyons @;r] ;;:;;,;*" a r r e n tio nr o r h c r a cr rhar anrpho.c referenccsd.,., ..;i i ,;;;,.;;,.. mention-:it issufficient if, forpalicipanrs, rhe ref...r,,. .nd so arre,dy in th. domain ofdilcou.sc. "1,;"tj;;;;"J".,, rh. *, .f *f.*.;;.;;;;;i;" abour. The.€lation b€tween domain of discou.""';;;;;;;;;;'j;^"" r n 2 .2 .4 tr cto w. 8o
demonstrative pronouns are 'perhaps more clearly organized dimension, whereby l&ls can straightforward proximal-distal ,the given area close to the speaker's pragmatically in a object L the pragmatically given ' object beyond the r/ral and CT', at (tg77a: 6+1) at CT'(Lyons location speaker's the to close the derivative glosses 'the one here', 'the one there', ively). But the facts ate complicated here by the shift from tiat to show emotional trril to sho* emparhy, and from this to lhat (Lyons (r977a:677) calls this ernpathetic deixis; see rq.Trb: zz7 and R. Lakoff, 1974 for the intricacies of usage). There is also a systematic neutralization of the dimension when it is not especially relevant, so that say, searching through a tin of needles for a number 9, either: ?hri is it! That's it\
four way Some languages have demonstratives with three and distinctions on the proximal-distal dimension, so that the North West glossable ,{merican languageTlingit, for example, has demonstratives and over there', one 'that one nearby', 'this right here', one as'this on a contrast has six-way while Malagasy way there', over 'that one press)' in Keenan, & (Frei, I5 Anderson I944: r dimension ; thesame However, care must be exercised in the analysis of unfamiliar languages, as demonstratives are often organized with respect to contrastsbetween participant-roles rather than simply to distance in concentric circles from a fixed deictic centre (the speaker's location at CT). Thus in Latin, and correspondingly in Turkish, /tic (Turkisn 0a) means 'close to speaker', tsre (Turkish 9a) means 'close to addressee',and le (Turkish o) means'remote from both speaker and addressee'(Lyons, r968: 278-9i cf . Anderson & Keenan, in press) Sirnilarly, in the Philippine language Samal, we have a four way distinctionbasedon four kinds ofparticipant role: (i) closeto speaker, (ii) close to addressee, (iii) ctose to audience (other members of conversationalgroup), (iz) close to persons present but outside the conversational group that consists of speaker, addressee(s) and audience. This system (specifically a switch from the demonstrative that encodes (ii) or (iii) to that encoding (iv)) provides nice ways of slighting people by cutting them, demonstratively, out of the conversation (Fillmore, rgTS: 43). There are thus systems of 8r
2.: Des(riPtiaeaPProaches
Deixis demonstrativesthat are not organized primarily, or only, around the speaker'slocation.There are also systems(e.g.in Australian and Ne* Guinea languages)that distinguish the three dimensions of spn". having demonstratives that gloss as ' the one above the speaker', ,11r.
one below the speaker', 'the one level with the speaker' as well as distinguishing relative distance from participants (see e.g. Dixorr rgTz'. z6zff rc Dyirbal). Some systems combine additional 'exotici deictic parameters like ' upriver/down river from speaker' u. ' visible/non-visible to speaker'to produce enormous arrays (up ro thirty
or more items) of demonstrative Keenan, in press).
terms (see Anderson &
The demonstrative determiners combine with non-deictic ts1n'5 for spatial organization to yield cornplex deictic descriptions of location. The non-deictic conceptual organization of space includes all those distinctions between surfaces, spaces, enclosures, containers and so on, and between fronts, backs, tops, sides, of objects, nor ro mention widths, Iengths, heights, etc. Thus: b j)
?[rt srZe of the box
can mean 'the surface of the box that can be called a side which is neatest to the location of the speaker at CT', but:
(?8)
?,fir! ride of the rree
simply means 'that area of the tree visible from the point where the speaker is at CT (or the space between that area and that point)'. The difference between the glosses for (77) a d (78) depends clearly on boxes, but not trees, having intrinsic sides (the difference is perhaps even clearer with an object like a car, which has an intrinsic orientation, so that its bottom remains its bottom even when thc vehicle is turned over, and its front remains its front even when goirrg backwards). 'lhe difference between (77) and (78) is not the same difficulty we met earlier, in the ambiguity of : \ 79)
The cat is behind the car
where behind can have either a deictic r.rsage(i.e. the car intervenes between the cat and the speaker's location), or a non-deictic usagc (i.e. the cat is at the intrinsic rear-end of the car). But the ultimate source of the difficulty is the same: some objects have intrinsic orientations, with fronts, sides, etc., and these allow both the deictic 82
of someoriented plane and the non-deictic refcrenceto some rselection plane As a result the deictic/non-deictic ambiguity rs oi,.f, ori"","a plagues the recipients of expressionslike: and llry g"n".ul, Bob is the man to the left of Mark
{8o) -.*hereBob may be to Mark's own left (non-deictic),or to the left from :1hsspeaker'spoint of view (deictic). ' Th"r" u.., as has been noted, fairly close connections between pronouns, and the definite article ilcictic determiners, third person I978)' All three categories Hawkins, z7g, t977a:646fr; r (Lyons, 968: be an essentially deicttc perhaps may are deffnite, and definiteness pronominal element' as a retains tlls r notion. l,yons suggeststhat On thls to h"/e similar element well as containing an adverbial is that t&is or,ly in that x 'r marked analysis,,re r differs from thrr.r and ,+ proxim al', lf t ar r is m ar ked '- pr oxim al', and t he x is unm ar ked (l-yons, tg77a:69-4)' for proximity, i.e. it is a neutral deictic term Finally, let us considersome motion verbs that have built-in deictic components. English come vs. 3'o makes some sort of distinction betweenthe direction of motion relative to participants in the speech event (the exposition here follows Fillmore, t966, r975" soff) As a first approximation, we may note that (8r)
He's coming
seemsto gloss as 'he is moving towards the speaker's location at CT " while (82)
He's going
glossesas 'he is moving away from the speaker'slocation at CT' The suggestedgloss for.otze would in fact be roughly correct for Spanishoezr'ror Japanesehuru, but it will not handle English usages l i ke: (81)
I'rr. coming
sincethis cannol mean 'the speakeris moving towards the location of the speaker',but rather means 'the speakeris rnoving towards the locationofthe addressee at CT'. (Such a usagemay havediachronically polite arisenfrom a deictic shift to the addressee'spoint of view.) In Japaneseone must her€ say the equivalent of f go' Taking this into account, we may suggest that English come glossesas 'movement towards either the location of the speaker,or towards the location of 83
fs ' ,n l! N1
ii
tl I II
{
I
I
1
I
i
I
ilI l
l
Deirts
2.2 Desc/iPlire o|Proathes
the addressee, at CT'.
say: (8+)
\,\' h e n I' m
However this won't quite do either _ on..aa
in the ol Ice,
you can .orne to see me
where coze glosses as 'movement to*ards the location ofthe speaker at the time of some other specified event' (let us call this 11*. refereoce tirne). Such a usage is still ultimately deictic, in that it makes refcrence to part icipan t -role, bur it is not directly placc_deictic (in that there is no anchorage to the location of the present spss.h event). In narrative, $'e sometimcs dispense with even this last vestiRe of deictic content, using .orne relative to the locations of protagonisils rather than participants, but this non-deictic usage wc shall ignort. Our third approximation to a gloss for come is therefore: ,rne1i6n towards speaker's location, or addressee's location, at either CT, r,r reference timc'. Our analysis is still incomplete, however, as there is a deictic usagc of roze that is based not on participants' actual location, but on therr normative location or horne-base. Hencc the possibility of saying, when neither speaker nor addressce is at home:
(Es)
I raragover severaltimes to visit you, but you were never liere
So rve must append another clause to our gloss, namely : . or motion towards lhe home-base maintained at CT by cither spcaker e1 addressee'. Very similar remarks throughout can be made forgo, and also for verbs llke bring and taAe (see Fillmore, r975: 5off). A number of Amerindian languages encode reference to home-base in a more systematic *ay. Thus in Chinantec, there are forrr expressions to choose from if one wants to say ,pedro moved to X depending on rhe following criteria: (i) one verb form is used if the speaker S is at X at CT, and X is S's home-base: (ii) another is used if S is at X, but X is no t S 's h o m e - b a s e ; ( i i i ) a t h i r d i s u s e d i f S r s not at X, but X is S's home-base; (iv) a fourth is used if S is not ar
X , a n d X i s n o r S ' s h o me-base(Fi l l more, r 97 r b: r 6). Further complexities in place deixis arise if the soeaker is mo ti o n - i r th e n b e c o mcs qui te possi bl e to ur. t" -po.rl t" .-. o rd e r l o re fe r to d e i c ti c l ocati ons,as i n: (8 6 ) (87)
ln tn
I first heard that ominous r^ttle ten miles apo There's a good fast food joint jusr trn mtnites Jrom here
This raiscsthe issueabout whether time deixis or placedeixis is more 84
{ t 977a:,669)inclines to a view that' since place-deicttc . basic.Lyons a temporal sense(especially ]j,-" tik" this and lhat can be used in unfolding discourse)'place parts of an p-*irnul and distal lo'..f", ,o deixis' Such a view is favourable time than l""i"i. i" rnor. fund"mental non-spatialto spatial reduce liiocalism, ttt" tt eory that attempts to in (86) and (87) can usage (Lyon., r977a:7t8fl')' But the ."rpr""rion. general each domain (space ir ur"a r" reversethe argument, and in fertile ground for metaphors about the other (see lnd ti-.) p..r"id"" deictic locations always have to be lh"Or"t, belou'). ln addition, location of a participant ar codingtime' ,paai6.d *iah respectto the time deixis element, ;3. place deixis always incorporates a covert is not truc. converse the while 2.2.4
Discoursedeixis Discourse.or text, deixis concerns the use of expressions
within somc utterance to tefet to some portion of the discourse that contains that utterance (including the utterance itsel0. We may also include in discourse deixis a number of other ways in which an utterance signals its relation to surrounding text, e.g. utterance-initial anyrray seems to indicate that the utterance that contains it is not addressedto the immediatell' preceding discourse' but to one or more stepsback. (Such signals are deictic because they have the distinctive relativity of reference, being anchored to the discourse location of the current utterancc.) The only detailed accounts of this area of deixis are, again, to be found in Fillmore, I975 and Lyons, r977a'.667fr. Since discourse unfolds in time, it seems natural that time-deictlc words can be used to refer to portions of the discourse; thus analogously to last weeh a d fiext Thursday, we have ;n the last paragraph and in the next Chaptel, But we also have place-deictic terms re-used here, and especially the demonstratives this and that. Thus this can be uscd to refer to a forthcoming portion of the discourse, as in (88), and that to a preceding portion, as in (89):
(88) (8p)
I bet you haven't heard ,rlJ story Iiat was the funniest story I've ever heard
Considerableconfusion is likely to be caused here if we do not immediately make the distinction between drlrorrse deixis and anap,[ora.As we noted, anaphoraconcernsthe useof (usually)a pronoun to refer to the same referent as some prior term, as in: 85
2.2 Detcri\tive aPProaches
Deixis t90,
Harry's a sweethearti ,e's so considerate
wherc Harry and he can be said to be co-refer€ntial, i.e. pick or.r the same referent. Anaphora can, of course, hold within senten;, acrosssentences,and acrossturns at speakingin a dialogue. D6;a,1. or other definite referring expressions are often us.d to int"oducg u referent, and anaphoric pronouns used to refer to thi same entity thereafter. It is important to remember, however, thal deictic and anaphoric usages are not mutually exclusive, as was rema.ked in connectioD with example (4o) above. Nevertheless, in principle thc distinction is clear: where a pronoun refers to a Iinguistic expression (or chunk of discourse)itself, it is discourse-deictic;where a pronoun refers to the same entity as a prior linguistic expression refers to, it is anaphoric. It follows that there is a close, but quite unexplored, relation betweendiscoursedeixis and lnention or quotation; thus in the following example (from Lyons, rg77a 661): (9 r)
A: That's a rhinoceros B; Spell il for me
it refers not to the referent, the beast itself, but to the wo rd thinocetos. Here, it is not doing duty for a use of rhinoceros but rather for a mention of it. Further, the property of tolen reflexivity, as in the following usage of r,hrs,is just a special case of intra_sententiat discoursedeixis: t92)
Itlri sentence is no! true
Fillmore (r97rb: z4o) hopes that a theory of discourse deixis will resolvethe well-known paradoxesassociatedwith sentenceslike (92) (ifit's false,it's true; and ifit's true, it's false),and indeed with token reflexivity in general. A number of significant problems for the distinction between anaphora and discourse deixis have been thrown up by the very considerable body of work on pronominalization (see Lyons, I977b; Lyons, rg77a: 662fr for a review; and for recentwork, see e.g. Heny & Schnelle, 1979). Firstly, there are the so-called pronouns of laziness (Geach, r96z: r25ff1, as in Karttunen's *"ll_kno*r, sentence(see Lyons, r977a:673ff):
(e3) 86
The man who gave his paycheck to his wife was wiser than the man who gave r, to his mistress
wilt, h;s paychrcA' but refers to what a i is not co-referen tial paycheck ,fr", NP woutd have referred to (namely the r"1l place of tl' One got it) if it had occurred in ,iur, r^,hor" -i"t."ss pronoun f " rh"p" r"y that the :"::j:t_f l-tlJ^T_: NP. Secondly, in an exchange a prior -l:"^."f"^, to reference ictic 668)l th" foUo*ing (from Lyons, rg77at A: I've never seen him B', That's a lie
be anaphoric (unless it is held that e pronoun ,rta, does not seem to does, i'e' a proposition iJf".",o ttt. same entity that A's utterance discourse-deictic(it to be -.J"-'",tt,n value); nor does it quitc scem
,. lf"rt'..,
but, perhaps'to tn" to the sentence "-t::tffij I*:1 ,tt", t.","nce). Rather, such a usage seemsto fall in between:
ui,"rin, 67o) catls such usages impure textual deixis' l"onr-trqzz", of anaphora as reference fri.atv, t-vo.t" points out that if one thinks establi"hed in the domain of discourse' then the a "l.eady "n,iii.t reference commonly J"y" in *hi"t tttey are referred to in anaphoric by the discourse introduced were which they in tt otaer ,rr" of " be glossed (95) might of translation Turkish the -"i" i,r"tf. fo, "*"rnpt", ihe proximal demonstrative anaphorically refcrs to (nO), *t.t" to the ", ,h" i."t ..f"."r,t introduced, and the distal demonstrative second:
(es) (e6)
but she John and Mary came into the room: he was laughio8 was crylng but l&at lohn and I{ary came into the room: t}* was laughing, was cryrng
In that case,there are good arguments for considering that anaphora ultimately rests on deictic notions (Lyons, r977a: 67r)' Such a conclusion would have important repercussions for the philosophical worries about the deictic nature of reference which were sk€tched in sectlon 2.1. To return to straightforward issues in discourse deixis, there are many words and phrases in English, and no doubt most languages' that indicate the relationship between an utterance and the prior dilcourse. Examples are utterance-initial usages of but, thereJore,in conclusion,to ,he conttary , still , houevet , anytoay, well ' besides,actually ' all in oll, so, alter all, and so on. It is generally conceded that such words have at least a-component of meaning that resists 87
Deixis
z.z DesctiPtiae aq,roaches
truth-condilional treatmenr (Grice, r975;-Wilson, r975; l,evinsr r979b). What they seem to do is indic*. .*.. i---,'jj_'-cvttrsol, justhowtheutterance,r;; continuation of, some portion "-#ll.rt','n".jij1:3Jff':: of the prior dir"or.r".'W"":.,;'^:t
sentences (Ross, 1967) like the following seem to position:rg the topic of the sentence by movement into initial
yr,
That blouse, it's simply stnnning Vera, is she coming down then ?
: properstudiesof theseterms. 01: king sketchedin the next Chapter .!:t ", "oo.""J'"iil'j j.rb.to oi-"orr*rrUo*, implicaaure, another will be inorcated :l,O:, ,,1. rn Chapter 6 in discrr.";^_ theconversational usesof raal/(seeg*,"1,, ,ea,i, ffi;:T;j found in Smith & Wilson ( r 979: r go), elaboratedin""1; Br".k;";;,:r":
ofactual usageseem to show that items placed in this position do correlate with discourse topic, or what the participants are 'about', although not alwaysin simple ways (Duranti & Ochs, distinction are - The issues that surround the topic/comment quite ill understood, and discussion has been confused by ical chaos (see Gundel, 1977; Lyons, rg77at 1oofl)l the subject is clearly ofconsiderable importance to pragmatic
.,i:T:.T:i:x::,i::"H:"T:.:1.::";;,;;;;;"il:i::il I ;il "1;;",T, il 1"#TI* "',"",;;-,';;, ilf"lT:ilT
are tagged by a particle in such a svstem,r;.
:-
-,"..,;^;: accurate precrs is obtained,, jJ":til.T::"1:J"ll"*:*'::
' : "ttt
:1, parttcleareextracted(seeLongacre, r976afor manysucn:i,.""ii;:: tanguajes;and Anderson& Keenan. in press, l:1:,n". 1l:.j"dian so-catt;{/oJ tth personcategory in Algonquiantang"r;;",;;, 1e;1i a drscourse-deicticcategory). *f:n tha^ttanguagesIike Japanese and Tagatoghave ll-t "j:.-y-.-l topic markers distinct
sentence Oi)
from case markers. Thus the Japanese
ano-hon-ara John-ga kat-ta r nat book-rop,r John-sz67.errboughr
book), rohn il#;, T::l'#Lh'H l;:-.^':l':*:l' * that (where topic and s";;";;;;;0";:,::iT;i#i" illT,Tljll,iliiTl languages
rhe srammaticar encoding of topic is so lll_l: ::rythat promrnent, it is not clearthat the notion of s"Ur..i n", ii" purchaseas it does in the analysis, ""r". for exarnpl6, (Li & Thompson, re76).A oi,"i ";;;;;;;;".
li::":r.: such topic
sreat
,r,"'ai"""*"#,
, markers has been concerned *i,f,,f," "i a"n,..r"._in,J.n"r organization of information as given ";;'i., tr, ,t ,"pii']". comment about the topic _ see " Gundel, 1977 r". g; ll * clear that a major function of "'r.ri.J, topic marking is pr".i".fv ,o .JIJ,.',". marked utterance to some topic raised in the prior discourse, "p.cific r.eLo perform a discourse_deictic function. -The same function seems to be perlbrmed in English, and in othcr relatively 6xed word-order languages, by word-order changes, Thus 88
remarks in this section only sketch out a province for which theory of discourse deixis might provide an account. The as indicated, may be very large, ranging from the borders of naphora to issues of topic/comment structures. Social deixis Social deixis concerns "that aspect of sentences which reflect or establish or are determined by certain realities of the social situation in which the speech act occurs" (Fillmore, 1975.76\. Fillmore, unfortunately, then proceeds to water down the concept of socialdeixis by including, for example, much of the theory of speech acts(see Chapter 5). Here we shall restrict the term to those aspects of language structure that encode the social identities of participants (properly, incumbents of participant-roles), or the social relationship between them. or between one of them and persons and entities referred to. There are of course many aspects of language usage that depend on these relations (see e.g. Brown & Levinson, ry78, rgTg)' but these usages are only relevant to the topic of social deixis in so far as they are grammaticalized- Obvious examples of such grammaticalizations are 'polite' pronouns and titles of address, but there are many other manifestations ofsocial deixis (seeBrown & Levinson, r978: r83-92, z8I-5; Levinson, ry27, rgTgb). 2.2.5
I' Ro3s propo.€d Lft-di.locstion is . .tm3formrtion, bur thcrc it. in f.ct seriousproblcms withsuch ansnslFis,.nd ir.ecmt b€tt ttotrclt such lopic phr!3.3 as spposition.l NPs, not unlikc v6rtivd, cvcn though thcrc i. little thcory ibout hov to handlc th€ syntsx and lcm.ntics ot the6e(3c€ Gundel, te17 | 46fr1.
89
2.2 Descriqlh)e aqProaches
Deiris lfhere are two basic kinds of socially deictic information rhat s*. to be encoded in languages around the *"rta, ,.l"tiorr"f'.1. absotute. The relational variety is the mosr i-p..r";;,;;: ilo relations that typically get expressedare those between: (r) speaker and refe.ent (e.g. referent honori6cs) (ii) speaker and addressee(e.g. addresseehonorifics) t rrU bystander (e.g. bystander or
iTT-::--Td nonottttcs) (iu) speaker and setting (e,g. formality levels)
audience
We can talk of honoriffcs just where the relation in (iF(iii) concens relative rank or respect; but there are many other qualitiJi'or relationship that may be grammaticaliz.d, kinship ."tatior,", totemic relations, clan membership, etc,, as ".g. made availaUleby rtre relevant social system. The first three kinds of honorific were clearly distinguished by Comrie (r976b), who pointed out that traditional descriptions have often confused (i) and (ii): the distinction is that in (i) respectcan only be conveyed by referring to the ,target, of ;he respect, whereas in (ii) it can be conveyed without necessarily referring to the target. Thus the familiar tufoous tvpe of distinction in singular pronouns of address(which, following Brown & Gilman (r96o), we shall call T/V pronouns) is really a referent honorific system, where the referent happens to be the addressee. In contrasr, in many languages(notably the S, E. Asian languages,including Korean, Japanese and Javanese) it is possible to say sorn" s"nt"n"" glossing as 'The soup is hot' and by the choice of a linguistic alternate (e.g. for 'soup') encode respect to the addresseewithour referring to him, in which cgse we have an addressee honorific system. In general, in such languages, it is almost impossible to say anything at all which is not sociolinguisticallymarked as appropriate for certain kinds ofaddressees only. In practice, thougt the , "taiorar" 'speech levels'of the S. E. Asian languagesare complex amalgams of referent and addressee honorifics (see Geertz, r96o and Coirie. r976b re Javanese;Kuno, r973 and Harada, r976 re Japanese). The third kind of relationalinformation, that betweenspeaker and bystander, is more rarely encoded in bystander honorifics. (The term bystaaderhere does duty as a cover term for participants in au-diencerole and for non-participating overhearers.) Examples include the Dyirbal alternative vocabulary, referred to above. used in the presenceof taboo relatives(seealso Haviland, r979 re Guugu 9o
languages' like aspects of ). and certain features of Pacific Reisenberg, rgsz:' 2o3-)' hono.ifics' in Pottapean (Garvin &
we may add a fourth' ,i1"",rr."" r.i"a" of relationalinforrnation other participants) (and perhaps luti" ,"t"tion U",*een sPeaker
most languages are used t". social activity)' Although formal/informal is "i,,t* distinction the in some ,.",i"lni"t-"f "",tings, in for example Japanese by so-called nrcrs.;-m"ti""lir.a, by a high diglossicoatiatt (see below)' Note rhat i., t"-it "'nl relative strictly to the deicire first three kindsofinformation are the social standingofthe speaker' formality ,ir", f,"r" "p""ln""tly involving a relation between all particiU*i seen as ""rft"o" (but seelrvine, r9?9; J M' Atkinson' r98z)'r' ,li.o-t-o "na "i,u",ion is often The other main kind of socially deictic information that example, for There ate, relational. than rather is absolute we may talk (after {orms reserved for certain speakers, in which case in Thai the For example, speaterE' Fill-or", r975) of authorized by male be used only particle that can polite tnorpheme hbdb is a being female speakers for reserved speakers,the corresponding form person of the first form rq6+). Similarly, there is a hhd (H^ ", pronoun specifically reserved for the use of the Japanese Emperor I97rb: 6). There are also in many languages forms iFill-or", reservedfor authorized rccipienis, including restrictions on most titles of address (Your Honou, Mt President, etc.); in Tunica there were pronouns that differed not only with sex of referent, but also with the sex of the addressee, so that there were, for example' two words for'they', depending on whether one was speakinSto a man or a woman (Haas, ibid.). Having reviewed the main kinds of social-deictic information that are grammaticalized by different languages, we may now consider where in grammatical systems such distinctions are encoded' Note that only the first kind of relational information' i.e. that on the speaker-referent axis, imposes intrinsic limitations on the ways in which such information can be encoded - namely in referring expressions, and morphological agreementswith them. For good sociological reasons. such referent honorifics are found for actors, their social !r Thc difr.'enc. rn.y b€ mor. iPper€nt th.n .€sli thcre msv $'ell b€ honorific sFt.mscncodine i€t.tions bcalr,c€nddrcsscc.nd rcfcr€nt, rnd thcrc.re th' of Aurtrclien ' trirngulrr ' lin acrms mcntion€d in $ction 2.2.t, to thc 'olc the sp€ck€rmcy not alwry! bc soccnttrl to th. firs. thr€c kindsofsoci.l d'ixis .irher.
9r
Deixis groups, their actions and belongings (sec e.g. Geertz, t960 and Horne, r974: xxi re Javanese). We 6nd, perhaps, pale shadows q1 these latter in the English 'elevated' tetrr's /esidence (for .home,t dine (for ' eat' or ' eat a meal '), lady (for ' wornan' ), steed (for , hor5s:i and so on. Expressions referring to the addressee, though, ar. particularly likely to encode speaker referent relationships, due 1s doubt to the addressee's direct monitoring of the speaker's q11lgqo" to him or her. Hence the world-wide distribution through qurte unrelated languages and cultures of the T/V distinction in second person singular pronouns (Head, r978; Levinson, r978; for the sociolinguistics, see Brown & Gilman, r 96o and Lambert & Tuckcr, r976). The fact rhat the form of the polite or V pronoun is oftEn borrolved from the second person plural, or third person singular or plural, pronouns, introducesconsiderablecomplexities into agreemenr s y s t em s ( Com r ie, lgTS; Cor b e t t , r 9 7 6 ; L e v i n s o n , r 9 7 9 b ) . A s w e noted, nominal predicates tend to agree with actual number and person, linite verbs with the morphological person and numbet encoded in the polite form of the pronoun, with language-specific decisions on predicates of intermediate kind. The other way in which addressees are typically referred to, namely by titles of address, also causes ngreement problems a decision has to be made betwecn second or third person agreementr and, where relevant, betwecn which titles of address can co-occur with which degree of resDect encoded in verbal agreements (I-evinson, r979b). tn languages with honorifics, honorific concord can thus become an intricate asDecr of morphology, which cannot always be treated formally wirhout reference to the socially deictic values of parricular morphemes. 'I'hese are some of the most important, and most ignored, examples of the direct interaction between pragmatics and syntax. Finally, let us note that titles of address and all vocative forms seem invariably marked for speaker-referent relationship: there is no such thing, it seems, as a socially neutral summons or address (see Zwicky, r974: 795 re English). The other kinds of socially deictic information, however, can De encoded just about anywhere in the linguistic system. Addressee honorifics (including dishonorilics and intimacy markers), for example, turn up in lexical alternates or suppletive forms (in e.g. Javanese; Geertz, r960), in morphology (in e.g. Japanese; Harada, r 976) , in par t ic les or af lix es ( i n e . g . T a m i l ; L e v i n s o n , r 9 7 g b ) , r n 9Z
.
2.2 DestriPtixe aqqroaches
(in e.g. Basque;Corum' r 975 : 96), in prosodics .,omenralphonology falsctto; Brown & Levinson, r978" 272)' honorifrc ^nd i1-,i".g.Tr.ttal of these (in e.g. Javanese, Japanese, a mixture a"""" L tnuny honorifics are encoded rn M"du,."", Korean) Similarly, bystander distinct vocabulary as by an entirely Yimidhirr Dvirbal and Guugu in other languages I979), and Haviland, (Dixon, rgTz:32ffi ie noted levels are encodedmorphoFormality morphology. hv oarticlesand across all the levels by differences but in Tamil iogi.olly in Japanese. syntax and phonology, morphology, including nf th. g.umtttat, termed diglossic variants usually kxicon. Caseslike the latter are the called has either (Ferguson,I964), although not everything so the restrictions in strict co-occurrencerules distinguishing levels or the to use that formal Tamil has. Some such levels are restricted medium, oral or written; but formal Tamil is used in both writing and formal addressor speechmaking. The linguist interested in delimiting the scope of an overall linguistictheory may be concernedthat the descriptionofsocial deixis will simply merge into sociolinguistics,and on this ground wish to excludeconsideration of social deixis from formal descriptions of languagealtogethet. This would be unfortunate. ln the first place, 8s noted in section t.2, a boundary can be drawn between deictic issuesand wider sociolinguisticones. For social deixis is concerned with the grammaticalization,or encoding in language structure, of social information, while sociolinguisticsis also, and perhaps primarily, concerned with issuesof language usage, Despite the fact that certain approaches seem to conflate the meaning and the use of social-deicticitems (see e.g. Ervin-Tripp, r97z), the possibility of regular ironic usagesof, for example, honorifics to children, argues for the existenceof prior and well-establishedmeaningsindependent of rules of usage.Social deixis is thus concerned with the meaning and grammar (e.g. the problems of honorific concord) of certain linguistic expressions,while sociolinguisticsis also concerned,iat.t a/ra, with how these items are actually used in concrete social contexts classifiedwith reference to the parameters of the relevant social system(Levinson, r979b). Thus, social deixis can be systematically restricted to the study of facts that lie 6rmly within the scope of structural studies of linguistic systems,leaving the study of usag€to another domain. A secondreasonwhy grammariansshould not simply ignore social 93
2.3 (:onclusios
Deixis deixis is that, while the study of English may suffer no obvious penalties for such neglect, there is scarcelya single sentenceof, lor example,Japanese,Javaneseor Korean, that canbe properly describeo from a strictly linguistic point of view without an analysisof social deixis. The neglect of the subjecr as a whole is no doubt simply due to the disproportionateamount of recentlinguistic work that hasbeen done on English or closely related languages. 2.3
Conclusions This Chapter has been very largely concerned,first, wrth the presentationof some useful analyticaldistinctions,and, secondlv with a review of some of the many intricaciesof deixis in familiar and lessfamiliar languages.The lack of theoreticaldiscussionreflectstne present state of our understanding: we have, on the one hand, only the rather simple philosophical approachesto indexicals (covq1i1p just some aspectsof person, time and placedeixis), and, on the other hand, a massof complicatedlinguistic facts,to which somepreliminarv order has been brought by the work of Fillmore and l-yons in particular. A central question that remains, though, is whether the study of deixis belongs to semantics or to pragmatics. However, even if linguists could all agreeon how the pragmatics/semanticsboundary should be drawn, there would be no simple answer to this question. Montague (r974) held that the study of any language containing indexicalswas, eo ipso, pragmatics. But this has the consequence,as we noted, that natural languages will only have a syntax and a pragmatics, and no semantics. So if the semantics/pragmattcs distinction is to do any work at all, we can try and shift the study of indexicals into semantics.And since at least some aspectsof deixis make a differenceto truth conditions, we may hope that this shift will coincidewith the decisionto restrict semanticsto the truth-conditional aspectsof meaning. However, we shall be disappointed, for there are aspectsof deixls that are clearly not truth-cond itional. The semantics/pragmatics border will then cut acrosswhat is, from the point of view adopted in section z.z, a unified linguistic fietd. But if we proceedto draw the line, where exactly will it fall ? As rve saw in seclion 2. r , , c cannot state the truth conditions of senrenceswith indexicals without referenceto the deictic function of indexicals; but if we allo*,truth conditions to be relativized to speakers,addressees,times, places,
etc', then it looks as if many aspectsof deixis can -:.,ticatedobjects, within truth-conditional semantics lt is a version -il"-"".ornaoa"t"a though, in which not sentences'but .5.-rutt -"onaitional semantics, can be assignedthe propositions they I"t u,,"."t "." in context, "L-'--". Wi,tto.l, such a move, the cutrent attempts to define the on fragments of ili;o".f tttt"r, consequenc€more or less directly make little would (as initiated by Montague, r974) ni u.uf t"ng"ug" as a generalsemantic programme' sens€ "Th"r" though, many obstaclesto the accommodationof deixrs "r", simply providing a list of indices or contextual within sema.,tic"by to which truth conditions can be statedrelative ..rint, of."fat"tt"" been made to deal with the distinctions has attempt no io, ""u-p1", and the various non-deictic usagesof tton-gestural, g"r,,r."1, b",rr"". we seem to need, not just a list gestural usages' For deicticwords. monitoring of the physical but a complete of abstractco-ordinates, it will be insufficient to For example, event. of the speech Droperties yet how many time of utterance, for index hauemerely a sittgledeictic itself: the utterance on to depend time indices we need seems (roo)
Don't shootnow, brlt now, now and now!
The possibility of an indefinitely long list of necessaryindices or co-ordinatesthus has to be fac€d. I n answerto this, Cresswell( I 973 : r r rfl) produies, by a technical sleight of hand, a formulation which avoidsspecifying the necessaryindices in advance But this hardly just solvesthe problem of knowing how to obtain the relevant indices when we need them. A second problem is that utteranceslike (ror)
Harry can only speakthis loud
arc tohen-leferi.ie to the physical properties of the utterance itself, sothat not only do the enormous technical problems of dealing with token-reflexivesin a logical manner have to be solved, but all the physicalproperties of an utterance will also have to be available as indices (requiring, again, an indefinite number of indices). These problemsalone would not make the prospectsfor the straightforward treatment of deictic sentenceswithin truth-conditional semantics look very hopeful. It may be more helpful to admit that what we are dealing with here are very complex pragmatic ways in which a sentenceand a context of utteranceinteract to pick out a proposition, by reference to the audio-visual monitoring of the speech event as it unfolds. 95
Deixis But whatever is uhimately O*:1:t-"-1.r, where person, placqx.4 ,' time deixis belong, there is little doubt that most asnectsofrti.^^ deixis and socialdeixis will lie outside the scope of a tru,h_"."d;r",:::. semantics.The reason for this is ;;"";;",.7
deixismostlymakeno differenc.t.1'i::,"JT:]t,,.^i;t o lruth condrtions ol t he f ollowing, ( r oz ) ( r o3)
Vous €tes Napol€on 'I'u es Napolion
You are-Napoleon and you are socrally superior to {or !w(,arly sd.i.rr '" t' distant from) me, the speaker
Then (ro5) would have to have r under which it rnsnnl (ro6), which it clearly does,lo, n"ul,"",t""ottt ( r o5) ( r o6)
Vous n'€tes pas Napoldon You.are.Napoleon, and you are not socially superior to (or socially distant from) me, the speaker
Exactly the same, and additional, arguments can be shown to hold for the complex honorifics of ,exotic' languages. Such aspectsof languagehave conventional but non-truth_conditional meanings. Similarly, it is generally agreed that the discourse_deictic wlras ... like moteouer,besid.es, anyway, well, etc., in utterance_initiat po"iUurr, do not make any difference to truth condition" 1C.i.", ,90r, ,f75; Wilson, r975). Herc again, then, it seems thut th"." ,* i;"r"i",i" rtems that have conventional meanings, but no (or only p-artiat.1 truth-cond it ional content. If we subscribe to a truth_c;n;itional semantics, we shall therefore be forced to find a place for such meaningsin pragmatictheory. Attempts have beenmade to assimilate suchmeaningsto variouspragmaticconcepts,for examptap."g-"ii" presupposition (Kecnan, rgTr), ot, as we shall 6r,d in tie ne*, Chapter,,conventional implicature. But the general conclusion must be that most aspectsofdiscourse deixis, and perhapsall aspects of socialdeixis, lie beyond the scopeof a truth-conditionul Deixis is therefore not reducible ""rnunti"".
at at, to matters "" ,,rtrutr,-..,nait;,]1,'i1.-"llil 96
Conversational implicature
lf I say either
the con dit rons which they wi be trr.re will be identical. _under The uttere.r of the 6rst may pragmaticaly presume rhal the addrqs5gs 1, socially superior or socially distant, but ( roz) ,."" ,i"a. ,, what ( loz ) ent ailed was : "., ""Ji (rc'4)
a J
perhaps hardlv
Iniroduction is one of the The notion of conversational implicature refer to the often (we shall pragmatics singlemost important ideas in distinctions as irnplicature as a shorthand, although ffi. "irrrply o,her kinds of implicature will be introduced below)' una iJi*""rr,tti" work in pragmatics is due to Th" s"li"nc" of the concept in recent stands as a paradigmatic , nu-b", of sources. First, implicature pragmatic explanations of !""-pt" of the nature and power of species of pragmatrc linguistic phenomena. The sources of this of language' inflrence can be shown to lie outside the organization yet these and interaction' co-operative for principles g".".ul in "o-" The language of the structure upon eflect principles have a pervasive significant some to offer seems of implicature, thetefore, "orr."pt functional explanationsof linguistic facts' A secondimportant contribution madeby thenotion of implicature to mean is that it provides some explicit accountof how it is possible (i e' more 'said' actually what is (in some general sense)more than of the sense than what is literally expressedby the conventional 3.o
linguistic expressionsuttered).r Consider, for example: I l .l
A: Can you tell me the time? B: Well, the milkman has come
All that we can reasonablyexpect a semantic theory to tell us about we this minimal exchangeis that there is at least one reading that might paraphraseas follows: ' G . i c e u s e s t h e p h ra s € . ! l a t i rt a t l a s a t e c h n i c ' l t e t mf o ' t h e t ru t h -c o n d i t i o n a l thc full contenr of an expressio., which mav in fact be somewhat l€ss than convcntlonal
content
Conoe/sational implic a tut e ( 2)
A: Do you have the ability to tell me the time J B: Ipragmatically interpreted particl(], rhe milkman 66rn.,, some time prior to the time of speaking
Yet it is clear to native speakers that what would ordinarily h" communicated by such an exchange involves considerably rn6.-a along the lines of the italicized material in (3): (:)
A: Do you have rhe ability to tell me the rime o/ th",As?nr moment. as standardly indicated on a wotch, and if si pleate do so tell me B: No I don't hnow thc etact time of the p/eren, moment, butI can prooidc some inJormation Jrom which you moy be able rc deduce the approximate time, namell the milkman [as 66n,.
(see R. Lakoff, r973a; Smith & Wilson, rgTg:r7zfrfor a discussion of such examples). Clearly the whole poin, of the exchange, namqly a request for specific information and an attempt to provide as much of that information as possible, is not directly expressed in (z) at a[; so the gap between what is literally said in (z) aod what is conveyed in (3) is so substantial that we cannot expect a semantic theory ro provide more than a small part of an account of how we communicale using language. The notion of implicature promises to bridge the gap, by giving some account of hor,r,at least large portions of the italicizeo material in (3) are effectively conveyed. Thirdly, the notion of implicature seems likely to effect substantiar simplifications in both the structure and the content of semantic descriptions. For example, consider: \ 4'
(s) (6)
o)
The lone ranger jumped on his horse and rode into the sunset The capital of France is Paris and the capital of England is l-ondon ??The lone ranger rode into the sunset and jumped on his horses 'l'he c:pital of England is London and the capital of France is Paris
The senseof and in (+) and (S) seems to be rather different: in (4) lt seemsto mean 'and then ' and thus (6) is strange in that it is hard to imagine the reverseordering of the two events. But in (5) there : The meaning of @ell is discussed in 3.2.6 bclow. ' As noted, the sym bol ?? i ndi .ar es pr l ghati c anom al y , . i nd;c ar es s c m a.r i c or syr tsclc anom aly, w hi l e ) i s non- c om m i tr at abour r he nai ur t of l he
gd
J.o lfltloduction
just what the standard t ij-^ ,and then' sense;ard here seemsto mean that the whole is true namely m rean ,,i,,.h table for & would nave lt l l r u+'."t.L^ a ]the -^ -. ^ --^ t of the reversal hence both conjuncts ate true: .ilrl ""* import at all' Faced #r,,,rn"." in (7) does not affect the conceptual taken one traditionally Iike this' the semanticist bas ir]ri'.""-0r." sensesof distinct he can either hold that there are two J;r;;,""k", that claim he can o"a, which is thus simply ambiguous, or il".ora are protean and ,[l rneaning" of words are in general vague and the Ifthe semanticist takes i-flu"nc"d by collocational environments' in the business of adducing an himself finds soon he irr, ,r"t, of the simplest looking of senses proliferation '";o"r"n,ty endless --"i-at. (8) and (9) to suggest that by led be for example might H" mean 'only or wholly white' (8) to seems it in for r4lrirei" "mbiguo..,s, white': 'partially only mean while in (q) it can (8)
(s)
The flag is whire The flag is white, red and blue
senses The semanticist who takes the other tack, that natural language position: how in a better are protean' sloppy and variable, is hardly just variable which do he".e." then know (which they certainly do) just to ignore the valueof white is involved in (8)? Nor will it do problem, for if one does one soon 6nds that one's semantics is (r r); self-contradictory.For example, (ro) cettainly seemsto mean but if we then build the ' uncertainty' interpretation in ( I I ) into the it meaningof pou,rle, (Iz) should be an outright contradiction' But is not. ( ro, (rr) \r2)
lt's possible that there's life on Mars It's fossible that there's life on Mars and it's possiblethat there is no life on Mars tt's possible that there's life on Mars, and in fact it is now certain that ther€ is
Now from this set of dilemmas the notion of implicature offers a way out, for it allows one to claim that natural languageexpressionsdo tendto have simple, stableand unitary senses(in many casesanyway), but that this stablesemanticcoreoften hasan unstable,context-specific pragmatic overlay - namely a set of implicatures. As long as some speci6cpredictive content can be given to the notion of implicature, this is a genuine and substantialsolution to the sorts of problems we havejust illustrated.
.'1.t Grice's theory of implicatute
ConaJelsa t i o no I implic atur e An important point to note is that thrs simplificatron of semantics is not just a reduction of problems in the lexrcon; it also hakes possible the adoption ofa semantics built on simple logicnl principles. It does this by demonstrating that once pragmatic implications ofth€ sort we shall call implicature are taken into account, the apparentlv radical diflerences between logic and natural language seem to fad. away. We shall explore this below when we come to consider 1li ' logical' words in English, and, ot, iJ ... then, not, the quantifiers 11u the modals. Fourthly, implicature, or at least some closely related concepr, seems to be simply essential if various basic facts about language a1. to be accoun ted for properly. For example, parti cles like well, anyuay, by the way require some meaning specification in a theory of meaning just like all the other u,ords in English; but when we come to conside; u'hat their meaning is, we shall find ourselves referring to the pragmatic mechanisms that produce implicatures. We shall also se" that certain syntacric rules appear at least to be sensitive to implicature, and that implicature puts interesting constraints on what can be a possible lexical item in natural languages. Finally, the principles that generate implicatures have a very gencral explanatory power: a few basic principles provide cxplanations for a large array of apparently unrelated facts. For example, explanations will be ofrered belou'for why English has no lexical item ncll meaning 'not all', for why Aristotle got his logics wrong, for 'Moore's paradox', for why obvious tautologies like War is zt:ar can convey any conceptual import, for horv metaphors work and many other ohenomcna besides.
Grice's theory of irnplicature Unlike many other topics in pragmatics,implicature does
with Grice' namely his that the oth€r major theory associated I, is not generally in Chapter above discussed v of meaning-nn (cfas having any connection with his theory of implicature
of an important kind' If' In fact thcre is a lVJu.t, rnttl. -connection C tice's theory of meaning-nn is construedasa theory rs w. indicut.d' it has the.interestingconsequencethat it gives an ii "o--t.ti.",inn,communication might be achievedin the absenceof i"*un, "i ho* means for expressing the intended message A lii "on,n".tio.tul it provides an account of how more can be lo'ioltaty ;. that senseof non-naturally meant, than ]pmunicated, in his rather strict we can' given an utterance, often ihat i" a"t,r"lly said. Obviously it; but not all those inferences derivea number of inferencesfrom sense,i'e' intended to be Grice's in communicative been may have kind of inferences that are The been intended' having as rec6gnized intended kind, and the calledimplicatures are always of this special which such inferences,of way in one sketches implicature of theory the criterion while meeting be conveyed sort, can e noo-conventional of meaning-nn' theory in Grice's sketched messages of communicated Grice's second theory, in which he develops the concept of implicature,is essentiallya theory about how people uJe languag€ Grice'ssuggestionis that there is a set of over-arching assumptions guidingthe conduct of conversation.These arise,it seems,from basic rationalconsiderationsand may be formulated as guidelines for the efficientand effective use of languagc in conversation to further co-operativeends. Grice identifiesas guidelinesof this sort four basic maxims of convetsation or general Principles underlying the efficientco-operativeuse of language,which jointly expressa general co-operative principle. These principles are expressedas follows ' (r:)
not have an extended history.a The key ideas were proposed by Grice in the William James lectures delivered at Harvard in r 967 and still only partially published (Grice, r975, r978). 'I'he proposals were
(r4,
relatively brief and only suggestive of how future work might proceed. Before rvc review Grice's suggcstions it would be as *,ell to make
(r5l
'
' l' he.c $as, though, c ons i der abl e s pc c ul ar i on $.'r hi n phi l os ophy j bout r hc uiilir y of a nor ion o t- pr agm ar i c i m pti c ati on, r nd s onr t pr or o- G r i c ean ;deas can be tuund in e g F ogel i n, 1962
The co-opetatite PrinciPle make your contribution such asis required, at the stageat which it occurs, by the accepted purpose or direction of the talk exchange in which you are engaged The maxin oJ Quality try to make your contribution one that is true, speci6cally: (i) do not say what you believe to be false (ii) do not say that for which you lack adequate evidence The maxim of Quantitf (i) make your contribution as ioformative as is required for thc current putposes of the exchange (ii) do not make your contribution morc informativc than is reouired !o r
C onoersat ionaI imPli ca tur e (r6 ) (r7 .,
The maxim oJ Releuatce make your contributions relevant The maxim of Manner be perspicuous, and speci6cally: (i) avoid obscurity (ii) avoid ambiguity (iii) be brief (iv) be orderly
In short, these maxims specify $hat participants have to do in ordcr to converse in a maximally efficient, rational, co-operative way: fhey should speak sincerely, relevantly and clearly, while providinn sufficient information. To this view of the nature of communication there is an immediate objection: the view may dcscribe a philosopher's paradise, bur no orrc actually speaks likE thar the whole time! But Grice's point is subtly different. [t is not the case, he rvill readily admit, that people follow these guidelines to the letter. Rather, in most ordinary kinds of talk these principles arc oriented to, such that when talk does not proceed according to their specilications, hearers assume that, contrary to appearances, the principles are nevertheless being adhered to at some deeoer level. An examole should make this clear:
(' 8 )
W her e' s Bill ?
B : There's a yellow VW outside Sue's house Here B's contribution, taken litetally, fails to answer A's questior, and thus seems to violate at least the maxims of Quantity and Relevance. We might therefore expect B's utterance to be interpreted as a non-co-operative response, a brushing aside of A's concerns with a change of ropic. Yet it is clear that despite this appatent failure of co-operation, we try to interpret B's utterance as nevcrtheless co-operative at some deeper (non-superficial) level. We do this by assuming that it is in fact co-operative, and then asking ourselves what possible connection there could be between the location of Bill and the location of a yellow VW, and thus arrive at the suggestion (which B effectively conveys) that, if Bill has a yellow VW, he may be in Sue's house. In cases of this sort, inferences arise to preserve the assumption of co-operation; it is only by making the assumption contrary to superficial indications that the inferences arise in thc first place. Ir ro2
.1.r Grice's theol! of imqlicature or more ....,r.is kind of inference that Grice dubs tn implicatul€' that we point is not " -'-'-.ru ronr"rrotional implicature' So Grice's ^ to these maxims on a superficial level but rather that' l*l"t-"dn"* pcople will inierpret what we say as conforming lul"r.r". pot"iUf.' at least some level' on ,o th" ma*imt '" maxims ofconversationalbehaviour? Bu, *tt"a i" ,na "outce ofthese we learn as we learn' say' table rules that Arl they contentional the maxims are in fact not arbitrary that Grice suggests but rather describe rational means for conducting -"nn"t"f is so, we would expect them to gove'n -nu"n,io"", ie-operativeexchanges.If this too, and indeed they seem to do i.p""t" of.ott-li.tguistic behaviour in which A and B are fixing a lo. Con"ia"., for example, a situation is interpreted as the injunction to ,rr. If tn" maxim of Quality sincere acts (a move we need to maKe Droducenon_spurious or promises' invitations' etc )' ;nyway to extend the maxim to questions, for brake fluid' he B would fail to comply with this if, when asked the bolts on knowingly passesA the oil, or when askedto tighten up A would the stee;ingcolumn he merely pretends to do so Similarly' to make one's fail to observe the maxim of Quantity, the injunction bolts' he contribution in the right proportion, if, when B needsthree passes him alternatively or 3oo' only one, him passes purposely l ot{l them he wants bolts, wants three if B Relevance: Likewisewith the maxim with to comply would fail B Finally, not halfan hour later. of of Manner, enjoining clarity of purpose, if, when A needs a bolt of bolts contains that usually a box size8, B passeshim the bolt in natural of some short falls sizer o. I n eachof thesecasestbe behaviour notion of full co-operation,becauseit violates one or another of the non-verbal analoguesof the maxims of conversation'This suggests that the maxims do indeed derive from general considerationsof rationality applicable to all kinds of co-operative exchanges,and if so they ought in addition to have universal application,at leastto the extent that other, culture-speci6c, constraints on interaction allow' BroadlY,this too seemsto be so. However, the reason for linguistic interest in the maxims is that they generateinferencesbeyond the semanticcontentofthe sentences uttered. Such inferencesare, by definition, conversationalimplicatu.es, where the term implicature is intended to contrast with terms which are like logical implication, enlailment and logical consequence gcnerally used to refer to inferences that are derived solely from t0 3
1.t Grice's theorJ of imPliatule
Conaer sational imPlic e lu/ e logical or semantic content.5 For implicatures are not semanti! inferences, but rather inferences based on both the content of whar has been said and some specific assumptions about the co-operativr nature of ordinary verbal interaction. These inferences come about in at least two distinct ways, depenciing on the relation that the speaker is taken to have towards the maxirn5. If the speaker is observing thc maxims in a fairly direct way, he may nevertheless rely on the addressee to amplify what he says by se4. straightforward inferences based on the assumption that the speaker is following the maxims. For example, consider the followinq exchange:
dematd "t'rn"' 'Both kinds of implicature ar€ of great interest Some further of each kind, organized under the maxims that give rise to "x36ples help to make thc distinction clear' Let us start with ,i"*, assumption that -"t ,"ornpl". of i-pli.atures that arise directly from the maxims, and which simpty amplify the the observing is ,i" "p""t "t in restricted ways (the symbol + ) may stand "om-uni"ut"a.o.ttent will generally implicate the io. 'th" ,ltt"ring of the priot sentence following')'
A (to passerby): I've just run out of petrol B: Oh; there's a garage just around the corner
(r9 )
directly in the would rather not have ice-cream mentioned "rot -B to ','o' ol the chlloren' ln calie they are thereby prompted oresence
Here B's utterance may be taken to implicate that A may obtain petr<,, there, and be would certainly be being less than fully co-operative if he knew the garage was closed or was sold out of petrol (hence the
QualitY (zt) (zz)
John has two PhDs + ) I believe he has, and have adequate evidence that he has Does your farm contain 4oo acres I + ) I don't know that it does, and I want to know if it does
inference). Let us call these inferences that arise from obscrving the (the term is not Grice's, althotrgh maxims standard implicatures irnplicature for a subset of he introduces the term generalized these implicatures which do not require particular contextual
The first of these provides an explanation for 'Moore's paradox ' namelythe unacceptabilityof utteranceslike (23):7
conditions in order to be inferred).6
This sentenceis pragmatically anomalousbecauseit contradicts the standardQuality implicature that one believeswhat one asserts The examplein (zz) simply extendsthe scopeof Quality by viewing trath asa specialsub-caseof sincerity applied to assertions;when one asks a question,one may standardly be taken to be asking sincerely and hcnceto be indeed lacking and requiring the tequestedinformation' (As we shall seewhen we come to consider speech acts in Chapter as felicity 5, these kinds of inferences are often talked about at all .l to implicature conditions as if they had no connection when one asserts Normally then, in co-operative circumstances, asks a when one something one implicates that one believes it,
Another way in which inferences may be gcnerated by the maxims is where the speakcr deliberately and ostentatiously breaches or (as Grice puts it) Routs the maxims- Consider for example : \20 )
B:
L e t' s g e t th e ki ds somethi ng Oka y, b u t I veto I-C -E C -R -E -A -M-S
where B ostentatiously infringes the maxim of Manner (be perspicuous) by spelling out the word ice-cteants, and thereby conveys to A 5 To maintain r he co nr as t, Gr i c e i s c ar c ful r o r es tr ;c r tht us e of the r er m im plic.tc so that, pr i m ar i ty , i t i s s peak er s that i m pl i c ate, w hi l e i r i s sentences, starements or proposirions thar enter into logical relations. tlowever , takins an utr er anc e r o be a pai r i ng ol a s entenc e and a c onr ex r , w e may der ivar ively tal k of utr €r anc €s hav i ng i m pl ;.ar ur es , and her e w e s h.l l . adopt th' r pr acr ' cr . c ur r .nr ,n Ir naui qr ,c s . '
I have also supplicd the term orr.^,i4s the maxims {for rhe bchxviour rhat to contrast wirh Gricc s rcrm aives os< to the srandard implicaturcs), Th. lack of termino loey hcrc presumably dcrives from thr erroneous fo!ti,8. assum ption that all s i andar d i m pl i c atur es ar e genc r al i z ed ones . See 3.2 3
(4)
I ?John has tvvo PhDs but I don't believe he has
(r9 ? 8 : I t 4 ) i n d i c . t e s t h a t h c a c t u a l l v w i s h e s ro w i t h h o l d t h e t t rm ' C ri c e implicature from the infe.ence in (2r), on thc Sround that it onlv expresses the maxim of Quality its€lf- Another problem with viewins this inf'rcnce as (as we shsll see) are deniable, ind this an implicature is thrt implicitures would susaest that (23) should not in fect bc anomalous One explanatton for this misht be that io addition to a aeneral maxim of Qualitv holdins for convention $sertoric tnd non-assertoric aPech 3cts, therc is sn .dditionll I979a:46 8) that ifone .sserts,. one should b€licve and know, (cf Gtda.,
ro5
.J.r Grice's theor! oJ imqlicatule
Convetsational imblic a tur e question one implicates that one sincerelydesiresan answerand, bv extension, when one promises to do r, one implicates that 6ne sincerelyintends to do .r, and so on. Any other use of such utterances is likely to be a spurious or counterfeit one, and thus liable to violate the maxim of Quality. Quanti,! This maxim provides some of the most interesting of the standatd implicatures. Suppose I say: (24)
Nigel has fourteen children
I shall implicate that Nigel has only fourteen children, although it would be compatible with the truth of (24) that Nigel in fact has twenty children. I shall be taken to implicate that he hasonly foufteen and no more because had he had twenty, then by the maxim of Quantity ('say as much as is required') I should have said so. Since I haven't, I must intend to convey that Nigel only has fourteen. Similarly, reconsiderthe example introduced as (8) above: ( 25)
'fhe flag is white
Since I have given no further information about other colours the flag maycontain, which might indeedbe highly relevantto the proceedings, I may be taken to implicate that the flag has no other colours and rs thus wholly white. Or again suppose we overhear the following exchange: (26)
A: How did Harry fare in court the othcr day? B: Oh he sot a 6ne
If it later transpires that Harry got a life sentencetoo, then B (if he knew this all along) would certainly be guilty of misleadingA, for he has failed to provide all the information that might reasonablybe required in the situation. All theseexamplesinvolve the 6rst sub-maxim of Quantity, which appears to be the important one, in which the provision of full information is enjoined. The effect of the maxim is to add to most utterances a pragmatic inference to the effect that the statement presentedis the strongest,or most informative, that can be made in the situation;8 in many cases the implicatures can be glossed by ' l.G.tb € sr r o n g e ststr teh.ntrh.tcanb€r./reana6'made.S uchi mpl i ci tappeats to the m.xim of R.l.vancc havr promptcd Wilson & Sperbcr ( r98 ! ) ro cb'm that the maxim of R€levancein fEcr subsumes rhe other maxims. r06
sentence' e'g 'Nigel onl! to the propositional content of the 'Harry only got white 'the is only flag , fou.t"en children ', "
producing a large range of ma*im i" also responsible for possibleimperativeswill where For example, ,rd i-pli"utu."". present interaction' and thus as the iiii".o."*a as relevant to present time' Hence: the at some action ,,,."t" to i-pt"-.nt (z7l
Pass the salt + ) Passthe salt now
(r) repeated here: Or reconsider €xample (28)
A: Can you tell me the time ? B: Well, the milkman has come
of B's responsethat It is only on the basisof assumingthe relevance to A's question' partial answer providing a it as r e can understand B's utterance this: assume like roughly work to The inferenceseems question, B should a given A asked that is relevant;if it's relevantthen theassumption rcconcile onecan beprovidingananswer;the only way of that B is co-operativelyanswering A's question with the content provide the position to a B's utterance is to assume that B is not in provide full information, but thinks that th€ milkman's coming might infer may A A with the means of deriving a partial answer' Hence the whenever that B intends to convey that the time is at least after milkman normally calls. Exactly similar inferencescan be made in caseslike example (I8), and it is clear that such inferences are fundamentalto our senseofcoherencein discourse:ifthe implicatures were not constructed on the basis of the assumption of relevance, many adjacent utterances in conversation would appear quite unconnected. Manner Finally, a number of different kinds of inference arise from the assumption that the maxim of Manner is being observed. For eiample, by the third sub-maxim of Manner ('be brief), wherever I avoid some simple expression in favour of some mor€ complex paraphrase,it may be assumed that I do not do so wantonly' but becausethe details are somehow relevant to the p.esent enterprise. ro7
.l.I Glice's theory of implicatule
Conoersational imqlic atul e lf, instead of (29), I say (3o), then I direct you to pay particular attention and care to each of rhe operations involved in doing (29t, this being an implicature of the use of the longer expression: \29 t (30)
Open the door Walk qp to the door, turn the door handle clockwise as far a" it will go, and then pull gently iowards you
But perhapsthe most important of the sub-maxims of Manner is the fourth, 'be orderly'. For this can be used to explain the oddity eg (6) above, repeatedhere: ( 3 r)
??The lone ranger rode into the sunsetandjumped on his hq15s
This violates our expectationthat events are recounted in the ordcr in which they happened. But it is just because paiticipants in conversationmay be expectedto observethe sub-maxim 'be orderly' that we have that expectation.Presentedwith (32), we thereforereao it as a sequenceof two events that occurred in that order: (3 2'
Alfred went to the store and bought some whisky
We now seehow the semanticistarmed with the notion of implicature can extricate himself from the dilemmas raised above in connection with examples (+HU ). He need not claim that there are two words azd in English, one meaning simply that both conjuncts are true, the oth€r having the samemeaning plus a notion of sequentiality.For the sequentiality, the 'and then' senseof azd in sentenceslike (32), is simply a standard implicature due to the fourth sub-maxim of Manner, which provides a pragmatic overlay on the semanriccontenr of and wherever descriptions of two events, which might be sequentiallyordered, are conjoined.e Implicatures that are 'triggered' in this unostentatious way, simply by the assumption that the maxims are being observed,have so far been of the greater interest to linguists. This is becausesuch inferencesoften arisewherever featuresof the context do not actually block them, with the result that they can be easily confused with the permanent aspects of the semantics of the expressionsinvolved. Consequently,asemantictheory canbecomeplaguedby a proliferation t For som€ di6cuhies of asr mmcl.ic the m.rim llar nish,
ro8
,fl/
here see l;chmerlins(
reTs), r^ho ar,.ues that nor all cases in the Cricean $,ayr for some €xrensions of to domrins other than temporal ordering see c.g.
sr€ reducible
of Manne( r e76.
senses and intetnal contladictions in ways we shall to these implicatures in the next irt U"lo*. Before returning kind of implicatures that ,-rr.l.t ,r" fi."t ill,.,"trate the other major had in mind. by overtly and second kind of implicatures come about to exploit it for order in maxim, some not following floutings or usages such calls purposes. Grice give rise to to be seen can they of the maxims, and are inferences These of speech'' of the traditional 'figures ofco-operation: on the remarkable robustness ofthe assumption from maxim-type someone drastically and dramatically deviates cohauiou., then his utterances are still read as underlyingly some infringing if this is at all possible. Thus by overtly the speaker can force the hearer to do extensive infetencing 'io of p.opositions, such that if the speaker can be assumed ,o-" ""t co-operative to be conveying these then at least the over-arching follow' examples Some be sustained. would ptinciple QualitY Thi" ^a*i-
(r)
might be flouted in the following exchange: What if the USSR blockades the Gulf and all the oil ? Oh come now, Britain rules the seas!
Any reasonably informed particiPant will know that B's utteranc€ is blatantly false. That being so, B cannot be frying to deceive A The only way in which the assumption that B is co-operating can be maintained is if *'e take B to mean something rather difrerent from what he has actually said. Searching around for a related but co-operative proposition that B might be intending to convey' we arrive at the opposite, or negation, of what B has stated - namely that Britain doesn't rule the seas,and thus by way of Relevance to the prior utterance, the suggestion that there is nothing that Britain could do' Hence, Grice claims, ironies arise and are successfully decoded' If there was no underlying assumption of co-operation, recipients of ironies ought simply to be nonplussed; no inferences could be drawn.ro det.il.d lccount, se€ SPGrb€t& Wilson, r98r' Th'v trsu€ that 'o For a mor€ ironics consist ofs€nt€nccs t.n,iozrd ta.h.r th.n rt.d- much t5 ifthcv wcrc in implicit quolrtion marks - from which rccipients calcultr€ imPlicatur's bv rcfcrenct to Rclevancc .sthcr ih.n Qualitv.
r09
3.1 Glice's theorY of imPlicature
C omtersationa I ifl Plic a tur c Similar remarks can be made for at least some examples of metaphor. For example, if I say (3+) I express a categorial falsehoq6 (i.e. a semantic category, or selectional,violation). Either therefote I am being non-co-operativeor I intend to convey something r116a. different: (34)
Queen Victoria was made of iron
The straightforward interpretation is that since Queen Victoria in fact lacked the definitional properties of iron, she merely had someof t6e incidental properties like hardness, resilience, non-flexibility .,1 durability. Which particular set of such properties are attributed to her by the utterance of (34) are at least in part dependent on tls contexts of utterance: said by an admirer it may be a commendation, conveying the properties of toughness and resilience; said by a detractor it may be taken as a denigration, conveying her lack of flexibility, emotional impassivity or belligerence. Other Quality floutings include the uttering of patent falsehoods a s i n (3 5 ):
(:s)
Teheran's in Turkey isn't it, teacher?
B : And l,ondon's in Armenia I suppose where B's utterance servesto suggestthat A's is absurdly incorrect. Or consider rhetorical questions like (36): (36)
Was Mussolini going to be moderate ?
which if the participantsbelieve that whatever Mussolini was, he was not moderate, is likely to convey (37): (3 7 )
Mussolini was dehnitely not going to bc moderate
Here, by overtly violating the sincerity of a question, once again an implicature is generatedby a flouting of the maxim of Quality. Quantity The uttering of simple and obvious tautologiesshould, in principle, have absolutelyno communicative import.rr However, utterancesof (38)-(40) and the like can in fact convey a great deal: rr Exccptions, of course. will be tautoloSics that ate not ot vious lo rddrtssccs, is in the didactic u s . of d€fi nni ons , or thos e thai poi nr out non- obv tous lo8ic!l
cons€qucnces.
'ldar is war Either John will comc or he won't If he does it, he does it their logical forms (respectively: Vrc that these, by virtue of + p) pi p are tecessarily true; ergo they share W(r)); p v conditions, and the differences we feel to lie between
truth almost entirely aswell as their communicative import, must b€ they come how of io their pragmatic implications. An account communicative rve communicative significance,and different can be given in terms of the flouting of the maxim of . Since this requires that speakers be informative, the of tautologies blatantly violates it. Therefore, if the that the speaker is actually co-operating is to be preserved, (38) informative inference must be made. Thus in the case of its nature that's in war, happen always things 'terrible it might be particular disaster'; in the case of ind ii'" tto good lamenting that no point in worrying about 'calm there's down, iro) it might be 'Jiether he's going to come becausethere's nothing we can do about of ours'it'; and in the case of (+o) it might be 'it's no concern quality, but the topic-closing Clearly these share a dismissive or paIticular context upon the detailsof what is implicated will depend implicatures of utterance.(Incidentally, exactly how the appropriate in thesecasesare to be predicted remainsquite unclear, although the maxim of Relevance would presumably play a crucial role ) Reletanee Exploitations of this maxim are, as Grice notes, a little harder to find, if only because it is hard to construct responses that mus' be interpteted as irrelevant. But Crice provides an example like the following: (4r)
A: I do think Mrs Jenkins is an old windbag, don't you ? B: Huh, tovely weather for March, isn't it?
where B's utterance might implicate in the appropriate circumstances 'hey, watch out, her nePhew is standing right behind you" More naturally, consider (42):
Gz)
Johnny: Hey Sally let's play marbles Mother: How is your homework getting along Johnny?
3.r Grice'stheoryol imqlicature
C onversa tional imq li. a tut e
need for some theory use. There thus remains a fundamental on the concept of not based n1 of communication which is (rqS7) in his theory of mcaning, as sketched by Grice
whereby Johnny's mother can remind him that he may not yet bc free to play. Manner One example of the exploitation of this maxim will sufficehere. Suppose we 6nd in a review of a musical performance something like (43) where we mighr have expected(44): (43) (44)
Miss Singer produced a series ofsounds corresponding closely to the score of an aria frol'] Rigoletto Miss Singer sang an aria from Rigoletto
By the flagrant avoidance of the simple (44) in favour of the prolix (+f) (and the consequentviolation of the sub-maxim 'be brief'), the reviewer implicates that there was in fact some considerable difference between Miss Singer's performance and those to which the 1s1n, singingis usually applied. Unhappily, in this book we shall have to passover most of these figuresofspeech(althoughsection3.2.5below is devotedto metaphor). Since Aristotle, much has been written about each of them from a rhetorical, philosophicaland literary point of view, but until Grice's brief remarks there had been few attempts to explicate the inferential mechanismsthat must be involved in interpreting figures of speech, or to explain how such mechanismsmight be reconciledwith any kino of standard semantic theory. Grice's work at least suggestsways in which these important communicative mechanismscan be brought within the scopeof a pragmatic theory, although (aswe shall seewhen we come to considermetaphor) much mystery still temains. (lndeed, there are authors who think that Grice's treatment of tropes is fundamentally incorrect - seee.g. Sperber & Wilson, r 98 r ; Wilson & Sp e rb e r, r 9 8 r.) One general point that these exploitations of the maxims raise rs that there is a fundamental way in whrch a full account of the communicative power of languagecan never be reduced to a set of conventions for the use oflanguage. The reason is that wherever some convention or expectationabout the useof languagearises,there will also therewith arise the possibility ofthe non-conventional exploitation ofthat conventionor expectation.It follows that a purely conventional or rule-based account of natural language usage can never be complete, and that what can be communicated always exceedsthe communicative power provided by the conventionsof the languagc Lt2
how implicatures actually i"i *" tt"u" only roughly indicated along the following about. Grice tries to tighten up the notion which w€ may state . First he proposesa de6nition of implicature S's saying that p conversationally implicates g iff: (i) S is presumed to be observing the maxims, or at least (in the case of Routings) the co-operative principle (ii) in order to maintain this assumption it must be supposed that S thinks that 9 (iii) S thinks that both S and the addressee H mutually know that H can work out that to preserve the assumption in (i), g is in fact required he points out that, for the addressee H to be able to calculate that he knows, the facts the implicature g, H must know, or believe in (+6) : fien
(.6l "
thc conventional content of the sentence (P) uttered the co-opcrative principle and its maxims the context of P (e.g. its relevance) certain bits of background information (e.g. P is blatantly false) (v) that (iHv) are mutual knowledge shared by sPeaker and addressee
(i) (iD (iii) (iv)
From all this a general pattern for working be adduced:rr Q1'
out an implicature
may
(i) S has said that P (ii) there's no reason to think S is not observing the maxims, or at least the co-operstive princiPl€ (iii)
in order for S to say that p and be indeed observing the S must think that 4 maxims or the co-op€rative principle,
It This phrasing, urhich is not cractlv Crice'!, mskes cxplicit thc rclation of th. notion of implicitu.c to th. conccpt of trr,iol knouhds.,.s c'ploteA in L.ei!, 1969, rnd Schificr, ,972. A3 \ '. not d in I.r' w€ c.n t v ihr. s rnd H i4uauy h^ora t ifr S knowr L H knowr p, S know th.t H Lnoes r' H knows thai S know. th.t H l(now! p, lnd .o on, ed innnitum. M.nv other .onat'{'tot, t.ljj.itr .ondi;on' .re.' p..8!nr.ic conccp.!, c.s. |..tuqpontior, mry r€ty impticitly on luch . conc.pt (3cc Smith, t98z). prccisc formulrtion will be found in (r2s) bclow. 'r A morc
t r3
3.1 Gice's theorY of imPlicature
C onoelsatiofl al imq li co tur e (iv) S must know that it is mutual knowledge thar g m'rr r.^ supposed if S is to be taken to be co-operating (v) S has done nothing to stop me, the a64rsssee, thinking thft q
(vi) therefore S intends me to think that g, and in saying thar p has implicated g From the ways in which implicatures are calculated, Grice suggesrs that the essential properties of implicatures are largely pr€dictabhHe isolates 6ve characteristic properties of which the fr.st, and perhaps the most important, is that they are cancellable, or morc exactly defeasible.r' The notion of defeasibility is crucial in pqgmatics as most pragmatic inferences, of various different kindsexhibit this property. An inference is defeasible if it is possible to cancel it by adding some additional premis€s to the original o1s5. Deductive or logical inferences are thus not defeasible. For example, given some logical argument like that in (+8), it is not possible 1o defeat the argument simply by adding prernises no matter what thry be:
(+8)
John has three cows John has only three co*s and no more too that (5r) entails (53): John has two cows
we can immediately see that implicatures are suspendable by y' mentionin an clause:rt John has thrce cows, if not more
i*richdoesnothavetheimplicaturein(52). Noteherethatentailments, way: biing non-defeasible, cannot be suspended in this
iii. Therefore, Socratesis mortal
More importantly, implicatures are directly and overtly deniable without a sense of contradiction:
I have dug up roor carrots ii. Every one of the toot carrots is orange
(56)
(s7)
Suppose we now dig up a green carrot: if we add the additional premiss iii to the argument, it fails and the conclusion is invalidated: i. I have dug up roor carrots ii. Every one of the roor carrots is orange rf Gric. (1975)in frct litt. six prolEttic.t .otcutab;t;.yon p. 50, rh€ re3ron pp. 57-8. Thc .ddirion.l propc'ty is rh.t irnpticrtur€s(untikc p.ih.ps .n.rilmcnB) tt. not iofc..nccr c..ri€d by scntcnc4, bur by urtcr.nccs,r gcncrelpoint Jrcedy medc:bovc.
?John has three cows, if not two
John has three cows, in fact ten John has three cows and maybe mor€
(58) Again, one cannot deny entailments in this way, as illustrated in (59): and
t.
iii. Therefore, all carrots are orange
! 14
are more like inductive inferencesthan .is respectimplicatures implicatures too are-inferences easily for til" a"au",l". ones, "i" (Grice, I973)' Consider for example (5r) and its Quantity implicature (52):
(ss)
(+s),
(So)
iv. Imtalid : Therefore, lll carrots are orange
i, If Socrates is a man, he is mortal ii. Socratcs is a man
If the two premises i and ii are true, then whatever else is true or falsc. iii is true. In contrast, inductive arguments are defeasible. Take for example
(4e)
iii. The tooznd carrot is greeD
(s8) Ge)
rJohn has thr€e cows, in fact nonc none 'John has three cows and maYbe
Further, and most importantly, imPlicatur€s canjust disappear when it is clear from the context of utterance that such an inference could not have been intended as part of the utterance's full communicative import. For example, suppose that in ordel to get the lavish subsidy (r9?2) m.k€. . distinction bctwccn t$'o kind3 of dcfcrlibilitv of " Horn implic.turci (.nd prcluppotition.): .u.tt|!t ion, whcr€ thc lPekcr it not wh€rc committ€d to thc truth or falsity ofth. implic.rurc, rnd c.nccll.tioa, rh. spc.lcr i! commift€d .o thc filsitv of rhc implicfturc. Ttc distinction is u!.ful decriptivcty, but both kindt of dcfctlibilitv c.n b. .ccounrcd for by thc !!m. gcncnl hind of mcchenism - ecc G8. G.zdrr' r979a' .nd discu!.ion b.low.
rr5
3.1 G/ice's theory of implicature
C om)ersa t io naI imPlic atur e
(66) in a context in instead we say any of the sentences in (64) false: very definitely is that known it is mutually
under the EEC Hill Cow Subsidy Schemeone must havs th19. and the inspector asksJohn's neighbour the following question: (6o)
then N's reply does not commit him to the implicature ordinaril, associatedwith (5 r ), namely (52), becauseit is clear from the context that all the information that is required is whether John's herd passes the threshold for subsidy payment, not the exact number of cow3[r. might in fact have. So implicaturesare defeasible,and can drop out in certainlinguistic or non-linguistic contexts. In that respect they appear to be quite unlike logical inferences,and cannot ditectly be modelled in termg of some semantic relation like entailment (for the contrary opinion see G. Lakoff, r975; Sperber & Wilson, forthcoming). The second important property of implicatures is that (wirh t;e exception of those due to the maxim of Manner) they are, as Grice puts it, non-detachable. By this Grice means that the implicature is attached to the semantic content of what is said, not to linguistic form, and therefore implicatures cannot be detached from an utterance simply by changing the words of the utterance for synonyms.There at least appear to be other kinds of pragmatic implication that are attabhed to the form rather than the meaning of what is said; for example, (6r) seemsto pragmatically imply (or presuppose as will be suggestedin Chapter 4) (62); but (63), which seemsat leasrto be semanticallyand truth-conditionally equivalent to (6 r ) (Karttunen & Peters, r979), lacks the inference to (62): (6 r) (6 2 ) (6 : )
John didn't manage to reach the summit John tried to reach the summit John didn't reach the summit
So in contrast to implicatures, this particular brand of pragmatic inference (presupposition) does seem to be detachable; that is, it does seem to be possible to 6nd another way of saying the same thing that happens to lack the inference in question (e.g. by saying (63) insteadof (6r) one can avoid conveying (62)). In contrast, take some implicature like the ironic interpretation (65) of (6a):
(6+) (6s) r lo
Tohn's a mental ProdigY john's an exceptionally clever human being John's an enormous intellect John's a big brain
I: Has John really got the requisite number of s9\,r5t N : Oh sure, he's got three cows all right
John's a genius John's an idiot
the ironic reading will be shared by all the different ways of the proposition that gives rise to it. So implicatures are non-detachable, with the exception of those arising under -maxim of Manner that are specifically linked to the form of the . And this property may serve to distinguish conversational from other kinds of pragmatic inferences like pre(see Chapter 4) and conttentional implicatures (see 3.2.3). they are i*.ihe thlra distinguishing feature of implicatures is that tgilculable. That is to say, for every putative impli.ature it should (47) above, !e possible to construct an argument of the type in the utterance showing how from the literal meaning or the sense of oo the one hand, a,ud the co-operative principle and the maxims on the other, it follows that an addressee would make the inference in question to preserve the assumption of co-operation. that is, not part of Fourthly, implicatures are non-conventional, theconventional meaning of linguistic expressions. Some reasonsfor believingthis have already been adduced under cancellability (or defeasibility)and non-detachability.But in addition, if Grice is right about the manner in which implicatures come about, then since you needto know the literal meaning or senseofa sentencebefote you can calculateits implicatures in a context, the implicatures cannot be part of that meaning. ln addition we can show that an utterance can be true while its implicature is false, and vice versa, as in: (67)
Herb hit Sally
which by Quantity would implicate (68)
Herb didn't kill Sally by hitting her
(sinceif Herb had killed Sally, the speakerwould, in sayingjust (67), be withholding information in a non-co-operative way); but a speakermight say (67) nevertheless,attempting to mislead, in a situation where (67) is true, but (68) is false. Finally, and importantly, an expression with " "t"*" -*"t"t :.";
3.2 Reoisions,p/oblems and applicariont
C onversa tional imPlica tur e So (73) and (25), being equivalenrin meaning,-shouldsharethe sam. implicatures. But they don't, since only (73) implicates (?a). Many problems of this sort in fact evapo.ate if the properties (il to (iv) above are taken together (with some additional criteria to bq discussed)asnecessaryconditions which are onlyjointly sufficientfor an inference to be considered an implicature. Thus the fact that in (7o) we can also show that the inference is calculable from the maxih of Manner, that it is not detachable when 14, or paratactic conjunction (or sheer adjacency) is substituted fot aad, and so on, argues for a rejection of the ambiguity claim. Other problems, like those associateo with (71) and (75), yield to particular counter-arguments. For example, Gazdar suggests that some designated implicatures can cancel others. Thus in (ZS) there is an additional implicature due ro the phrase perhaps oll, narrj.elyI
o6)
Perhaps not all
which cancels the implicature (74) due to the quantifier Jome(sce Gazdar, r979a: r39 for details). In addition we may hope that, as work proceeds, further properties of implicature will come to light. For example, Sadock notes that implicatures seem to be the only kinds of pragmatic or semantic inferences that are freely reinforceable, i.e. can be conjoined with an overt statement of their content without a sense of anomalous redundancy.r? Compare for example : \77) (78)
Some of the boys went to the soccer match but not all ?Some of the boys went to the soccer match but not none
A further important feature of generalized conversational implicatures is that we would expect them to be r..ziuezsal.That is, we would expect that in every languagein which (Zq) or (8o) is directly expressible, the utterance of the equivalents of (79) and (8o) should carry rhe standard implicatures (8 r ) and (82), respecrively: I' Prcauppositions (Chapter 5), snd .v.n p.rhaps cnt.ilm€nts, may also allo* 'r.inforcing', but only if.he rcinfo.cina phr$c cont.ins hc6vy stress, c.g. lohn r.aliz.dn eat.o;n;ng and it WAS ftiniss. Herc, it may b€ argued, rh. exceptions prov€ the !ul€, for rh€ srress scems to produc€ an .ddirional ihplic.ture (of the sort '.nd boy! was it raining', i.e. it r{.s ..inin8 ve.y hard),60 €xplainins how tb. reinforciDs phrase is not enti'cly rcdundant, .nd thus p.agmatically acceptrblc. Sce Gricc, ro,t8: rzrff.
That man has two children The cloth is white That man has no more than two children The cloth is wholly white follows from the theory: if the maxims are derivable considerations of rational co-op€ration, we should exPect them universal in application, at least in co-operative kinds of ts This feature has not yet been put to extensive use but rurn out to be one of the clearest indications of the presence of implicature. Note that without I theoryof implicature generalizations of the sort illustrated by cross-linguistic many (8o)'s implicating (82) in (presumablv)all (8r) and i)'simplicating would be entirely unaccountedfor. prediction from the theory is also cmpirically verifiable, yield a test for implicatures. Recollect that implicatures are id may the assumption of underlying co-op€ration in from lrid to arise 'irnversation. But suppose we can find kinds oftalk where a systematic md avowed non-co-operation is assumed, except for some minimum €ssentialto maintain talk. Then the implicatures normally associated with what is said should not routinely 8o through' And in fact this B€emsto be th€ case; for example, in cross-examination in a court of law (at least in England or the United States, where there are adversarialsystems) one finds exchanges like: (83)
On many occasions ? Not many Some? Yes, a few
Here legal counsel C is cross-examining defendant W. It is C's job to extract damaging admissions from W, and W's job to resist that, this being the accepted convention in an adversarial legal process. Hence W is not expected to co-operate with C beyond the demands required by sticking to the truth (the maxim of Quality, it is hoped, stays in force). So the maxim of Quantity is in abeyance; it follows that W'8 first utterance in (83) cannot be assumed to commit him to the proposition that he did do the action in question on at least some occasions,despite the fact that it would standardly implicate that (ttot !' For .pp.r.nt countcr-cvidcnc. .c€ Kecnrn, I9?6b; rnd for . countcr_ araum.nt to thit 3c€ Brown & kvin:on, 1978: 29&{.
3.2 Rel)itions,problems and applications
C onaersational imPlica tute
ways of distinguishing implicatures from other have som€ sound pragmatlc lnlerenc€s' r of semantic and exhibit the following suggested,as we saw, that imPlicatures : 6ajor distinguishing Properties
give rise to difierent implicatures on diflerent occasions,and indeeq on any one occasion the set of associatedimplicatures may not ht exactly determinable-16Consider for example: (6s)
John'sa machine
This could convey that John is cold, or efhcient, or never stops working, or puffs and blows, or has little in the way of grey matter, or indeed any and all of these. So implicatures can have a 6s11ain indeterminacy in at least some cases,incompatible with thc stable determinate sensesusually assumedin semantic theories. 'fhis section has presented a straightforward review of Q1;ga', theory of implicature. \de now turn to consider linguistic reforrnulations and extensionsof these ideas,and their impact on linguisli6 theory. Revisions, problerns and applications Grice has provided little more than a sketch of the large area and the numerous separateissuesthat might be illumined by a fully worked out theory of conversationalimplicature. So if use is to be made of these ideas in a systematicway within linguistic theor,, much hasto be done to tighten up the conceptsemployed and to work out exactly how they apply to particular cases. The theory though is of such broad scope,with ramificationsin so many areas,that here we can do no more than take up a selectionof some of the issuesraised.We shall start with some generalproblems concerning the identification of, semantic input to and typology of implicatures, then proceed, hrst, to a detailed analysisof standard (non-flouted)Quantity implicatures,then secondly,to a considetation of metaphor as deriving from the flouting of the maxim of Quality, and finally to a general assessmentof the possible relationsbetween implicature and languagestructure. 3.2
TestsJor irnplicature lf conversationalimplicature is to play a principled role in linguistic theory, it is crucial that we understand its properties and 3 2 .r
r ' T h is is cla im e dby w i l son & S perbcr(re8r ) to be true onl v of i mpl i catur's due to exploitat;ons of the maxims, and th us lo ind icatetha! such exp loil:tion3 in \o lv. o u ;te d ' fl .renr i nferentrrlmechani sms.
rr8
cancellability (or defeasibility) .,on-detach"bility (or inference based on meaning rather than form) (iii) calculabilitY .. (iv) non-conventlonalltY (i)
'.rj,f. j'
ilit
Sadock (rq78) has made doubly clear' Now as Grice was aware' and for l;'." ,n.". is as unproblernatic as it might seem' Suppose' "f proved the bv (7o) implicates (7r), this being .'limple, we claim that (7r) as in (72): cancel can we factthat
0o) (zr) O2l
loe taunted RalPh and RalPh hit htm -First Joe taunted Ralph and then Ralph hit him jo" tut R"lph hh hirn, but not necessarily in that nutptt ".td "t"a order
just ambiguousbetween two To this th. sceptic can reply: (7o) is &, the other to 'and then'; to logical sensesof 4n i, one equivalent in this particular case by and tt.e all (72) does is disambiguate intended The attack has is not indicating that r-n ' and then' reading one of the attractions of some force because,as we noted in 3.o, ambiguity unnecessary implicatureis that it would rule out or make claimsof this sort. Similarly aon-detachability, as a defining property of implicatures' has its problems. As Sadock points out' to test for non-detachability you have to have a set ofsynonymous expressions, which should share ihe same implicatures. But suppose the alleged implicature is actually part of the semantic content of each member of that set: then it will Le ' non-detachable' but hardly becauseit is in fact an implicature! Worse,even in the clear€stexamplesof implicature, problems arise; for example, consider (73) which is usually claimed (as we shall see in detail in 3.2.4) to implicate (74) and to mean(hav€ the same truth conditions as) something like (75): (?3) \14)
(7s)
Some of the boys went to the soccer match Not all of the boys went to the soccer match ".. \o-e and perhaps all of the boys went to the soccer match
C ona er sa tiono I im P lic a t ur e i.e. for all r, if r is an arrow, then it is not the case that r hit the tarset Here (9o) expresses the sense 'None of the arrows hit the target,. But (89) on the other hand is an expression of the form Not all As are B; it therefore implicates 'Some As are B', or, instar'tiating;
(9 r,
Some of the arrous hit th€ tarset
Therefore only one of the two readings of (88), namely (89), has the implicature (9r). Therefore, implicatures must be derived not f191r, uninterpreted surface structures like (88) but from some semantrc representation of a particular reading, in this case from some representation with al least the sttucture in (89). We can now go on to show that, while implicatures are derived from a level of semantic representation, they often cannot be calculated from the truth conditions alone. Consider any expressions ofthe forrn ( 92) or ( 93) : ( 92)
p
(e3)
t and if p then p
Clearly thesewill sharethe sametruth conditions: wheneverp is true, so also(93) is true, and vice versa.But now compare the instantiations i n (9 4 ) a n d (9 5 ):
(q+) r95,,
I t ' s done It's done and if it's done, it's done
The latter alone has a distinctive implicature, roughly that in (96):
(eo)
It's no good regretting what has already happened
So at least some implicatures are derived from the semantic or logical structure of rvhat is said and not just from the truth conditions, although the latter will of course also be relevant. Further evidence for the need to refer to semantic rePresentation and notjust truth conditions comes from a consideration of tautologies. Compare, for example, (qZ) and (q8):
\97 (e8) '
A square has four sides Boys are boys
Since these are both necessarily true, they must share the same truth conditions. So if implicatures were read ofl truth conditions alone, they should share the same implicatures. But clearly only the sccond r 24
3.2 Rel)itions, p/oblems a4d applicaztions
.
something like 'that's the kind of unruly behaviour could impticate lrom boys exPect .^o would ' In g.n"."I, therefore' the linguistic levels that must be referred to of implicaturesinclude the semanticrepresentation io the calculation form of the sentences uttered' together with the attendant ^,loci"ul The sensitivity to logical form will explain why, for t-r,rtiondit;""". (89) and (9o) are associated with different .xampl", th" readings utteranceswith identical truth conditions Lpli"ature". The fact that (as in (92) and (qf)) can give rise to but difier"t t logical forms raises the possibility that difierent implicatures is important: it (roo), might have their slight various near-synonyms, like (gq) and implicatures meaningdifferences accounted for in terms of different (as, on a first approximation, in s€neratedby different logical forms iror) and (roz) respectively) sharing the same or similar truth \991 (roo)
John kissed the girl It was John who kissed the girl
(roI) (t02)
3r (K(x, g) & (" : ;))
K(r,e)
The different usages of 'stylistic options' with the same truth conditionsmight thereby be explicated (seeAtlas & Levinson, I98r for a variant of such an accounti but see also Chapter 4 for a ptetupposilional account of the difierence between (99) and ( roo)). Finally it should be noted that there is one obvious but important exception to the claim that implicatures make reference to semantic representationand truth conditions but not to surface structure. The exceptions are those implicatures due to two of the sub-maxims of Manner, namely 'avoid obscurity' and 'avoid ambiguity', which makeessential reference to the surface form of utterances, (The other two sub-maxims of Manner, 'be brief ' and 'be orderly', can at least in part be interpreted equally as applying to the level of semantic representation.)20 I' In f.ct, (roo) requires ! mo.e compler losical form than (roz), and ir c.n slso be claimcd th.t (99) md (too) hav€ slishtly diff€rcnt truth condirions: hcrc comgrre the accounrs in H.lvors€o, 1978 lnd Atlas & L€vinson, 'e8r. See also 4.4.2 b€lo*'0 Here a unitary level of intcrpreted suif.c€ srrucrure *ould .void rhc embarrassmcntof reading some implicatures off t.uth .onditions, oth€.s off losical forrh, 5nd yet oth€r. (somc of the M,nner implicatures) ofr.'.rrfcce structure. Such r lcvcl, consistins cssentially of surface strucrure trces .nnotatcd with th. me.nins3ofrheir constitucnrs, is madc sveileblc in recenr w ork by e.A .c az dar (rq82)rz \
j.z
C onvet sa tionaI imPIi ca tur e zaay implicating 'some' by Quantity - see below). This being 15. casecounsel cannot take not many to commit W to 'some' (it would after all be strictly compatible with 'none'). C therefore hqs 1. question W explicitly as to whether W did in fact do the actionin questionon some previousoccasions,such explicit questioninggivinr cross-examination some of its distinctive 13nd to the laymai unpleasant)flavour (seeLevinson, r979a for some further examples). Again, there would be no such prediction of a failure of the inference frolJnnot maL! to'sorr.e'just in non-co-operative circumstances, without the theory of implicature. But given the theory we can predict, for example, that if some inference is genuinely a generalized Quantity implicature it should be possible to find cases where it is implicitly cancelledsimply by virtue of a non-co-opetativecontext, whether this is antagonistic,as in legalcross-examination,or playfully unco-operative,as in games like 'twenty questions' or the posingof riddles. There is every reason for confidence, then, that the sorts of problems raised by Sadock (r978) are capableof detailed solutions. Another kind ofattack that hasbeenmade on the notion of implicature is that the maxims are so broad that they allow the derivation ofjust about any proposition as an alleged implicature, and thus that the whole theory is vacuous (seee.g. Kroch, rgTz and Kiefer, r979 and replies in, respectively, Gazdar, rgTga:. 53 and Gazdar, r98ob). However this kind of attack would only have force if it were in principle impossible to predict implicatures on a rigorous basis.But aswe shall demonstratein section3.2.4,a firm start has in fact already been made in the direction of formalization, and there is no reason to think that further progresscannot be made. ImPlicature atd logical Jorm 3,2," We have seenthat implicatures are derived from (a) what is said, and (b) the assumption that at least the co-operative principle is being maintained. But exactly what aspect of 'what is said' is relevantl More precisely,what linguistic level or levels must be referred to In the derivation of an implicature ? Are implicatures derived from, for example, the surface structure, the semantic representationor the truth conditions? Some quite detailed arguments can be given to show that all but the Manner implicatures must be read from the level of semantic r2 2
Reoisions,problems and applications
including some specification of logical form. They can they be read offfrom uninterpreted surface structures' nor uttered' the sentence of truth conditions the from simply rred from be derived cannot sensibly implicatures that show us let surface structures, There are many utterances that For in surface structure but which share the same implicatures' (84), where P is any in of the sentences any of the utterance p, wilt share the proposition the expressing sentence is not implicature (providing the (8S) of course in
(81) ' .' (8s)
PerhaPsP maybe P possiblYP potentially P PossiblYnot P
Thus (86) will imPlicate (87): (86) (87)
There may be life on Mars There may not be life on Mars
because,by Quantity, if one knew that there must be life on Mars one should have said so (again, see section 3.2'4 for the details). The problem here is that there is no way to relate the expressions in (84) simply on surface structure grounds, although they share the implicature in (8S). So we should miss the basic generalization that all expressionswith the same semantic content seem to have the same implicatures(see Gazdar, r979a: 56fI for further argument). Secondly, as we shall show in section 3.2.4, an utterance of the form Not all of the As are I has the generalized conversational implicature 'some As are B' (the former does not entail the latter because the former could be true even if the latter were false). Now consider: (88)
All of the arrows didn't hit the target
This exhibits a well-known type of ambiguity (a so-called scope' ambiguity) between the two senses expressible by the following logicalforms:
(8s)
(Vr (A(r) + Hit(r, the target))) i.e. it is not the case that for all .r, if r is an arrow) then .l hit the target (Hit(r, the target))) Vr (A(*) + r23
3.2 Reaisions,problems and applications
C onoer sational imP lic atur e c onv er s at r onal ones on a l l t h e d i s t i n c t i v e p r o p e r t i e s w e h a v e o u t l i n " . r f or t he la er . For ex am p l e , c o n v e n t i o n a l r m p l i c a t u r e s *i l t b e r , o r l c,zncellablehecause they do not rely on defeasible assumprions abor,r the nature of the context ; they will be cletachable6ecause they depend on the particular Iinguistic itcms used (e.g. if you substitute a4d fof ,rl you lose the conventional rmplicature but retain the same truth conditions); they w ill norbe calculated using pragmatic principles and contextual knowledge, but rather given by convention (e.g. there is no way that given the truth conditions of 6rl you can derive or calculate that there is a contrast between the two conjuncts); they mav bc expected therefore to have a relatively detelminate content or meaning; and there will be no expectation of a zzioersal tendency for languages to associate the same conventional implicatures with expressions with certarn truth conditrons. In a sense conventional implicature is not a very interesting concept ^. it is rather an admission of rhe failure of truth-conditional scmantics to capture all the conventional content or meaning of natural language words and expressions. It is natural, thereforc, thal the acceptance of the notion has been resisted (see e.g. Kempson, r 975), and that attempts have been made to reduce alleged casesto matters of entailment, conversational implicature or presupposition Gricc's few examples of conventional implicature encourage the would-be reductionist: indeed Kempson ( r 97 5) claims that there arr only several candidates for the category anyway. But this is an error, for a very large number of deictic expressions of the sort describeo in Chapter 2 seem to have conventional implicatures as a central meaning component. 'I'his is especially true of discourse-deictic items as in ( lr o) , ' z ! and s oc ia l l y d e i c t i c i t e m s a s i n ( r r r ) ( w h e n u s e d i n addr es s ) : ( r , o) IIII,,
however, moreover, besides, anyrvay, r,rell,still, furthermore, although, oh, so s ' r , m adam , m a t e , y o u r h o n o u r , s o n n y , h e y , o i
Take, for example, 1'/V pronounst ike tufttous in French: what a choice of ( r r z) over ( r r 3) conveys (as we argued in Chapter z) is nor 1? ln section 3.2 6, i t s l l l be ar gued r hat r he m eani ns of s uc h r tem s ofr en involves .efer enc€ r o pr oc es s es of.oD ?r i ar ;oadl Bul r he r ay i . ur chy . wh' ch such mean; ngs ar e enc oded, ;r i s her € b€'ns'm arpti y r .ar ed,;s .on* nti onol
r 28
'. ,rificrence in truth
lir""r*J """t"t
condilions
but just
a dilTerence in the
relationshipbetweenspeakerand addressee:
Tu es le Professeur , --\ Vous 6tesle Professeur l::; ..rtt nous,when used to a singular addressee,conventionally but indicatesthat the addresseeis sociallydistant jj11--truth-conditionally superior to, the speaker. The whole vast range of J-- o, "o.iutty in' for example, the S E Asian languages, like Korean and i,Jno.in.t 'r'--"r", uta similarly encoded as conventional implicatures' ' br takethe discourseparticle oA in English As Heritage (in press) particle is generally produced (at least shows,ohas an utterance-initial by one speaker just after anoth€r has I one distinctive usage) the conventional signal in English for snnouncedsome news' It is received and recognized, but in itself news has been that indicating that could be analysed truthcontent propositional no it has 1982,on related particles ) (See t98I, also Owen, conditionally. items, as in ( I ro), and addressforms, discourse-deictic that Note expects of conventional Grice the exhibit (tIr), Properties as in - you cannot add non-cancellable they are For example, implicatures. the implication' denies that effectively phrase, instance, for rconjoined Compare:
(rr+) (tr5)
The Duke of Norfolk has three mansions, and in fact more ??The Duke of Norfolk has three mansions, but only one car, and there is in fact no contrast between these two facts
In (r r4), the implicature 'no more than three' is effectivelycancelled by the conjoined phrase; but in (Ir5) a similar conjoined phrase denyingthe conventional implicature of 14, does not seem to lift the forceof 6at at all, and indeed seemsanomalous (here cf. Grice, t 96 r ) Justas conventional implicatures are non-csncellable,so they are detachable(in contrast to conversational implicatures), as illustrated by the switch from ,a to uoIlJ; nor are they calculated (no one has to calculatewhy uor,lj might be more polite than ttr); and they do not seemto have radically different interpretations in different contexts (consider,for example, the meening of the items in ( I Io)). Various important issues about the organization of a grammar are raisedby the concept of conventional implicature. On the account suggestedhere, lexical items will often have non-truth-conditional but neverthelessconventional featuresof meanins: so a lexicon for 129
.J.2 Revisions,problems ond applications
C onael sational imqlic a tur e
Kiads oJ imPlicature In our account of Grice's theory of implicature (ss611aa
3 .2 .3
3. r), we stressed a dichotomy between those implicatures (which wr called standard) that are derived from a simple assumption t[6111.r. speaker is obsetoing the maxims and those derived in more complex ways on the basis of the speaker fozling or exploiting a maxim. The distinction underlies the common view that there is some specialclass of utterances that are 'figures of speech' or exploitations of 4era straightforward ways of talking.'r Btrt Grice also distinguished between kinds of conversational implicature on another dimensior generalized conversational implicatures are those that arise withour any particular context or special scenario being necessary, in contrast implicatures which do require such speciliq to particularized contexts. As an example, Grice notes that in general whenevsr I s6y ( r o3) | s hall be t ak en t o i m p l i c a t e ( r o 4 ) : I ualked into a house The house was not m) house
( I 0 3 .l
( ro + )
So there seems to l>e a generalized conversational implicature ftorn the expression an -F-to the assumption that the mcntioned F is not closely related to the speaker. In contrast (ro5) *'ill only implicate ( r o6) if ( r o5) oc c ur s in t h e p a r t i c u l a r s o r t o f s e t t i n g i l l u s t r a t e d i n \ r oJ ) : (ros) (ro6) (roz)
The dog is looking very haPPY Perhaps the dog has eaten the roast beef A: What on €arth has happened to the roast beefl B: The dog is looking very haPPl
The implicature in ( I o6) is thlus palticulalizcd (see Smith & Wilson, rg79: r7rff for an account of horv implicatures like this might be calculated). Now most of the floutings or exploitations of the maxims are particularized, in that, for example, ironies require particular bac[ground assumptions to rule out the litcral interpretations Butitcould !'
is so i ns i s r r hat the d's ti n.r nn lndeed, Sper be. & W i l s on ( for r h.om i ns ) fundament.l that t w o qui te di fl er ent k i nds of r eas oni ns ar e €m pl oy ed, both of *hi.h clnnot be s ubs um .d w i thi o s s i ns l e th€or y of i m Pl i c a( ur e W hr l e clsim ids that the s tander d i m pl i c atur es ar e deduc ti ons fr om a s i nSl c m ai ,m ot Rcl€vanc., b.ck S.ound as s um pti ons and uhat i \ s ar d, the) s uPA.s r r har ' fisur es of sp€.ch ' ty pi c al l y i nv ok e i m ages and as s oc i a( i ons of a qu'r .
r 2b
claimed that metaphorslike (I08) or tautologiesIike ( to9) .ocrhrpsbe they convey in a relatively context - independent way 5"1.t *ft", (r"8) ('og)
England is a sinking shiP
r- .nv case,it is clear that the two dimensionscross-cut: for example' ,ttut arisefrom observingthe maxim of Relevanceare iiiirpfi.",ut"t only with respectto the l,r,i"ututir"a, since utterancesare relevant Thus B's response in (ro7) I]'ri"ul", topi" or issue at hand juxraposition to A's question in ( r o7)' l,l"flcates( t o6) by virtue of its that are both iut the important Point here is that thoseimPlicatures the maxims and are generalizedhave a special derivedfrom observing theory For it is these in particular which ;porrance for linguistic conteol of linguistic *iit U. nrta to distinguish from the se,nantic will be routinely associated implicatures such because expressions, with the relevant expressionsin all ordinary contexts' We have been using the term implicature loosely to refer to what (and we shall Gricewas careful to designateconaetsationalimplicature will misunderstanding where no the shorthand use to continue general be a to implicature the tertn intended in fact result).But Grice coverterm, to stand in contrast to what is said or expressedby the truth conditions of expressions,and to include all the kinds of pragmatic(non-truth-conditional) inferencediscernible. In addition thento convetsationalimplicatures, i.e those calculatedon the basis of the maxims, Grice envisaged an entirely dilTerent kind of nontruth-conditionalinferences,namely conventional irnplicatures. Conventionalimplicatures are non-truth-conditional inferencesthat are zo, derived from superordinate pragmatic principles like the maxims,but are simply attached by convention to particular lexical itemsor expressions-Grice providesjust two examples:the word Dal hasthe same truth-conditional (ot truth-functional) content as the word and, with an additional conventional implicature to the effect thatthere is some contrast between the conjuncts (Grice, I96I); the other example is the word thereJorewhich Grice holds contributes nothing to the truth conditions of the expressionsit occurs within (Gtice, r975: 44). Other examplesthat have been suggestedare the meaningsof eoen(Kempson, r975; Karttunen & Peters, r979) and yat (Wilson, r 975). Conventional implicatures can be expected to contrast with '7
3.2 Reoisions,Ploblems a\d applicatio,ts
C omt erca tional imq li ca tul e
systematic inferences of intriguing complexity (?.:*." & L€vinsor, r978), Indeed, there may well be a generalprinciple here: for ever., kind of mutually assumed constraint on laoguage usage, there will I a corresponding set of potential inferences that come about eithe. from the speaker observing or flouting the constraint. If this is sothere are many kinds of implicature yet to be discovered. The proliferation of speciesof implicature reminds us of the poinr made in Chapter r, namely that recent developments in pragmatie have as a consequencea 'hybrid ' view of the nature of meaning.Tt c total signi6cation or communicative content of an utterance may be divided, accordingto Grice (r975), along the lines indicated in Figute 3. r. Here we see that the truth-conditional content of an utterance (what, in Grice's special sense,is said) may be only a small pan of its total meaning, and as we explore other topics in pragmatics we shall continue to add further kinds of pragmatic inference to t[i5 inventory. GenetalizedQuontit!implicatures 3,2.4 One ofthe greatattractionsofthe notion ofconversationalimplicatu6, as was indicated in 3.o, is that it promises to simplify semantics substantially.For instance,the proliferation ofsensesof lexicaliterns can be avoided by noting that implicatures often account for differenr interpretationsofthe sameitem in different contexts; thus, aswe havc seen, the 'and then' interpretation of and can be attributed to the maxim of Manner. But to demonstrate how far-reaching the contributions from Grice's theory can be in this regard, we shall need to expressmore rigorously our understanding of how the maxims work, so that wc can accurately predict some range of implicatures, show how these could be mistaken for aspectsof the sez.reof the linguistic expressions involved, and demonstrate the substantial benefits that accrue to semantics if these mistakes are not made and the systematic ellects of implicature are taken into account. Here we shall concentrateon some generalizedeuantity implicatures, as these seem at present to be the best understood (thanks especially to the work of Horn, ry72' rg73 and Gazdar, rg79a). Following Gazdar (rg7ga), we shall consider two specific and rmportant sub-cases: scalar Quantity implicatures, and clausal Quantity implicatures.
of a set of linguistic alternates' or linguistic scale consists the samegrammatical category' which can ."p."""i"nt "f "",iu" by degree of informalioenessor semantic l.l".a ir, titt"u. "rder " an ordered set Such a scale will have the general form of by angled brackets) of linguistic expressions or scalar e9 €2, e3... e11tas l n:
(e, e", c", .'. en)
etc', in a sentential frame A we obtain +,hereif we substitute €r, or ?r
A!::l'-li::':i.',::::T^lli*if '1fl':ilt: ;5i*"tr-ro'-"a ""1::i":: A(e"),etc'but not viceversa'For example'takethe f,,'i;l(;J.nt"il"
all and some'These form an implicarional scale iriittt ot"t,in"* i-toil, (rIg) (i e' ,o.r>, becauseany sentencelike (rr8) entails is true (t l9) is true also) but not vice versa:
*han.u",
(lI8)
(r t8) (r r9,
All of the boys went to the Party Some of the boys went to the PartY
general predictive rule for l.,low, given any such scale, there is a if a speaker asserts deriving a set of Quantity implicatures, namely in the ordered that a lower or weaker point (i.e. a rightwards item that a highet implicates he then obtains, a scale on set of alternates) Thus fl o' obtain does set) the ordered (leftwards in point or stronger the not all that implicates (r conversationally I9) one if one asserts quite compatible it is though so even party; is this boys went to the wiih the truth of (rr9) that (Ir8) is also true, as shown by the non-contradictorinessof (r zo): (rzo)
Some of the boys went to the party, in fact all
We may formulate this generally as a rule for deriving scalar implicatures from scalar predicates: Scolatimplicatutes:Given any scaleof the form (e ,. eg,-e3' ' ' ' en), if a sieaker assertsA(?J, then he implicates : -A{",)' i{ l' ni""), then he implicates A(e2)and - A('r), and in "".""t" general,if he assertsA(en), then h€ implicates - (A(e.-I))' (A(e'-z) aod so on, uP to - (A(€r)) For the scalar implicature to be actually inferred, the expression that gives rise to it must be entailed by any complex sentence of which (r zr )
it is a part. Thus the utterance of
j.z
C oneer sotional imPlic atur e a natural language will contain reference to pragmatic components of meaning. Secondly, syntactic rules seem to be sensitive 1q .r.1, elements of meaning. Consider again, for example, (t r2) and (rr3) above: ,! takes the singular form ofthe verb, uous the plural forry1 but uozr does not take a plural noun phrase after the verb irre if it is being used to refer to a singular addressee. Consequently, as r,e. noted in 2.2.5, there is a morphologically encoded distinction berween the ooal that is genuinely plural and the oolJ that actually refsls 1, a singular referent, which appears just with nominal predicates (ses Comrie, r975 for cross-linguistic data here). \ow in some languagq5 which have additional honorific devices, the morphology requils5 that all items referring to a particular person be at the same honorific level. Thus most Tamil speakers would lind ( t r 6) ill-formed or unacceptable because the honorific level in the subject does not agree with the honorific level in the predicate: ( r I 6)
I ?talaivarcolraanka headman-honorific says-supcr-honori6c
Such honorific levelsare not alwaysencodedby regular morphologicr,, elementsor otherwise in the form of the linguistic items. So rulesof morphological agreement have to refer to the conventional implrcatures that specify the degree of tespect offered by the speakerto the hearer or the referent. But in that casesyntax is not autonomous with respectto pragmatics, a claim that most linguists *'ould resist. The only way to escapesuch a conclusion is to generatesentences with, for example, unacceptablecollocationsof honori6cs, and then have an additional set of pragmatic filtering rtles that ape standard morphologicalprocesses.The machinery for such a solution hasbeen explored by Gazdar & Klein (r977). It is not an elegant solution tn that such pragmatic filters would do a tremendous amount of work in a language rich in honorifics, of a sort that would normally be thought ofas standardlymorphologicalor syntactic(for the magnitude of the problem see e.g, Harada, I976, on Japanese) The issue i. important becausethe inter-relation between conventional implcature and syntax is one of the clearest areas where pragmatics impinges deeply on grammatical processes.In fact little thought has yet been given to the implicalions that such inter-relations have for the overall organization of a theory of grammar. Recently a new and different interpretation of the nature of r3 0
Retisions, ptoblems and applications
fall . ,---fional implicature, and the linguistic phenomena that t'-i,-',," (I975' & Peters Karttunen by put forward been ,.oo., has they suggest that the cote examples of the lllr'-rrr.nii"rrv usuallv described as Pretuppotit;on are reallv best llll'o."non vl'l.-^ conventional implicatures, and they outline a formal ^. *t,nt^ the framework of Montague grammar' The theory ]I",J"", Chapter 4, and we note its existencehere lliJ"r"".a extensivelyin terminological confusion ln fact the phenomena they lllj"i-i"" l"-"";u" ftuu. quite different Properties from the conventional (see Levinson, ,']Li.rru."" of items like those in (rro) and (rIr) in this book the term.will be retained,as Grice intended' ,Oin'il ""0 i^, rhe inf"tenc"" associatedwith such items' We have described the kinds of implicatu'e central to the literature' thete do seem to be additional nonbut, as anticipated by Grice, produced by different maxims or of inference kinds conventional For example, we shall see below that usage. language orinciples of that produces implicatures principle of itformativeness ,tr"r" i" u to the maxim of Quantity (Atlas those due sometimesin conflict with principles of politeness that produce & Levinson, I 98 t ), and there are
I implicat.d
I ll
non'convcntionally
convcnt ionally
con"crsationally,
non-conv.rsationally
r--_]
B.ncrally
perticul.rly
Figure 3.r Kixds oJ communicational conlent r! I... impl;cetcd
by the maxims of conv€rcition.
!3 r
C omtet sa tiona I impl ic a tul e A(er)' and ,S knows that not A(er),. Now empirically the inference from, for example, (r tq) is to the stronger . S f,""*"if,", ,S),, and this is a generar fact about th. s."l-ar i-oil""ir."".-b,i*t "",?, ui.a. of Quantity implicature seen
r",-,rJ"i.i"I"#; ;:'.'r::I#l# ;i:,,*":::fi: "]"!:il:
some stronger statement obtains. Why this should U. ."-"1., ,* of the many mysteries in this €lrea (see Atlas & Levinson, r98I for discussion). We now turn to clausal irr
rationis (with (tz6)
"
"risht "i_prin":::';;::l;":::r*
( reTea)rormu-
Clautal implicaturcr: .|/ S assprts some
complex expressron p which (i) containsan embedded sente;;;.";; iuio i""nn.. entails.norpresupposes q..and(iii),h;;:;';",'.;||"il",,r.
expressionr of roughry equal bfevity which contains g such that r docs entail or presut by' asserting p rather than r, S implicates ,h", h.tf"-"--q';^ ',1"n'
i.' h. i-;ri;;;;;;'i$:o:*"'*
*hether s is true or rarse'
The underlying intuition is this: if I use some linguistic expression that fails to commit me to some emb.dd.d ;;;;;";;:;';; ;$":".".. to anothet availablestronqer e:
;1""T ffi;::Jlil:i,l# ;"11'i,T",;H#; ::1,1:;;;{
posltton to make the stronger - sltatement' Thus if I say (Iz7) instead of (rz8). \r.Z-) (r2U)
I betieveJohn is awav I know John is awav
it is possible, for a ].-r:lt:*:,1* away. Or if I sav-
I know, that John is in fact nor
(I29)
The Russiansor the Ar havejust landedon Mars it is entairedthat one or ,n. o,n-ttt""n" party has landed on Mars' but I implicate ,rr* i, i"-p"""iui.,srrer is the Russianq and it is possible that it isnot the RuJil:;rfi;T k ow' This is becauseI have chosen ro utter ( r z9) in pr"f.r"r,"", fo. ",
*o"ra i,l"l;;; ;6',f :il"^.;j:,*: :l,H;?' ^gorwhich "o,"-r (rlo) The Russians and the I
Thustheuttering 0,"j""",,,:;;;;;,ni::1'j;::: " becausethe, whrch disjunct is ", true,
choice ofa disjuncrion has consequence that neither the -""_ of the r:mbedded sentences is entailed (or 136
j.z
Retisions, problems and applications
presupposed) by the whole' Since one could have chosen a stronger that did entail one or both of the disjuncts, one can be "*p."""ion taken not to be in a position to utter the stronger expression' Hence a statement of the form p or q generatesthe set of implicatures: {Pr, P - P, PC, p - q) i.e. it is epistemically possible that p, also that not ,r, also that q, also that not g. A sentence of the form p or g has these implicatures by reference to the availability of other sentenceslike p attd 4 or simply p or 4 which are stronger or more informative becausethey do entail p or qor both' Similar pairs of'stronger' and 'weaker' constructionsare illustrated i n (r3t): (a\ t,rongerIorm (r3r) 'P andq' 'sincet , q' 'a knowsp' 'a realizedp' 'a rcvealedP' p' 'necessarily
(b) wcahaform ', ot q' 'if r t h€nq' 'a belicves P' 'a ihouShtp' 'd saidP' 'po$iblv p'
(c) inqlicatu t ol(b) lPP,P - P, Pq,\ - 9l {Pp'e- p'Pq, P- q1 {Pt' P - t} (Pp' P - t) lPP' P - ,\ {Pl' P - Pl
Note that items that occurred in the list of scales in (rzI) with the appropriate scalar implicatures could reappear here with additional and stightly difierent clausal implicatures. For example, th€ utterance of possiblyt carries the scalar implicature 'not necessarily p'; but since porsr6/yp in contrast to tecetratily p do€s not entail p, there will also be a clausal implicature from the utterance of possrblyp to the efiect that the speaker does not know whether p is or is not the case (i,e. the set of implicatures {Pp, P - p} will arise). Or again, utterances of the form 2 or q will have the scalar implicature K - (p & q) and the clausalimplicatures {Pp, P - p,Pq, p - g}. So under rules (rar) and (rz6) even the more simple complex sentences may give rise to multiple Quantity implicatures. We are now in a position to show how the recognition of such generalized Quantity implicatures can help us to simplify semantics. At the beginning of thc Chaptet we outlined a pervasive problem in semantics: a large number of words seem to behave as if they either had a single sense that is protean (i.e' may change from context to context), or alternatively had a very large number of distinct but cl
3-2 Revitions, ploblemt and applications
C onl)eNalional imPli ca tur e (rzz)
does not commit the speaker to knowing'Not all of them went' becausesoze occurs in a complement clausethat is not entailed by the matrix clause. For this reason, and because of defeasibility 1n general, it is useful to make the distinction between potential and actual implicatures (as in Cazdar, r979a); rule (rzr) (and similarly rule (rz6) below) generates potential, not necessarily actual. implicatures. Such a rule embodies a claim that the semantic content of lower items on a scaleis compatible with the truth of higher items obtaining, and the inference that higher items do not in fact obtain is merely an implicature. Thus soraeis compatible with a//, and it therefore does not include as part of its semantic content ' not all', the latter being a scalar implicature regularly associatedwith sorze(but cancellable as implicatures always potentially are). If readers now apply the rule in (rzI) to the following scales(from Horn, r97z), they may check the rule-derived implicatures against their intuitions: (rzl)
(all, most, many, some,few) (and, or) (n , ... 5 , 4 , 3 , z , r) (excellent, good) (hot, warm) (always, often, sometimes) (succeed in /ing, try to V, want to V> (necessarilyp, p, possiblyp> (ceitain that p, probablethat p, possiblethat p) (must, should,may) (cold, cool) (love, like) (none, not all)1r
To show that these regular scalar inferences are indeed implicatures we need now to produce a Gricean argument deriving the inference, for example, that (r 18) is not the case,from the utterance of (l rg) in co-operative cilcumstances. A short version of such an arqumenr might go as follows: (, z+)
The speakerS hassaidA(e");if S wasin a positionto stat€that a stronger item on the scaleholds - i.e. to asserrA(er) - then ,nor non€,. i.e. .somc'. is thc soutce " Th€ implic.tur. here, trom not alt ro of one inr.rprct.tion of €xlmpte (88) di$uss.d .bov€.
r3 4
he would be in breach of the first maxim of Quantity if he asEerted A(er). Sincc t the addressee assume thrt S i8 cooperating, an-J therefore will not violate the maxim ofQuantity I take it that S wishes to convey thst he i3 *itho,rt t "rtti.tg, tot in a position to state that the stionger item tr on the scale holds. and indeed knows that it do€s not hold
John says that some of the boys went
More generally,
(rzs)
and somewhat more explicitly:
(D (iD
S has said p There is an expression g, more informative than p (and thus q entailsp), which might be desirable as a contribution to the current purposes of the exch.nge (end here there isperhapsan implicit reference to thc maxim of Relevrnce) (iii) q is of roughly equal brevity to p; so S did not say p rather ihan q simply in order to be brief (i.c to conform to thc maxim of Manner) S f.""* ,tttt g holds but nevertheless uttered t he (iv) 6i"..ii would be in breach ;f the injunction to make his contribution as informative as is required, S must mean me' the addressee, to infer that S knows that q is not the case (K q), or at least that he does not know that 4 is the case (- Kq)
The important feature of such arguments to note is that they derive an implicature by reference to what has ttot been said: the absence of a statement A(er), in the presence of a weaker one, legitimates the inference that it is not the casethat A(er), via the maxim of Quantity' Another feature to note is that the inference is implicitly or explicitly rnodiffed; that is to sEy that from the utterance of epistemically A(e1)one actually infers 'speakerknows that not A(e,)', (symbolically, K : A(er)), rather thao just - A(ar). Hence what is conveyed is the speaker's commitment to his knowing that - A(cr)' This makes clear the pragmatic nature of the implication (referring to participants' knowledge states), and has imPortant implications for formalization' Following Hintikka ( r 96z) we may represent ' S knows that p' as Kp, and 'S doesn't know whether p' (or 'it is epistemically possible that p' ) as Pt. The two concepts K and P are then related just like the modal notions zecessaryand possiblc(seeAllwood, Andersson & Dahl, knows thatt iffit is epistemically P 1977. Iro)t i.e. Kp - t(S -' impossible, given what S knows, that not p). A final and related point to note about this Gricean argument is that it equivocates (and we here use the epistemic notation to good effect) between the inference and K - (A(er)), i.e. between 'S does not know that - K(A(er)) r 35
C ofloelsat;onaI impl i catul e For example, faced with the English words [o, and. warn. the semanticist might be tempted to claim that each covers a distinct and different (if approximate) span on some range of heat. It follows that it ought to be contradictory to say: (t32)
This soup is warm, in fact hot
just as it would be to say (rff)
rThis book is short, in fact long
But of course it isn't. The semanticist might then either claim that the meanings of natural language terms like warm are simply too vague or loose to engender contradictions, or he might ,h"t warm is in fact ambiguous betwcen a ,neither cold ,roa ",rgg"ri hoi, a"n". ( cl e a rl y n o t p o s s i b l e i n (r3 z )), and a.not col d,or.at l aast w arm, senre (the reading relevant for (r gz)). But the theorist who utilizes implicature has another kind of response: the scale of heat is not divided into discrete, labelled spans, but rather organized so that whar is hot is a special sub-case of what rs warm; thus a sentence of the form X r'sAot entails ,X is warm'. Consequently the terms form a scale (hot, warm), as in ( r z r ), and this predicts that to say X is wor^ conversationallyimplicates ,X is not hot'. But the implicature, tike all implicatures, is defeasible and thus is cancelled Uy,f," u"""rtion in (r3z) that X is in fact hot. Such an account b""o-. g"""*f "rn claim about the meaning of items in linguistic scales, " in g".,"ril items (when embedded in statements) enail their "rr.h Ioiver bounds (warm in a sentence will entail .at least warm') but ;^jl;_t" their upper bounds (roarrz implicates .not hot,). ^.r.ty The recognition of such scalar implicatures not only aids the understanding of the semantics of the general ,rocabulary in a language, but it also plays a crucial role in understanding ,f," :fogl""f, expressions in natural language, specifically the corinecti,rei the qusntifiers and the modals. The correct analysis of such terms is of course crucial to any semantic theory, but especially to those based on togical principles. Nevertheless understanding in this area was seriously hampered until the development of a theory of implicature, Forexample, it has long been noted that in many natur"l ;";;;", _disjunction appears to be ambiguous between an exclusive r-eading as in (r34) where it seems to be asserted that only one disjunct is true, and an inclusive reading as in ( r 35) where both iisjunct" U" ,*, ""r, r18
j.z
Reoisions,ptoblems and applicatiotrs
Mirabelle's in the kitchen or the bedroom The book is red or crimson the Thus the two hypothetical senseswould be: one and only one of the of or both V); one (exclusive, symbolically true disjuncts is account this v)' On (inclusive, symbolically disjuncts are true the addition of or both in (136) would serve to 'disambiguate'
(r34) (r35)
the sentence: Ronaldis a movie star or a politician,or both However Gazdar (r979a: 8z) argues that the ambiguity theory cannot be correct. For by standard logical equivalences the following correspondences can be established:
(rf6)
a (- P')& (- q') - U' v q) e( - t ) ( t q) & ( - {) ) v ( , & q) V Now given (I38) we would predict that there ought to be a reading of (t39) as ( I 4o) : (!37) (r:8)
(rl 9) (r40)
Ronald isn't a movie star or a politicran Either Ronald's not a movie star and he's not a politician, or he's both
But there does not seem to be such a reading, where what is asserted is that either both conjuncts are false or both are true't6 So the ambiguity view seems to provide the wrong predictions. But there's an alternative to the ambiguity claim, namely an implicatural account. For the scalar mechanism in (lzl) straightforwardly predicts that p ot q wlll standardly get interpreted as 'p V g'(i.e. exclusively) as follows. There is a scale (azd' or) where the sense of azd may be equated with logical & and the sense of oz with logical v (i.e. inclusive disjunction). Hence to sayp or q will implicate that the stronger item on the scale does not hold, i.e. - (p & q). But if we then conjoin the sense of p or q with the scalar implicature we *ith heavy ltrc6s oD 4 it is potsibl..o int.rprct (r39).r conv'vina " Although j ust thc s.cond diljun€t ot ( t {o}, as 6hown bv th€ po3sibi litv of !.vins : Ro'ald ttar OR o por.ician' hc't BOTH.This misht s€'m to rrSuc thtt ;sd't a ^oti or crnnot bc Gqu.tcd {'ith loeicd v, bcceuic - (, v q) & (, & s) is . contt.diction However, thi! sP.ci.l inte'action bctwe'n ltrcas 'nd ncgrtion i! quit€ 8e't€t.l - thus on. c.n !.v lto.rt do.'n't LIKE Mar'ho' h' LOVES .lthouah not likinS somcon..nt.ils not lovinS thcm. Th€ principlc hcrc ^r', secmsto b€ that sivcn s ecrlc (c,,er), if onc rssctts - A(cr) with heavv !r'ds on c', one c.n me.n A(c,). lt co'rld b€ cl.im€d that cr it hcrc nol |.t.d but .nrion d. For further rcmrrks, scc Gricc, 1978 and Horn' t978. ..rhu
r 39
C onaer t a t iona I imp lica tur e
g#i:;"9_ft:l.LY"ffi;;; "r,,i"E;;i;;;;;;;;" obtain the exclusive readins:
be considered univocat, and inelusiue, .h.-.J;:;;;r:;pli,",;on to a generatizedtype of implicatu; G*;;;;';rr", };fi,|* The modals provide another. crucial logical domain where impli_ cature provides essential insights. L".,y ,"a*n thought, as Horn (1973) has"""i".i"i'"? -Olr.r nicely documented, there has been considerable confusion abour the prop". i",.";;;;;;;r;;;rn.."r,,"" between the sentential operators zecessatg and possibleandthe related modals rrlst and may, etc. Thr in this way' consider (r4t); this seemsto imply (r;i.tobl"-t "ti"e 'I he gori a may in fact be a membet of the genushomo 1:1ll rt42) Thegori We might
a maynot in r"., u" ,n.,ni".'oi.i., *ii"Jo"_, "
thus led, as Ar roro wiig"";;;;be ;;,il:l,: fi lT.A":fi I,T,:l,,J.l ;,;i: ( r4 3 ) O p -9 _ 6 i.e. if p is possible,then rt is possible that not , But we will also want to allow is.necessarvmust also be possible,and thus we *,,1 I-lit:Ier rso adopr rhe axi om i n (r44): ",'-1": (r++) tre .: g p t.e. tt, ls necessary, then it is possible And as a matter of definition:
( r4s)
Dr,-O-p r.e. if p is necessary,then rt rs not posstbte that not ,
But putting these three axioms t,
atthe "u*,ai,,,i",,ii pl'J;:::::"* ff:li 1"";:l';:j::::iaterv (I+6)
(bv(r44)) - oe Jil, 9e t||, op+O-p t b v 'c"',iiiup".;,io., t , + ji) (iii) O p - - - Dp iUy from {r45) with
of double negations) (iv) therefore, trp -""3ortt"tt"n Clearly we cannot hold onto botl axtoms' and losicians have mostlv had the good 3lr.But r'vhat leads us to think that (I43) mrght be".;;;;":".;." a ralid inference?
trana e il";;;fi:T;'ff:J:[l;:"Jffi,,:ffi
r40
j.z
Reaisions,problems and applications
(the speaker knows that) the stronger 4p, will be to implicate that joe" not hotd, i.e. (or, strictlv, K - Cp)' But, by logical - !P not the case'i e' equivalence,if p is not necessary,then it is possibly in natural inference (r43) is a legitimate So - Op - I - 1t. a logical than rather implicature an viewed as is if it t".rfr.g., as: it therefore us rephrase Let inference. an utteranceofthe form Op conversationallyimplicates - !p' and thus bv logical equivalence,O - p A considerable amount of confusion in early attemPts to formalize modal logic might have been avoided if the distinction between logical consequence and conversational inference had been available
(r+z\
(see Horn, r 973). Turning now to clausal implicatures, note that p ot g has the following implicatures : (r+8)
ImPlicoturesof 'P or q' scalar : K- ( t &4) clausal:{Pr, P * P, Pq, P - q\
The clausal implicature explains the intuition that it would be extremely misleading to utter (r49) if one knew that Claude was in the dining room: (r+s)
Claude'seither in the dining room or in the study
for by (r48) the qtteranceof (I49) has the clausalimplicature that for all the speaker knows he may be in either room. Thus if one knows that t, one does not co-operatively convey that by stating t ot qi the use of the disjunction rather conveys that one has grounds for believing one or the other disjunct but does not know which. By accounting fot the fact that the utterance of a disjunction thus effectively conveys much more than its logical sense, the thcory of implicature once again makes it possible to retain the simple logical analysis of or as inclusive disjunction while accounting for the divergence from that analysis in actual use. Similar remarks can be made about conditionals. \try'hateverthe correct semanlic analysis of conditionals is (and there is now good reason to think that natural language if ... ther. c nnotbe equated with logical -r, the material conditional - see Gazdar, tgTga:. 8g-7\, a number of particularly troublesome features can be accounted for by means of implicature. By our rule (rz6) we can predict (r5o): r4t
C onaercationaI imp I ic a turc For example, faced with thc English words ,o, and warm, the semanticist might be tempt€d to claim that each covers a distinct and different (if approximate) span on some range of heat. It follows that it ought to be contradictory to say: (r32)
This soup is warm, in fact hot
just as it would be to say (!33)
iThis book is short, in fact long
But of course it isn't. The semanticist might then either claim that the meanings of natural language terms like warm are simply too vague or loose to engender contradictions, or he might th", parm is in fact ambiguous between ,neither a colJ oor"ugg""i ho*,, (clearly not possible in (r3z)), and a.not "..r"" cold,or,at least warm, sense(the reading relevant for (r3z)). But the theorist who utilizes implicature has another kind of response: the scale of h";;;"-;r, divided into discrete, labelled spans, but rather organizea i". is hot is a special sub-case of what is warm; "o,i"i.,n th; a sentence of the form X ri lro, entails .X is warm'. Consequently tt t..-"-fJ..r, u scale(hot, warm), as in (rzr), and this predicts that to" suy X i, *i_ conversationallyimplicates ,X is not hot,. But the implicature, like all implicatures, is defeasible and thus is cancelled Uy,f," in (r32) that X is in fact hot. Such an account ""..r,i"n b"io_" g"rr"."l claim about the meaning of items in linguistic ""r, " scales, i" g.r,".;i ;""1, items (when embedded in statements) cntail their loiver bounds (warm in a sentence will entail .at Ieast warm,) but merely i;;;;rr" their upper bounds (raarz implicates ,not hot,). The recognition of such scalar implicatures not only aids the understanding of the semantics of the general .,rocabulary in a language, but it also plays a crucial role in uiderstanding ii";l'"gi*r, expressions in natural language, specifically the corinecti.,es] the quantifiers and the modals. The correct analysis of such rerms is of course crucial to any semantic theory, but especially to those based on logical principles. Nevertheless understanding in this area was seriously hampered until the development of a theJry of i-pli;;;;". Forexample, it has long been noted that in many natur"l;;;;;*, -disjunction appears to be ambiguous between an exclusive r'ead-ing as in (r34) where it seems to be asserted that only one disjunct is true, and an inclusive reading as in (r 35) where both iisjunct" U" ,.r,., ""r, r38
3-2 Reoisiont, Ploblems and ap,licatiorrs (rf+) (r35)
Mirabelle'sin the kitchen or the bedroom The book is red or crimson
Thus the two hypothetical senseswould be: one and only one of the disjuncts is true (exclusive, symbolically V); one or both of th€ disjuncts are true (inclusive, symbolically v). On this account the addition of or both in (136) would serve to 'disambiguate' the sentence: (rf6)
Ronald is a movie star or a politician,oi both
However Gazdar (r979a: 8z) argues that the ambiguity theory cannot be correct. For by standard logical equivalences the following correspondences can be established : q) - Q 'v qle( - f ) &( *( ( p) ( q) ) v ( t & e) ( p v & c) Now given ( r 38) we would predict that there ought to be a reading of (r39) as ( r 4o) :
(r37) (r38)
(r:g) it;;i
Ronald isn't a movie star or a politician Either Ronald'snot a movie star and he's not a politician'or he's both
But there does not seem to be such a reading, where what is asserted is that either both conjuncts are false or both are true.ts So the ambiguity view seems to provide the wrong predictions. But there's an alternative to the ambiguity claim, namely an implicatural account. For the scalar mechanism in (t2t) straightforwardly predicts that p ot q will standardly get interpreted as 'p V q' (i.e. exclusively) as foltows. There is a scale (azd, or) where the senseof azd may be equated with logical & and the sense of or with logical v (i.e. inclusive disjunction) Hence to say p or q will implicate that the stronger item on the scal€ does not hold, i.e. - (, & q). But if we then conjoin the sense of p or g with the scalar implicature we $ Althoush $'ith h€.vy strcs! on ot it is Po.sibl€ to intcrprct (r39).s conveving just th! scconddis.iuncrof(rro), asshown by the po$ibilityofs.vins: Ronard k 't a nooi. t,a. OR a Politi.ia^, h.'t BOTH This miaht sccm to .rauc rh.i o' cmnot bc cqu.tcd sith logicrl v, b€crure - (t v 9) & O & ?) i' . contr.dicrion. How.vet, ahisspcci.l interaction b€tw.cn strcts.nd ncgation ir quit€ gen€ral - thus on. c$.ty Ha/rr do.tn'', LIKE Ma ha,h. LOVES i.,, .lthough not likins 3omconc.nt.ils not loving them. Thc principl. h.t se.ms to be that 8ivcn. rc:lc (c1,c1), ifonc:rscrts ' A(cJ *ith h.avv.tres.' on .,, one crn mc.n A(cr). h could b€ claim€d thtt cr is hcrc not 6rd but rzrh.r n ntion d. For futthcr i.mirki, 6cc Gric., t97t rnd Hom, 1978.
r 39
C onaelsa t ionaI impI i ca tu/ e
j.z
obtain the exclusive readins:
Reoisions,problefls atd applications
:..;t;;;;;;;ffi#;ri"lff"r,:"?";i"Y"1;J1"""fi :
be considered uniaocal, and exclusive interpretation being due to a generalized,u'-"-"'::':"' ,the pe ol rmplicature (see Gazdar, r979a: z8-8:). The modals provide another-crucial logical domain where impli_ cature provides essential insights. Orr"r m"ny fo",."l thought, as Horn (1973) has nicely "".,,uri.i-oi documented, therc has been considerable confusion about the prop"" ;",".or"i"ii"n between the sentential operators "'i,n...,"o"rr zecessaty and possibleand the related modals rzzs! and may, etc- The probtem-s *ir" i.' iii, *"r.'i".ria* ( r4 r); th i s s e e msto i m p l y (r4 2): !tnr) (t42)
The gorilla may in fact be a member of the genushomo
Thegorillamaynot in f"., b", ,.,..,';;;';;i"
*"Jiiin"_"
might thus be led, as Aristotle was on occasion, to take I: the following as a basic axiom (where D = necessarily,O : possibly): (i43) o t* o -, i.e. if p is possible,then it is possible that not , But we will also want to allow
bepossibre, *" *il,"",3xiT;::lTff:"ill;*, "* ".Jir,",' ( r44) Do
op
- is necessary, i.e. ifp then it is possible And as a matter of definition: (I4s )
op lil, (r, !e or,Jorp
an utteranceofthe form Op conversationallyimplicates - Op' and thus by logical equivalence,O - p A considerable amount of confusion in early attempts to formalize modal logic might have been avoided if the distinction between logical consequence and conversational inference had been available
(rtl')
(seeHorn, rg73). Turning now to clausal implicatures, note that p o/ { has the following implicatures: Im,licatutet of '9 or q' scalar : K- ( ?&q) clausal:( Pt , P - P, Pq, P - ql The clausal implicature explains the intuition that it would be extremely misleading to utter (r49) if one knew that Claude was in the dining room:
(r+8)
(r+q)
Dt r - g! p r.e. ifp is_necessary,then it is not posstDlethat not ,
But puning these thra" u*io-, tog.ther we arrive immediately absurdity that, if t is necessary, then it is ";; "";";;"-,"',, (rq6) *
(the speaker knows that) the stronger 6p, will be to implicate that j*,,rot tota, i.e. - !p (or, strictly, K - !p). But, by logical if p is not necessary,then it is possibly not the case' i'e' -"quiual"nce, p. So (r43) is a legitimate inference in natural Ap -.9 rather than a logical t".,g|r.g", if it is viewed as an implicature inference. Let us rephrase it therefore as:
at the ".
(bv(,44)) t b y t , + t ii
(iii) O p - - np 1by "oii.upo";tion from (r+s) with of double negations) (iv) therefore, Do -t[oott""t"n Clearly we cannot hold onto botl axtoms' and logicianshave mostlv had the good ;;;;;;." *"0" us to thinlt that (r43) might be a,atid inferenc. ?*r,:::^11:,
Dand e f; ";;'i ;: T;,'ff il:::J,I,1"""i:: iI".,"#;
Claude'seither in the dining room or io the study
for by ( r 48) the utterance of ( I49) has the clausal implicature that for all the speaker knows he may be in either room. Thus if one knows that p, one does not co-operatively convey that by stating, o/ q; the use of the disjunction rather conveys that one has grounds for believing one or the other disjunct but does not know which' By accounting for the fact that th€ utterance of a disjunction thus effectively conveys much more than its logical sense' the theory of implicature once again makes it possible to retain the simple logical analysis of or as inclusive disjunction while accounting for the divergence from that analysis in actual useSimilar remarks can be made about conditionals. \y'y'hateverthe correct vmantic analysis of conditionals is (and there is now good reason to think that natural language it .,. thet eannotbe equated with logical --+,the material conditional - see Gazdar, r91ga: 8g-7\, a number of particularly troublesome features can be accounted for by means of implicature. By our rule (rz6) we can predict (r5o):
140
r4l
C onztersa tional impl i ca tw e (t5o)
Clautal imrlicatules ol,if p then q' { P b ,P-p ,p q ,p -q l
Therefore to say (r5r) is to implicate that one does not have any reason to think that Chuck has actually already got a scholarship or to think that he will defnitely give up medicine: (r5I)
lf Chuck has got a scholarship,he'll give up medicine
Some have thought that the hypothetical implications associatedwith the use of if .-. then should be built into the meaning of the conditional. But the problem is that such implications _ like all the others we have discussed in this section - are defeasible. Tbus if we embed (r5r) in the discourse context indicated in (r5z), rhe clausal implicatures evaporate:
( rsz)
A: l'vejust heard that Chuck has got a scholarship B: Oh If Chuck has got a scholarship, he;ll give up -dear. medicine
Hence consistently associatedbut neverthelessdefeasibleaspects of the meaning of the conditional can be explained by implicature. If such hypothetical implications were built into the semanticsof the conditional, the usage in (r5z) would force us into yet another ambiguity claim. Theexistenceof a number of differentkindsof euantity implicature, including scalar and clausal, gives rise to a projection problem for implicatures,i.e. the implicatures ofcomplex expressio.rs not be equivalent to the simple sum of the implicatures of all -"y the parts. Consider, for example, the fact, discussedin 3. r, that implicatures can be suspendedby explicit mention in f-clauses, as in: (t53) Some,if not all, of the workerswent on strike Here there should be a scalar implicature (r54) due to rorr.e(by.ule ( r z r) a b o v e ): (tS+)
(all the workerswent on strike) K i.e. S knowsthat not all the workerswent on strike
But there should also be the clausal implicature (rSS) due to the phrase if not a// (see the prediction in ( r5o)):
( rss)
r42
P(all the workers went on strike) i.e. it is possible, for all S knows, that all of the workers went on strtxe
3-2 Reoisions,prcblems aqd applications (I55) are inconsistent, and it Now the two implicatures (I54) and implicature (r55) effectively clausal seemsintuitively clear that the observations' ( cazc€lsthe scalar implicature r 54). On the basis of such mechanism (or projection cancellation) Gazdar (rg79a) sets up a Let the follows'r6 as dcsigned to model implicature cancellation, adding by assessed com;unicative content of an utterance U be to sequentially the distinct semantic and pragmatic inferences of U the that the context C, where C is understood to be the set of beliefs the speaker is committed to at the point when U is uttered' On ,ri,"rurr." of U, first the entailrvents (or semantic content) of U are added to the context (here we might add: only if they are themselves consistent with all the propositions in C; otherwise Participants will an.lyse U as a Quality flout and expect an appropriate implicature)' Next, all the c/azsal implicatures are added that are cot'JtSten'with the content of C (now augmented with the entailments of fI), inconsistent clausal implicatures simply being rejected and not added to the set of propositions in context C. Only now c n scalar implicatures be added, just in casethey in turn are consistentwith the context as already incremented by the entailments and clausal implicatures of U. This mechanism will correctly predict that the scalar implicature (I54), being assessedafter the clausal implicature (r 55) has been added to the context C, will be rejected as inconsistent with what has already been accepted. Thus on Gazdar's account deleasibility is captured by making implicatures acceptable only if they are consistent with entailments and other implicatures that have priority. Note that this mechanism also explains why implicatures may be overtly denied as in (r56): Some of my best friends are drug-addicts, in fact probably all
(t 56)
for the entailments of the second clause, being added to the context first, will cancel the implicature due to Jotte. Gazdar's mechanism appears to be perfectly general and to operate on sentences of arbitrary complexity. For example consider (r 57): '
G.zd..'.hod€l is. mod.l of whrt individual sP..k€r. ar€committed to' ind rhe wry in *hich this cencels implicrturcs. It do€! not csPtur. int.r.€tiv. .3p€ctsof what rnly bc mutually t.kcn fot 8r.ntcd.s convcrlrtion prGc€d3 It .ko makcs th. wronS pr.dictioN whh resPcct to tropcs or .rploitrtions of the mrximt, whcrc implic.tures oftcn crnccl cntrilm€nts. But it sccms to op€r.t€ w.ll within th. limit€d, but imPortant, domain of gcncralized conv€ruationcl irnplic.turc..
r 43
C onverca tional impIi ea tur e (rSZ) (rS8)
Someofthe Elgin Marbles are fakes,and either the rest ofthem ar€ too, or they're inferior originals (i) K - (all of the Elgin Marblesare fakes) (ii) P(rheresrof the Elgin Marbles are fakestoo) (iii) P (the rest of rhe Elgin Marbles are fakes too) (iv) P(the rest of the Elgin Marbles are inferior originals) (v) P (the rest of the Elgin Marbles are inferior originals) -
Here (i) is a scalar implicature due to some, and the rest of the implicatures are clausal ones due to the disjunction in the second conjunct of(r57). Note that implicatures (i) and (ii) are inconsistenr, so the scalar implicature (i) will be cancelled, and the sentence as a whole will have just the implicatures (iit(v). We also now have some account of the problem raised by Sadock (1978: zgr) and discussedabove in connection with example (75;. Implicatures are saidtobe non-dctachaDleand therefore not defeasiUte simply by substituting a synonymous cxpression for the expression that gives rise to them. But consider that the meaning of rightmost scalar items like sorzeis consistent with leftmost items iike a/iin such scales. It follows that sorzehas the semantic content paraphrasable as 'at leastsome'or'some if not all '. Therefore (r59) and should fr6o) bc synonymous, and ergo by the principle of non-detachability thcy should sharethe sameimplicatures.Dut they don't. However, we n
3.2 RelJisions'Problemsand arplications shown' promise in natural language. Such insights, w€ hope to have ro simplify semantics in two basic ways: (a) In the area of general vocabulary an implicatural analysis-can promoted by heip to avoid the proliferation of hypothetical senses and apparent ambiguities, together with the attendant inconsistencies of meaning of aspects defeasibility selective posed by the difficulties (seeMcCawleY, r978)' (b) In the crucial area of logical vocabulary, implicature can allow supplethe semanticist to maintain relatively simple logical analyses analysis an of such absence in the whereas mented by implicature, built the linguistic relevance of the entire body of logical machinery philosophical and linguistic about up over two millennia of thought problems would be seriously in doubt. Ahybrid theory of meaningin which both semanticsand pragmatics play a part therefore has the cardinal attraction of shifting some of problematic aspects of meaning out of the domain of ah" -o", semantics proper into a difrerent component where the difncult properties of defeasibility and cont€xt-sensitivity can be systematically handled. It would be misleading, though, to give the impression that all the problems are solved, even in this quite limited area of two specific kinds of Quantity implicature. It is quite unlikely, for example, that the projection mechanism for Quantity implicatures is as simple as Gazdar's rule that clausal implicatures take precedence over scalar ones - and it should be noted that we do not have any explana'ion for this observable regularity. There are other kinds of Quantity implicature, and other kinds ofpragmatic inference that 8re sometimes in conflict with clausal and scalar implicatures' Some of these latter, whose origin is not understood, actually take precedence over our two kinds of Quantity implicature. Consider, for example: (16z)
If you give me a bite of your ice-cream,you can have a bite of ml ne
which clearly seems to 'invite' the inference (163) (see Geiss & Zwicky, rg7 r): If and only if you give me a bite of your ice-cream,can you have a bite of mine There is thus a clear inference fromqit p to'q if and only if ,'. However, these connectives form a scale, aarnely (iJ and only iJ' iJ),
( r 6f )
r 45
C onoet sa tionaI impIi ca t ut e where the stronger biconditional implies the simple conditional. Therefore by principle (tzt) above there ought to U" implicature from ( r 6z) to the effect that ,ro, (t 63).iut " "."r". the implicutu.g works in precisely the reverse direction: q if p invites the inference 'q if and only if p'. So we have here an in]."en.e tf,"t i" *ortin-g ,n the opposite direction from ordinary euantity inferences: ,,or-?U, by Quantity if I say a weaker statement where a stronge. one would have been relevant, I implicate that I am not in a pos"ition to riate the stronger one. Here on the other hand by making tt" *"li* statement (r6z) I implicate the stronger one (r63). In fact the phenomenon is widespread. Co.rsld", the normal interpretations of: (164)
He turned on the switch and the motor started We read this in a way that is as ,strong, (informationally rich) as the world allows - and thus read in the following ."tu,io.," t",*""n ,*o conjoined clauseswherever possible: (t 6 s )
We have already given an account of the inference in (i) by appeal to the maxim of Manner; but this will not help us with ,fr" i.,f.r.n"" in (iii) to a causal connection between the two events (of course we could invent ad hoc new maxims _ see e.g. Harnish, r976 _ but thls would soon water down the notion of implicature). The problem here is that by the maxim of euantity the inference " from (164) to (r6s)(iii) should be specitically banned. For if I had -r.,; informationaly richer (r65)(iii) i f,u.," T",:,_,1:_ navrng not said so, I implicate that "no.,ta ""il as far as I know (r65)(iii) does not obtain. But that of course is the wrong p-al,i"".'-ii"* therefore seems to be an independent principle-o. m"*i--*l,iifr'*" may call the principte of inforrnativeneas, that i., 1,.,", .o-" circumstancesallows us to read
than itactu arrycon ;il _; ;il:: tr d::J:,l;: ':ff Tfi::: "ffi
the additional inference that (as far as the speaker know") statementcould b1 made. The problem that no* b"""r" ";;;;;r, ,h;;;i;", rs.to provide a principled account of how in just .",n" ;;;-;;," additional principle (,read as much into an utterance i; ;;;"ir;;". ", r46
j.z
Reoisions,ptoblems and applications
the wirh what you know about the world') takes precedenceover (e.g' most of the maxim of Quantity, while in other circumstances (seehere Atlas examples in this Chapter) the teverse precedenceholds prevails, (166) that in note Quantit] I98r). Thus Levinson, & (168) the additional (167); in but to inference only the licensing principle appears to license the inference (I6g) against Quantity's strict limitation of what one can mean by saying something: (166) (16Z) (168) ir691
Gilbert wrote The Mihado Gilbert and hc glone wrote The Mihado Gilbert and Sullivan wrote The Mihado Gilbert and Sullivan jointly wrote The Mihado (rather thatt independently invenring the same work)
(seeHarnish, r 976 and Atlas & Levinson, r98r for discussionofthese and related examples). In addition, then, to the important insights the theory of implicature has provided, substantial problems remain concerning how different kinds of implicature and pragmatic inferences interact. Nevertheless enough progress has been made to show that the various attacks that have been made on the theory of implicature, usually on the grounds that the concepts involved are too vacuousto be formalizableor testable(seee'g. Cohen, 197t ; Kroch, tgTz), are quite ill-founded. Metaphor: a caseof maxim exploi,ation We turn now to the other major kind of implicatures by Grice, those arising from the exploitation or flouting of suggested we shall consider here to what extent the theory of and the maxims; contributes to the study of metaphor. The actually implicature subject of metaphor, and its relations to other classical tropes or figures of speech, has of course been the focus of much thought since at least Aristotle's Rhetoic. Fundamental issues about the nature of language, and indeed the nature of thought, are raised by the subject: metaphor is not only central to poetry, and indeed to a very large propottion of ordinary language usage, but also to realms as diverse as the interpretation of drcams and the nature of models in scientific thought (see e.g. the collection in Ortony, r97ga fot the wide scope of the issues raised). Here, however, we can only try to establish the need for a pragmatic approach to metaphor, and sketch the directions in which such a pragmatic account might contribute to the study of 3.2.5
metaphor. r47
C onoerca ti onal impliea tut e Any discussion of metaphor, or the tropes in general, is plagued _ by divergent classificationsand t
8ofl. Forexamp re,r",h.r"ri;;::;'llllfl,,"jrlil "';ili"?]li ?,rJ;
metaphor I Different classificatory schemes yield difierent answem. (r7o) Britain rules the waves Here we shall simply take a very broad view of what metaphor is, accepting examples like the following as patadigm cases: (r7O The tree wept in the wind Iago is an eel \t72) U73) These stoneshave drunk a thousand years It should be pointed out immediately that there is a long an6 respectable tradition that views metaphor u ,eiorrrr. process and not a problem in pragmatics "" ""rrtrul at all. Indeed the two traditional theories(or classesof theory) whose central teDetsare laid out in (r74) and (r75) are both usually construed u" ,"_orti, ,h.oli." of metaphor: ( t 74)
(rzs)
The compa/iton theoryi Metaphors are similes with suppressedor deleted predications of similariry. Thus (r7z) is semantically io /"gJ'i, lihe an eel "quir"l"., The int.taction theort : Metaph;rs are special uses of linguistrc expressions where one metaphorlcal expression (or /orns) is embedded in another . (or Jtame), such that the meaning of the .ftlf."f tnteracts ..*nt".",on rocus with and rlaager the meaning of the/rame, and
'Io establish the need for a pragmatic approach to metaphor, we shall need to show, at some length, how such semantic approaches fail to yield adequate accounts of the phenomena. To seehow such semantic theories of metaphor can be given some plausibility, let us take a particular instantiation of each and examine its u"ii"\r"rn".r,, shortcomings. One particular version of the rnreracr-, tt a"al-""" "rrd U" formalized (or at least given some precision) using the framework of semanticfeatulet as utilized by, for example, Katz & Fodor ( r 963) or componential analysts(see Lyons, r96g; 4o7ff), On tneory, the meaningsof lexical items are specified ",r.n " ""_i.,," by a set of featurcs, each of which is an atomic concept o. irreducible s"munticlrime drawn from a larger but restrictedset, the membersof the latteriei.,s . ra 8
3.2 Reaisions,problems and applications jointly define all the complex senses of in principle sufifrcient to might have the actually occurring lexical items. Thus the noun r'or? which jointly with it, associated features semantic of following set define its sensei UZ6i
Phytica.lobiect ,rotufal non-liaing ,rtineral concleled
in and the verb die rnight be represented as a set of features related particular ways, as indicated: procestwilh result, namely,that some ftt'ing entity x ceasetto be F77') li,iag Now consider the interPretation of: (q8) The stonedied (this argument is drawn directly from Levin' I9??: Chapter III; see also Cohen, r 979). It is ctear that the sentenceis not straightforwardly interpretable becausethe reading for stonein (t76) has the feature ton-lhting, while the reading for die in (r77) requires that its subject of be living. ln such cases,the argument goes, an additional set the to interpret play order in into brought are rules' 'construal sentence.Essentially what such rules will do is map features from one lexical item on to another: the additional features may be conjoined or disjoined from the existing ones, or they may replace them' Applying such rules to (I78) we obtain (i,,et a/ia) the reading (tZs)
The stone ceasedto be
where the featurc non-lioing is added disjunctively to the verb's specification for a living subject and the specification Jiuing simply dropped from ceare to be li1)ing,to yield ceaseto be' In short, the vertr's meaning has changed to become neutral to living and non-living subjects.Or alternatively, the reading: (r8o)
The living naturalmineral concreiedthing died
can be obtained, by repla.ing the featute noa'lhtitg in the specification for stozewith the fe ature lioing tranxferred from the verb, so that Jtote might here refer to some rather solid human individual Such analysescan be 'formalized' in feature frameworks (as has been done by W ei n r eich, r 966; Van Dijk, r 97?; Levin, I 977; et c ) . t49
C onoerca tio r,aI impIi ca tur e The main attraction of such theories is that they attempt to briog within the fold of standard semantics interpretive processes like metaphor which are not always clearly distinct from ordinary processes of languageunderstanding. Consider the range of examplesin (rgr) below: where does literal interpretation cease and metaphorical interpretation take over ? (t8r)
John camehurriedly down the stairs John ran down the stairs John rusheddown the slairs John hustleddown the stairs John shot down the starrs John whistled down the starrs
Some have claimed in fact (seee.g. Wilks, r975; Carling & Moore, I98z) that natural language semantics has an inbuilt ,elasticlty, that allows such interaction between the sensesof words to take place in standard processesof semantic interpretation, and not just in metaphors. However, there are numerous problems for any such account of metaphor, of which a few will suffice here. First, it seems fairly clear that the supposed readings of metaphors thus provided are not good paraphrases:the feature-mappingprocessis both too limited anJ too determinate to capture the metaphorical force of the expressions. Secondly, and relatedly, many aspects of that force have more to do with the coatingent, factual (real-world) attributes of the referents of the metaphorical.;focas than with the semantic features that can be claimed to express its meaning. For example, if I say (r7z) I may effectively convey that Iago is slimy, eats offal (and thus perhaps, metaphorically at second remove, stoops to dirty deeds), and has the ability to wriggle off hooks (and thus out of difficult situations). But none of these associations is a senantic feature by any reasonable stretch of theory or imagination: an unslimy, non_offal_eating, non-wriggling eel would still be an eel. An important part of the force of any metaphor thus seems to involve *h"t might U" 'connotational penumbra' of the expressions involved, the""ii.j-tfr" incidettal rather than the defining characteristics of words, and knowledge of the factual propeities of referents and hence knowledge of tle *l-rfa tn general, All of these matters are beyond the scop" of a semantic theory, as generally understood within linguistics'luttf,ough semantic metaphoi theorists find themselves p,r"h.d b:v "om" th"".
.].2 Revisions,problems and aqplicatio'ts s€mantics and the totality arguments to deny any distinction between e'8' Cohen, I979)' of"knowledge in a speech community - see variety of A final and crucial argument against the feature-transfer intuitively semantic theories of metaphor is that there are metaphors, the part and parcel of the same phenomenon, which do not involve to trigger the initial semantic anomaly within the sentence required i"o.rtrrr"l rules' (rules for feature-transfer)' Suppose, fot example' playing chess, I saY to mY opPonent: (r8z)
Your defenceis an impregnable castle
providing the This may be understood in a number of ways: literally, if the defence in question is constituted by a rook; or metaphorically defensive position is in general impregnable; or, interestingly, both (t82) itself' at once. But in no caseis there any semantic anomaly in if Indeed metaphors are closely linked to parables and proverbs I say (r 83) I generally mean it to apply metaphorically to the situation i n hand: (r8f)
A stitch in time savesnrne
Whatever explains the understanding of these sorts of utterances ls likely to explain m€taphor, and it will not be a semantic theory however construed. We turn now to the so-called corzpariso, theory of metaphor' The essential claim is that metapho.s are derived from explicit similes' Thus one could hold that (r84) is equivalent to (r8S), and that therefore there is no outstanding problem of metaphor at all beyond the problems of the semanticsof similes. (r8+) (r8S)
Universities are compost heaps Universitiesate like compostheaps
One should note that there are various possible /izgarrtrc positions here: one could maintain that (r84) shares the wndetlying srntactic structure of(t 85), or alternatively, whatever the underlying structure interpretation of (r85) lnany of (t84), that (r 84) sharesthe seraazrrc (r8S) claim can be made that the (r8+) the and case, by relating not really distinct from the is metaphors problem of understanding pioblem of understanding some specific kinds of 'literal' uses of language, namely those in similes. A relatively sophisticated version of this position is held by Miller ( r979) (although he eschews any specifrc syntactic ot scrflantic clai'Irs t5t
problemsard applicatio'ts 3'2 Reo;s;ons,
C onoetsationa I imPIi ca ltr e and presents a version of comparison theory as a rryclrological theory of how metaphors are comprehended). The claim is that in order to comprehend metaphors they must be converted into a complex simile-like form - complex because there are always a number of extra implicit predicates or variables which have to be reconstructed by the listener. Rules are proposed that will convert metaphors into their complex simile-like form for understanding. The rules rely on a tripartite classification of metaphors. First, we have nominal tnetaphors : metaphors like ( r 7z) (Iago is an eel)iave the form BE(r, J); to understand them the recipient must construct a corresponding simile in line with the following rule (where * ) should be understood as 'is interpreted as'): (186)
BE(.t,y) + ) rF rG (STMTLAR(F('), c(y))) i.e. metaphors of the r r! a y kind are interpreted as: 'There are two properties F and G such that * having property F is like y havingproperty G',7
The claim then is that a metaphor of the .r is y variety is not actually a comparison betwee'j two objectstc and I but between two ptopos;tions (.r being F, 1 being G). The job for the listener is to infer what these two similar properties are: thus (r7z) might be decoded as 'Iago's ability to get out of difficult situations is like an eel's ability to wriggle off hooks'. The second kind of metaphors are predicative rnetaphors : metaphors like (r87) have the conceptual form G(r) or G(r, r): (r8Z)
r? ThG r.l.tion BE is prcsum.bly pr€d;csriv. r.thcr rhan .n id€nrity r€htion. It is not clca. thst idcntity si.rem.nts can b. us€d atone to construcr met.phoru - it is morc natural ro ..y Th. p,otcstol is a (wh.r. thc ^s.ar; ind€finit€ ariicl€ m.k€s it cl€lr r'r a .sralD is r pr€dicat.) rh.n Thc ptoJcsot ir .srdrir. On thc orhcr hand, if rhc profcssor's dcpartment hrs alrcady b€.n lik.n€d to Russia in the r94os, end thc correspond.ncc is now b€ins speh out, th. f.tter s€€hs quite natural: cf. Th. d.ro.tddt ;t tih. Rutt;a i. th. t94or, a"d th. p.okssol ri Stdrrr. Incid€nt.lly, .lrhoush w€ folloq Mitter's not.tion, on€ should notc that F and c are h€r€ Dr€dicstc oa,iabt.s. nol pr€dicete .orrrar.r, in a s€cond-ord€r p'.dicat€ togic lnd should property be distinsuishcd, c.s. by (;reel capiral letr€rs (s.e Atlwood, Andersson & Dahl. r 9 7 ? : ta 8 tr ) .
G(r)+) lF ly (SIMILAR (F(r)' (G(r))) i.e.metaphorsofthe rGrkind (i.e.with metaphoricalpredicstes) are interpreted as: 'There is a property F and an entity y such that x Fing is like Y Ging'
The interpreter here has to reconstruct another pr€dicate and another entity so that once again two propositions may be found to be compared. Thus for ( I87) the rule will produce a simile like ( I89) and thus more specificallysomething like (I9o): (r8q) (r9o)
Mrs Gandhi is doing something which is like something steamingahead Mrs Gandhi's progtessiD the electionsis like s ship steaminS ahead
The third kind of metaphors are aentential rnetaphors: some metaphors, like B's remark in (r9r), are not categorically false (in the way in which Iago cannot really be an eel, or Mrs Gandhi cannot really steam ahead); rather they are identified by being brcleoant to the surrounding discourse when literally construed: (r9r)
A: Whst kind of mood did you find the boss in ? B: The lion roared
Here a sentenceof the conceptualform G(y) is interpretedutilizing the followingrule: (rcz)
G(r) +) lF 3r (SIMILAR (F(r), G(r)))
i.e. given an irrelevant proposition, CJ interpret it as: 'There is another property F and another entity r such that the proposition'l Fs'is similar to 'y Gs' (and 'r Fs'r's relevant to the discourse)'
Mrs Gandhi steamedahead
To understand them the recipient must construct a corresponding complex simile in accordance with the followins rule:
i52
(r88)
Thus for (r9I)B we have the interpretation (I93), and thus more specifically in the context, (r94): (r93) (rc+)
The tion's roaring is like something doing something The lion's roaring is like the boss displayinS anget
On this general scheme there are thus three rules for converting metaphors into simile form: (186), (r88) and (r9z). The central problem then becomes how each of the unhnouns'in each formula ls given a value: for example, how does the interpteter move from the vacuous ( r 89) to the specific ( r 9o), and similarly from (r 93) to ( r 94) ? Miller has little to offer here, although he notes that a partial solution can be given for metaphors like (18?): given a predicate like steam r 53
Conversa tional imp lica tur e ahead applied metaphorically, one reconstructs the missing argument by going to the most general type of argument the predi"ut" c-un t"t (and thus to sijp rather than, say, Mdrs issippipaddlc ;tcamer). That still" leavesa missing predicate unresolved, and the other kinds ofmetapnor entirely unexplained. But obtaining a specific interpretation for a metaphor ri the heart of the problem, so most of the mysteries still remain, However Miller's theory is not, in the version he puts forward, a scmantic theory of metaphor, which is what we are here concerned with. It might though form the basisofone. Suppose now (in contrasr to Miller) we take the strong line that the comparison theory is a syntactico-semantic theory of metaphor: we would then identify (I85) as the underlying syntacticstructure of( tg4), deriving the latter from the former by the elliptical deletion of /rAe.We would t-henclarm that the normal semantic processes involved in the interpretation of (r85) are involved directly in the interpretation of (rg4). An initialproblem for this position is that not every metaphor can . be simply derived from a simile by deletion of the predicate of similarity (is lihe, is similat to, etc.). For example: (I95) The government is going the wrong way down a oDe-way street Here to derive the related simile we need to reconstruct much more than a deleted lihe or as if (no well-formed sentence results from the rnsertion of such items) - namely we need a structure like the output of Miller's rule (r88), which specifiesan additional implicit predicate and implicit argument of the sort indicated by italicization below, (196) The government is pursuingpo!;cieslike a car going the wrong way down a one-way street Sinceit seemsunlikely that any motivated syntactic machinery could ever derive (r95) from (rq6), let us retreat to a weaker position: whatever the syntactic relation between the pairs (rg4) and (rg5), or (r95) and (196), the 6rst sentence in each pair has the setianuc represenratiotmade most explicit in the second. The claim is therefore that the members of such pairs share semantic representations. The question now is whether such a view is tenable, and if so whether rt is at all enlightening. The crucial issue here is how we are to lnterpret lihe ot the underlying concept SIMILAR in, for example, (r-g8). No* authors are agreed that there is a contrast between -"nv combaisons and 1 54
3.2 Reaisiotrs'problems and applications (from Ortony' sirziles.Thus (rg7) is a comparison' (r98) a simile r979b: I 9l ) : (r97) (rs8)
are like dictionaries Encylopaedias are like gold mines Encyclopaedias
The first is true, the second,arguably, is literally false;the first admits of empirical verification, the second, arguably, does not (at least when read as a simile); the 6rst draws attention to certain key attributes shared by both kinds of volumes (e.g' they are both reference books, and both alphabetically organized), the second to less salient and very abstract shared attributes (e.g. value, labyrinthine nature, etc.)' In short, the similarity in (rq7) is a literal one, the similarity in (t98) is fguratioe. And of course it is not to comparisons like (r97) that metaphor is closely related, but to similes like (t98). Thus we see immediately that if we relate (r98) to the metaphor (t99), we are no more clear about how (r98) is actually interpreted than we are about how metaphors like (I99) are understood. (tSq)
are gold mines Encyclopaedias
To interp.et both (r98) and (r 99) we seem to have to infer some analogy of the sort; (zoo)
where the italicized terms are implicit. And even then we have only pushed the problem back a step, for how we understand that analogy is still mysterious. \[e therefore appeat to have gained little or nothing by considering that the semantic representation ofmetaphors should be identical to the representations of the corresponding similes. Even if there were some advantage in the claim, it is far from clear that it is actually tenable. Searle (r979a), for example, produces a number of difficulties for the view. First, take Miller's rules (t86), (r 88) and ( r9z): these assert the existence of the objects or relations mentioned or implicit, but there is in fact no such requirement on successfulmetaphor, as (zor) illustrates: (2or)
The Presidentis e Martian
Secondly, there are some metaphors that do not seem to be based on similarity: Searleinstances(z02) and notes that when it is converted
C onoer sa t ionaI imp licatul e
.7,2 Revisions,problems and applications
to simile form as in (zo3) the metaphor is stit quite unreduced, residing now in the terrn coldness. (2o2) (2o3)
Sally is a block of ice Sallyhasan emotionalmakeupsimilar to thecoldness ofa block of ice
irl concludes Searte, simply zo relation of similarity between Tl:." and a block of ice, or indeed unemotional natures and coldness flllr (literally construed).Thirdly, it is not ";;;:;;;;"r,. produce paraphrases "1""r,;";,1; that are intuitively ;;r;;:, :,1 *111on"^ all compare, for example, the foltowing: ", l."n! (?oS)
The interviewer hammered the senator What the interviewet did to the *"" like someone hammering a nail ".rr"ro.
There are enough difficulties then with any view that claims that metaphors are syntacticallyor semantically (or both) implicit simlles tornake that theoretical path qurte unattractlve. We have found substanlial problems for both of the two main semantic approach€s to metaphor, and it is reasonable to see wh"r a pragmattc apj)roach to metaphor has to ofler in contrast. e p."g-"ti" approach will be based on thr
conten t orutterances *' L;,; ;"Tli:jt
;:il":n#i""_'"ilij
rnterpretation; rather the semantics willjust provide a ch"."",".ir"',-n of the literal meaning or conventional involved, and. from this, together with "";,".,;a;;';;;;rr"" details ,f ,f," pmgmatics will have to "."1",.i1',n" Drovide ,h" ,",*""","1,"". been many obJ."tro.," to -.t"pho.i."l a move of this so.t on the I!"t",n1t" grounds that a line is drawn between .literal , ,fig.r."ti*, ,l""g." of linguistic expressions,and ".rd that consequ.",l, ;;';;d;.. *tr:1*"s
ll:l]I brzarre or
of tanguage n,,atl"_".ru."i,"'u;;;"
,;;;"*
difrerent ftom the rest.of langua". *"";. il;";;";"r, milnlaced: all that is being suggested is that ti.re f"lf rn"..i"" 1re most
of thesentences weutteris b;
of labour between a semantic c(
""p,"."a iv " ,".i;;ili;""
"f
:'jT,.l-ll":"i;;,;;;;";"#;:ili:il*"TTli:",ffi .I: t:1,u1. ir, but merely to place it firmly among ,h. ;;;;;"..
"t
of ranguage th"t *" r,"u"a"r"'";r;;;;;;;r, il:'i::tU:'*".0'"ages As an initial step we may revert to r56
Grice,s suggestion,noted in
3. r,
that metaphors are exploitations or floutings ofthe maxim of Quality' However we have already come far enough to see that this is not always true - Miller's sentential metaphors are not necessarily false' and are not categorial falsehoodslike (r8+) and the other sorts of examples Grice had in mind. Thus (r8z) could be true and metaphorical at the same time, as we indicated, and similarly (zo6) could be both literally true and metaphorical, if said of a place where it was both the casethat Freud lived there and also the casethat his theories were kept alive there after his death: (2c,6)
Freud lived here
So we shall have to say rather that metaphors taken literally either violate the maxim of Quality or are conversationally inadequate in other ways, especially with reference to the maxim of Relevance (cf(rgr) above; and see Sperber & Wilson, fonhcoming). A second problem with Grice's suggestion that then immediately emergesis that such a characterization ofitselfoffers little insight into the nature of metaphor. All it does is offer us a partial criterion for the recognition of metaphor - only partial becauseall lhe other kinds of implicature due to maxim exploitation (e.g. rhetorical questions, understatements. etc.) share the same property of being generated by an overt flouting of a conversational maxim - and how we get from tbe rccognitiott to the intel/retatioz remains entirely unclear. Indeed it may be helpful to reformulate Grice's general account of how an implicature is worked out, in terms of a two stage process (where speaker S says p to addressee H and thereby implicates q); (2o7)
Stage t: locating a triggel i.e. identifying the need for inference There are two kinds of triggers: (a) In sayingthat p S hasgenerallyobsetvedthe maxims, but p is neverthelessconversationally inadequate in some degree,requiringthat p be 'amplified' or 'repaired' with the additionalassumPtionq (b) ln saying that p, S has flouted the maxims, and whatever he meanshe cannot mean pi to preservethe Co_oPerative Principle, S must substitute some proposition g fo. p St agez: iaJet r ingq ln the caseof(a), H can usc the reckoning involved in standard impticatures,as, e.g.,in (rz5). ln the caseof (b), H must (i) determine what kind of trope p is, (ii) apply the reasoning characteristicof that ttope, (iii) selectamong competing values
appl;cationt .1 2 Reaisions,proble'ns atd
Conoc r sa riona I i mpI i cat ur e for g on the basisoftheir conversationaladequacyvis,ir-vis t6s maxims What the reformulation makes clear is that Grice's account of metaphor only takes us as far as stagi r (although the maxims play a role in tbe final stage of stage z). What is further required is an account of(i) how metaphors are distinguished from other tropes, and crucially (ii) how, once recognized, they are interpreted. Searle ( r g79a; has here, within this sort of framework, offered some sugges;ions, especially for problem (ii). He suggests that once a conversational inadequacy is recognized, an utterance is matched to a series of plagmatrc construal rules or principles of interpretation (and presumably the best match selected as the speaker's intended message). Thus given (zo8) and one of the rules for metaphoric interpretation in (zo9), the recipient may derive (zro): (2o8) (zog)
(2ro)
Sam is a giant Given an utterance of the fotm r is F where this €nrails ., rs G' and G is a salicnt feature of things that are F, then interpret the utteranceas ..t is G' Sam is big
Searle lists seven such principles, of which the searchfor a relation of similarity is only one, which can be stated roughly as follows: (zr r)
Given an utterance U of the form .r r.s.F look for some G or H which is a salientpropertyof F things;then,ifsuch is found, rDterpretU as,.t is G', rejectingthe interpretation.,t is H, if H is lessobviously predicable of r
This is intended to handle examples like (rZz) and (rg4). However, even if we grant that many kinds ofmetaphor have nothins to do with relationsof similarity (and that may be as much a matr., o] d.6r,i,i,r., as of fact), (z r r ) tells us precious little about what is, at the very leasr, a centralkind ofmetaphor. Moreover, it leavesobscurethe motivation for, and the expressive power of, metaphors. More concrete suggestions for a pragmatic theory of metaphor simply do not, at the time of writing, exist. Sperber & Wilson (forthcoming), experiencing the same sort of difficulties with other 6gures of speech,conclude that the theory of implicature does little to explain how such utterances are decoded, and indeed that tbe problems lie largely beyond pragmatics in an essentially psychological theory of rhetoric. This is, however, to undervalue the role thai the !5 8
of tropes' and in the 6axims play in the location and recognition I t may be conceded' context' to the ,"i"",io., of irr,".pretations relevant produce oi cannot alone though, that the theory of implicature with respect predictsuchinterpretations.One importantconsideration pragmatic a ask of to to m.t"pho. is that it is, perhaps, too much of what is clearly a ,t.or" th", it should actually give us an account psychological capacity that operates in f"rf"itly gener"l and crucial think anologically' lruny dom"irr" of numan life, namely the ability to but also to Such an ability is basic not only to language usage the construction of model-building of all sorts, from map-making to frozen theories(seee.g. Black, r9?9; Kuhn, I979)' and metaphors' of this the impingement as of thought best perhaps and unfrozen, are such Taking language' natural of pragmatics the on sort of reasoning could that metaphor on literature existing in the a view, there is much example' be drawn upon to give an account of metaphor' Crucial, for is the metaphor in is involved what which seems to be the way in the allowing into another, domain mapping of one whole cognitive & Lakoff as For example, tia;ing out of multiple correspondences' fields conceptual or domains two Johnson (lg8o) have pointed out, productively like politics and @ar, once put into correspondence' the sort:23 of alive' produce att thos€ familiar metaphors, dead and The Conservativesrouted the Labour Party at the elections' and Labour has been in retreat ever since Under Mrs Gandhi's generalship,the forcesof the Congress Party were rapidly marshalledfor a spirited counter-attackon the Aanksof the disorderly rabble that constitut€d the Janats faction
(zrz) (zrl)
Or, consider the way in which the domains of the future and the weather are often superimposed as ln: of continued Britain'seconomy,apartfrom thesunnyprospects the future as ever; as bleak is oil6elds' Sea finds in the North of education and the arts is clouded, and only the outlook for the electronicsindustry is bright
(2rd
It thus happens, as Black (1962, t979) has argued, that a single metaphor reverberates through two entire concePtual fields' The ,,veaknessof any paraphrase of a metaphor is much more than any I
For .n intcrcstina tnd invotv.d cortesPondenc€of this sort bct\&c€n kinds of pcoplc rnd spcciesof snimal, 3.. L.ach' 1964
r 59
C om)elsat iona I irn| Ii ca t ur e mere omission of the literal semantic content of the term used metaphorically (pace Searle, rg79a: rz3); such a paraphraseis talk within a single domain, while a metaphor links two domains rn potentially elaborate parallelisms of indefinite depth. Sperber e Wilson (forthcoming), argue that the interpretations of tropes are fundamentally aoz-propositional, and one way ofconstruing this claim is precisely in terms of such domain correspondence. The correspondence theory helps explain why good metaphors usually substitute'concrete' terms for (metaphorically implied) . abstract' ones - as made clear by a comparison of the relative successof the following two metaphors: (2rS) (z16\
Love is a flame A flame is love
For if a metaphor is like a model, or a map, or an analogue,of a domain, then just like models, maps and analoguesin general,if they are to be useful and successful, metaphors had better be simpler, idealized, more easily grasped than the complex domains that thcy model. The correspondencetheory also helps to explain the basisfor other failed metaphors. For example, Morgan (r979) points out that Miller's simile schemafor nominal metaphors should allow (zr7) to be used as a metaphor just in case my father (who is not calleo Herbert) is a machinist, to convey that Herbert is also a machinist:zi (2r7)
Herbert is my father
The account would proceed in terms of the failure of the attemDted metaphor to set up any proper correspondencebetween the two domains ofwhich/a thers and mac hinistJare parts: notjust any domarn is a possiblemodel for any other. The correspondence theory of metaphors therefore has the virtue of accounting for various well-known properties of metaphors: the ' non-propositional' nature, or relativeindeterminacyofa metaphor's import, the tendency for the substitution of concrete for abstract terms, and the different degrees to which metaphors can be successful. Let us now, in summary, considerthe broad outlines ofa pragmatic !' It mi8hr bc arsued rhat (2r7) faits as r m€taphor becausr ir is sn idcntiry statemeni, and Miffer impficitly rul.d these oor. Rut H.,bert is a Joth./ or H.rbert n Jath.,U will not *ork e;ther.
' r 6o
3.2 Reaisions,problems and applicalions or account of metaphor. First, we need an account of how any trope maxims, non-literal use of language is recognized; and here Grice's or some reworking of them, may be expected to play a central role' Then we need to know how metaphors are distinguished from other tropes, and here the search for a possible corresponding domain, relevant to the conversation in hand, may be a crucial element; another heu.istic may be the absenceofall the features associatedwith other tropes like irony or understatement (e.g. ironies seem typically used to make criticisms)' Once recognized, the interpretation of metaphor must rely on features of our g€neral ability to reason analogically. lf we had an account of this very general cognitive ability, we might expect it to apply directly to the interpretation of linguistic expressions used metaphorically. It is possible, though there is no real evidence for it, that such processing would involve the conversion of metaphors into the complex simile form proposed by Miller. In any event it could be claimed that linguistic pragmatics alone should not be expected to provide such a general theory of analogy, without considerable help from psychological theory. If there is to be a division of labour the psychologists' task might be to provide the general theory of analogy, while the pragmaticists' job should be to locate the kinds of utterances that are subject to such interpretation, provide an account of how they are recognized and constructed, and of the conditions under which they are used. ln addition we would require an account of the way in which contexts constrain the interpretive search for correspondences, as the following examplessuggest: (zr8) (zrs)
A: B: A: B:
Oh what a beautifulhouse Yes, my wife's the curator Oh what a dingy old office Yes, Bill's the curator
ln short, just as the theory of implicature itself reflects the impingement ofgeneral propertiesofco-operative interaction (not in any way specific to language behaviour) on language structure and use, so a theory of metaphor will crucially involve the impingement of a vety general cognitive ability, the capacity to reason analogically, on language structure and use. Just as we may look to empirical studies ofinteraction to refine our understanding of implicature and pragmatlc inference, so we may look to psychological studies of analogical reasoning (including Artificial Intelligence theories of pattern lor
Conoerca tiona I i rnplic a tur e matching and extraction) to provide the basic understanding q1 metaphorical processing that we currently lack, In both casesp;ag_ matics is centrally concerned with the interaction betw".n liagui",r" and an essentiallyindependent domain of human " "*p..i.rr".l-' Imtlicaturc 3.2.6 and language ,tructure The theory of conversational implicature is a theory of language 4Jc; nevertheless it can be sho*r, to n"u" implications for the study of language ,t/uctu/e, that "o.r"ia"rlUt" is to say for language viewed as a self-contained system of rules. To t-tii" ,", of course, to show that there are interesting "ho* ,.l"tion" b"tro".n structure and function of a sort that many current theories of grammar do not envisage, or at least consider beyond the purview qf linguistic theory. It is fairly simple to show that the linguistic description of morphemes and lexical items must at times refer to the notion of conversationalimplicature (or at leastto something like it). Consider for example the English djscourse particles uell, ih, oh, ,o, ony.,uy, actually, still, ajtet all, and the like: these might be a.*.;f,J u" 'maxim hedges' that indicate for recipientsjust how the utterance so prefaced matches up to co-operative expectations
A: Where are my glasses? B: Well, they're not herc
(there are in fact alternative treatments of wel! either in terms of relevance-hedging(see Brockway, rggr) or in terms of di";;;;.structural notions (see e.g, Owen, rggo: 6g_7g, ,9Ar; Uut these att refer to.conversational expectations, ho*e'e.'"xp.-es".al. Si-iL.ir, a termlike anyway could be claimed to be a relevance-he;;"1;;;i;;", some usages,in that it seems to imply that an utter"r.,"" O.""fu"J *i,t, .:1""T, to the.proceedings rn some more direct way than an i:,j rmmedlately preceding utterance(Brockway, rggr; Owen, rggz), as illustrated below: (zzr) A: Oh I thought it was r62
sood B: Anyway, can we get Lack to rhe oornr?
.1.2 Revisions,ptoblems and applications can be given using the concepts lAgain it may be that a better analysis 6 - but the point remains see Chapter analysis of conversational requires referenceto lexical items of cettain valid: the description ofsucb items is no shortage There inference.) modes ofconversational you hnout tight, nout, all the way, in any language - one could add by other (see rg7z, t973\' and also James, to the above list for English Longacre, them(seee.glanguagesare sometimes exceptionally rich in rgz6a; Brown & Levinson, 1978: I5lff). So we may take it as clear that the metalanguage for the description of the lexicon of a natural language must make reference to conversational function, and one way to formulate such functions is in terms of implicature. Another connection between conversational implicature and the lexicon is of more theoretical interest. Conversational implicature can be shown to provide systematic constraints on what is a possiblelexicol irem in a natural language (see especially Horn, r97z).30 The basic constraint imposed is roughly as follows: bzz\
cooversational Ifthe useof a lexicalitem tocarriesa generalized implicature l, the^ ceterisparibusthere will be no lexical item r that directly encodesI
In essencethis is a redundancy constraint: if a concept is generally implicated by an existing term in a language, that concept will not be directly lexicalized.Considerfor examplethe lexicalizedincorporation of negatives in English as in zoze, neoer,nol, impossible,etc. There is in fact a systematic paradigm of possible (realized) and impossible (unrealized) incorporations of the negative: (24\
Negatite Phrote not possible not necessary
Lcrical incorPotation impossible *innecessary
nol sorne not all
none rnall
not not not not
sometimes always or and
*nalways nor rnand
Now observe that the following are scalesin the senseof ( r r7) above: '0 We shsll here Sloss ov€r considcr.bl. dimcultics conccrnina thc d.fioition of the concept /.r'lral r'1.'r (as oppos€d to noQh.nc, crc., rh.r *ould nc€d to be .la.i6ed to mak€ .hc followins s.oeraliz.tiobs cl..rly tcstebl..
r 63
C ofiversational ;mpl;cature (224)
J.z Rettisions,problems and applications
(necessary,possible) (all, some) (always,sometimes) (and, or)
Hence to use the item on the .ight of each scaleassertivelywill be to implicate that the stronger item does not apply _ i.e. to implicate ' n o t n e c e s s a ry ' ,' n o t a l l ' , .not al w ays' , ,not and,(by (rzr) above.1. But then by the constraint (z,22) they will not be l.*l"ulir.d, h.r,"" the paradigm in (zz3).rt Together with additional principles, G,;.iceanprinciples have been used by Gazdar & Pullum (1976) to glve an account of what rs, theoretically, a surprising economy in the lexicon, namely the very small set (two or three) of the crucial truth-functional connectr,res employed in natural languages,given the theoretically indefinite number that might exist. Thus, for example, i, U" predicted that no languagewill lexicalize ""r, "onnJ"r,iiy a truth function thut iut"" two sentencesbut yields a truth value that is determined solely by the truth or falsity of, say, the righthand conjunct. Th" r"u"o., i" of course that such a connective would rendet it" l"ft redundant - and hence it would force "orr.irrrr"t "l*oy" a consisten, U."""i, oJ ,fra maxim of Relevance. An interesting question is whether there are any pragmattc
The constraint appearsto work roughly as follows: supposewe have e sentencelike (zz8) which conversationallyimplicates (zzq); then one may replace the noun phrase a lo, of people with the indirect question yoa'l/ neeer guets how many people' which stands in an implicating relationship to that noun phrase, as in (23o): You'll neoet guesshou many PeoPleJohn invited to his party John invited a lot oI peoqleto his party John invited yol'll neoerguesshow many peopleto his party
(2281 (zzg) (4o)
(clearlythere are a number of additional constraints - seeG Lakoff, r974: 323r.So here we appearto have a syntacticprocessconstrained in a systematicway by conversationalimplicature.32 There are other candidates for constructions with implicatural constraints, including our familiar asymmetric conjunction, where two conjuncts must be ordered in the sequence in which the two events they report occurred if the maxim of Manner is not to be breached.ln addition, it has been noted that non-restrictive relatives are conversationallyconstrained by relevance:the embedded clause must be less relevant to the current conversationaltoPic than the matrix sentence(seeGazdar, l98oa). One may notc too that ironies, metaphors and rhetorical questions can acquire conventional indicators and structural correlates (Brown & Levinson, ry781 267ff). Thus Sadock (r974) notes that in English, rhetorical questionsthat presume a zo-answer permit the occurrence of negative polatity iterns, i.e. linguistic expressionsotherwise restricted to negative environments.A large number of possiblefurther casesare raisedby the analysis of irrditect speechacts as implicatures (as we shall see tn Chapter 5; see also G. Lakoff, r974; Ross, t975). A final and neglectedinteractionbetweenimplicature and language structure lies in the domain of lang\age change, lt is well known that metaphor and the other tropes are in part responsible for the significantsemanticshift that can take place in the meaning of words over time. Euphemisms, for example,begin as polite metaphors but soonacquirethe sensethey originally implicated Similar remarkscan be made about honorifics. Overstatement as in the English use of
::1::.,*":1".:"",::'"::i,:H;::":xl;l';: ;:,!t'+ff
Lakoff (r974) has drawn attention to synaactic (zz5), where one finds parts of one sentence within "-.fg"rl"'f,U. another: (2251 John invited you'll never guess no.o ,lon, peobleto you can,l imagixe uhat hind oJ a pany Lakoff notes that this is closely related to: (226) invited John a lot oJ people to a ueid
party
Note that not just any sentence fragment" oa"au. in the italicized ""., slot s : (227)
?John invited llarr.y used to hnos; hou many peopleto you didn, t tmagine uhat hind ol a pany
"
h
may,
in r.spons€,
w€ll-formed
'l An €xeprion mishr.rlpcar ro he uza...$ary, but the negativc prefix uzcan be roo produdiv. and non-asstmi,aring ro be comideied "9".9. l. le xa ca llyin co r p o r a r e d( sc eH orn, rqZu: zzl ).
be chimed
sentcnces,
and that
th.t thet
strinSs should
like (23o) are not be handled
in fact by a (so tar,
which is independcntly rcquircd non-cxisftnr) theor), of semi-seoa€.ce3, t o h a n d l e . o n v e rs a ri o n a l e l l i p s i s . l n t h . t c a s e mu . h o f t h e e n t i rc s y n t a c t i c thcory of machincr), of a llnguase will be duplicatcd in such a prqmatic * mi -s c n t c n c e s - s c c Mo rg a n , r9 7 3 .
!64 lD5
Conoelsational implic a tur e ftightfully, awfully, tenibly can induce new senses: thus the terrn staroe meant in Middle English just ,to die', but through uses parallel to (z3t) has of course come to mean ,suffer from 5evg1. hunger' in most dialectsof English (we have now to specify ,starve to death ' if that is what we mean; see Samuels, r 972: 53 from which these examplesare taken; seealso Ullman, r96z). (2 3 r)
Presupposition
I' m d y i n g to s e ey o u
Although the process is well documented, we do not know exactly how it works: is there a point at which implicaturessuddenly become conventionalsenses,or is there somegradual processofconventionalization (and if so, how does this accord with our concept of the lexicon)? In somelimited domains one seemsto be ableto find a series of stages in the linguistic change: e.g, from particularized to generalized conversational implicature, then to conventional implicature, in the caseof some conventionallyencoded honorifics rn Asian Ianguages(seeLevinson, t977: 47--60),not to mention second person polite pronouns in Indo-European languages(see Brown & Gilman, r96o, and referencestherein). Other questions arise: do the observable syntactic correlates of such semantic shifts (e.g. tne acquisition of a /o-complement for die in (z3r) above) foito* tr," creation of a new sense,or do they cause it ? We simply do not yet know much about the role of implicature in this process(but seeCote, r975; Brown & l,evinson, tg78- 263fr; Morgan, r97g for commenr and speculation).3s lnany caseit isclearthat implicature plays amajor role in language . change, triggering both syntactic and semantic changes. IndJed it seemsto be one of the single most important mechanisms whereby matters of language usage feed back into and aftect matters of languagestructure. It is thus a major route for functional pressures to leave their imprint on the struciure of a language. " This is nor ro deny fie €xistenceofa rich liter.rure on s.manric.hanee, b,,r ro sutatacsr thar the rheory of implicaturc may provide intc.estins re-rn&ly$s o f th is m a te r ia l.
r 66
+
Iniroduction In the previous Chapter we discussed conversational implicature as a spccial kind of pragmatic inference Such inferences cannot be thought of as semantic (i.e. as pertaining to the meanings of words, phrases and sentences)becausethey are based squarely on certain contextual assumptions concerning the co-operativeness of participants in a conversation, rather than being built into the iinguistic structure of the sentences that give rise to them' We turn in this Chapter to another kind of pragmatic inference, namely presupposition, that does seem at least to be based more closely on the actual linguistic structure of sentences; we shall conclude, however. that such inferences cannot be thought of as semantic in the narrow sense, because they are too sensitive to contextual factors in ways that this Chapter will be centrally concerned with' The reader should be warned of two things at the outset The first is that there is more literature on presupposition than on almost any other topic in pragmatics (excepting perhaps speech acts), and whil€ much of this is of a technical and complex kind, a great deal is also obsolete and sterile. The volume of work is in part accounted for by a long tradition of philosophical interest which, because it is much referred to in the linguistic literature, will be briefly reviewed in 4' t ' In addition presupposition was a focal area in linguistic theory during the period I969-76, because it raised substantial problems for almost all kinds of (generative) linguistic theories then available' As a consequenceof the large literature, the assiduousstudent will findjust about every pronouncement in this Chapter contradicted somewhete in the literature; if the views expressedhere seem partial, that is in part because they have the benefit of hindsight. Much that seemed confusing and mysterious has become clearer now that some baslc 4.o
r67
Pletupposition distinctions and frameworks have been established (but see Oh & Dinneen, r 979 for a lively compendium of divergent modern views). The second caveat concerns the distinction that has evolved between the ordinary usage of the word plesupposition iB technical usage within linguistics. The technical concepr ^nd accommodates only a small proportion of the usages associated with the ordinary language term, and the reader who hopes fora full explication of the latter within a single pragmatic concept is bound to 6nd lhe rather narrow range of phenomena discussed below disappointing. The following examples illustrate some ,ordinary' sen"", oith. t".that are rotdealt with within a theory of presupposition in pragmatics, although many of the cases have accounts within other branches of pragmatic theory:r ( r) (z) (3)
(+) (s) (6) Q)
Effects presuppose causes John wrote Harry a letter, presupposing he could read John said "Harry is ro competent", presupposing that we knew-Harry had fouled things up - in fact we jidn,t-know and so larled to realize that he was being ironic H-arry asked Bill to close the door, presupposrng rhat tsill had lelt rt open as usual: he hadn't so he threw a chair at Harry 'he Adolph addressed the butler as ,.sir", presupposing that was the host Sir Ansel himself The theory of evolution presupposesa vast trme_scale 'l-he article presupposes Chomsky,s theory of . .by Jackendoff nomrnalrzatrons
What these examples have in common is that they use the ordinary language notion of presupposition to describe any kind ofbackground assumption against which an action, theory, expression or utieran.e makes sense or is rational. In contrast, the technical sense of presupposition is restricted to certain pragmatic inferences or assumptions that seem at least to be built into linguistic expressions and..which-can be isolated using specific linguistic tests (especially, traditionally, constancy under negation, as will be discussed below r.
' F.or examr'|., (tt soutd be srven an cxptrc.rion in terms of rhe exploir.rron ot r conv.6.rrcnrlmdim (secChapr.r JJ; (a) in rerms ofrhr nor,on ofler,crr, .ordrror emptoyrd wirhin rhc rh.ory of sp€ech .cts (Chrprer 5); .n; {s) ,; tc.ms o[ thc norion of.otu.nt;o"ol ingticatur. (CMpter j).
r68
4- t flistodcal
baehground
Historicalbachground Once again concern with this topic in pragmatics originates in philosophy, speci6cally debates about the nature of debates with and referring expressions. Such problems lie at the heart reference of logical theory and arise from consideration of how referring expressionsin natural language should be translated intothe restricted 4.t
logical languages. The first philosopher in recent times to wrestle with such problems was Frege, the architect of modcrn logic. ln elliptical discussion that allows considerable freedom of interpretation, he raised many of the issues that were later to become central to discussions of presupposition. For example, he said: If anything isassertedthereisalwaysanobviouspresuppositiont that the simple or compound Proper names used have a reference. lf one therefore asseits 'Kepler died in misery" there is a presupposition that the name 'Kepler' designates something.(Frege, r89z (t952: 69)) And he went on immediately to say that it is not part of th€ meaning of Keplet died in miseTythat'Kepler designates something'; if it was then Keptet died in n r'serywould have the logical form ' Kepler died in misery & Kepler designates something', and thus the sentence Keplet did not die ir misery would be equivalent to 'KePler did not die in misery or the name Kepler has no reference'.s That he felt would be absurd, He adds: That the name 'Kepler' designatessomething is just as much a presupposition of the assertion'Kepler died in misery', as for the contrary [i.e.negative]assertion.(ibid.) Similarly he considers the special status of the meaning of temporal clauses: 'After the sepaiation of Schleswig-Holstein from Denmark, Prussia and Austria quarrelled.' ,., It is surely sufhciently clear that the sense is not to be taken as having as a part the thought that Schleswig-Holstein was once separated from Denmark, but that this is the necessary presupposition in order for the expression 'After the separation of Schleswig-Holsrein from Denmark'to have any reference at all. (r892 (r9S2: ?r)) ' Thc c..msn ie'm rhat Fregc uscd $as Vola1/tt ,zung. ' This followsfrom the cquiveleoccof - (t & ?) to - t v - ?, wh€E, it 'Keple!
d i . d i n mi s e ry ' . n d
9 i s ' Th e
n . me K € p l e r re f e rs ' .
!69
Pr esuppositiotr A Chinaman, he goes on, ignorant of the historical facts, will take our sentence... to be neither true nor false but will deny it to have any reference, th. g."uid' oi'"i"""".. , "n teference for its subordinate clause. Th"is apparentlydeterminea time. (ibid.) "i""".-*""iJ'""," Frege thus sketches a theory of presupposition with the following propositions:
4. r Hisro/ical bachground (8) above, in logical form they are not logical subjects at all but correspond instead to conjunctions of propositions. So instead of translating The F is G into the simple subject-predicate formula G(The F), he held it should be decomposed into the conjunction of the following three assertions: (q)
(i)
Referring phrases and temporal clauses (for example) _-. carry presuppositionsto the effectthat they do in fact refer (ii) A sentenceand its negatrvecounterpart sharethe sam€s€r of presuppositions (iii) In order for an assertion(ashe pur in the Kepler case)or a sentence(as he put in the Schleswig_Holsiein case)to be either true or false, its presupposition"rn,.r"i'1"'i.'tr. o. satisfied As is clearfrom (iii), Fregeheld more than one view ofpresupposition_ sometimes he speaks of uses of sentences (assertions) fruurrrg presuppositions, sometimes of I ""
suppositions, andelsewhere ."'l::',""? j:1T.t;::.:'rlm:
i::suppositions (see Atlas, r975a): ,,when .ue ,th" tloonl]..'*" presupposea reference" (rg9z (r952: ""y 6r)). Later these distinctions came to have importance. But it is clear that we have here in;;;.yo the parametersthat have guided much of the subsequentai"",l""ion of presupposition. Now Russell, writing in r9o5, thought that Frege,s views were . srmpry wrong. Struggling with the same problems in the theory of reference, he came to quite different conclusions. One problem was how to account for the fact that sentences that lacked proper referenrs, like (8), coutd be meaningful. (8)
The King of Franceis wrse
Fr_egehad an answer provided by his distinction between senseand reference: such sentences retain their o. .,,."rrirrg i;,;., ""r,"" lack referents and thus fail to ha! ";;;
thatFrese,s views red; ;;;;;,:J'::: Tl'l;lJ,i"Ll1l1l*,f lll
well-known theory ofdescriptions, which foi fo.ty_fi,r. y"u." *", to dominatesuchinquiries.He heldthat defintteaescrip,ro"'"lii.io" soCdsohavenothinglike the simplelogl"ut ,.".,"tuiionii"i imagine.Whereasthey occur in natural "r" -,an, languages ", ""bj""i":';;i" t70
There is someentity r, such that: (a) .r has property F (b) there is no other €ntity y which is distinct from ,r and has property F (c) r has property G
Thus the logical form of (8) is not ( Io) but rather the complex (t r) (where we will let ' King' stand for Kitg oJ Ftance): (,o) (rr,,
Wise(the King) 3.r (Kine(r) & - ly ((y * x) & King(y)) & Wise(r)) (Paraphrasableas 'There is a King of France and there's no one else who's King of France and he is wise')
Russell was able to show that this analysis handled the difficulties that aroseon other views. For example,on this account (8) is meaningful becauseit is simply false; it is an assertion that, by virtue of the Russellian expansion of the phrase The King oJ France, also asserts the existenceof that individual (by (9) above). One particular advantage that Russell saw in his analysis was that it allowed what we today call scope-arnbiguities, Thus the negative sentence: (ra)
The King of Franceis not wise
can be taken two ways: either it is presumed that there is a King of France and it is assertedthat he is non-wise, or (less usually) what is denied is that it is true that there is both a King of France and that he is wise. The latter reading is the only one that can be involved in the following sentence: (r3,
The King of France is not wise - because there is no such person
Russell's formula in (r r) allows (at least) two slots for negation to capture this ambiguity: negation either occurs with wide scope as in (r4) or with narrow scope as in (r5) below: (r4)
(Kins(r) & - (lr - 1y ((y * r) & King(y)) & Wise (r))) (Paraphrasable as 'It is not the casethat: (a) there'6a King of
Presupposition
(Is)
q. t Histotical backgtouad
France,and (b) there'sno one elsewho,s King, and (c) he,s wise,) 3.t (King(.t) & ((y * r) & King(y)) & wise(f,)) - ly.There (Paraphrasable as is a King of France and tirere,sno one elsewho's King of France,anJ the King of Franceis not wise')
The former wide-scopenegation allows one to use (t2) to deny that the King of Franceexists,while the latter narrow-scope negatio; o;ly denies that the predicate applies to him. Russell's analysis remained largely unchallenged until Strawson ( I g5o) proposeda quire different approach. Many ofthe puzzlesarise, argued Strawson, from a failure to distinguish sentences f.om ar"s of sentences to make, for example, statements that are true or falsc, Russell's conflation of the distinction led him to think that because (8) is significant, and has a clear meaning, it must be either true or fafse. But seztencesaren't true or false only stalements ; are. Hence the statement of (8) may well have been true in A.D. r67o and false in A.D. r77o, but in r97o the statement cannot sensibly be said to be either true or false: due to the non-existenceof a King of F.rancein r97o, the question of its truth or falsity does not even-arise. Strawson was therefore led to claim that there is a special kind of relationship between (8) and (r6): (r6)
There is a present King of France
namely, that ( r 6) is a precondition for (g) beingjudgable as either true or false. He called this relation presupposition, and he held that it was a special species of (what would now be called) pragmatic inference, distinct from logical implication or.r,,"it-".,,, u which derivesfrom conventionsabout the use of referring;.;;;;"."-p"",." These conventions,he held, are considerably more 6o_-of"* ,fr"., be captured by the ,.jejune existential analysis/l "r" t"" f," ,".rn"a Russell's theory - Srrawson (r952: rg7)), and are bound uo witfr conventions about what it is t(
rormarry heherd that; ",;;;i
fi:::;:.1'""":1fi*:ff
is a precondition of the tiuth or falsiry of A lStrawson ,95", ,7'51. One consequenceof Strawson's disagreement *1,f, nr"""fi,'i", directly addressed,is that, in rejecting the complex togl""t io.underlying definite descriptions, he has lost a m""n" :;;g negative sentenceslike (r "f 3), where the presuppositions the'mselvcs r72
"H.;
are cancelled.For normally, on Strawson's view (as on Frege's), a negative sentence, when uttered, will pteserve its presuppositions' Russell could point to the two scopes or slots for negation provided by his complex logical forms. Strawson, had he faced up to this difFculty, would have had to claim that the word tto, is ambiguous: on one reading or sense it preserves presuppositions, on another it includespresuppositionswithin its scopeand is thus compatible with denying them. What he actually contended, however, was that there was only one reading of ( r z), namely that in ( l5) where the predicate is negated, which of course leavesthe denial ofpresuppositions in ( t 3) quite unexplained. Strawson and Frege thus held very similat views in opposition to Russell's approach to definite descriptions. Presuppositional theories ofcourse hav€ one signal attraction: they seem much more in line with our direct linguistic intuitions that, for example, when we utter (8) there is a foreground assertion, namely that a particular individual is wise; the implication that that individual exists is somehow a background assumption against which the assertion makes sense. Certainly Russcll had no account of this. By the time linguists became interested in the concept of presupposition(mostly after about r969), a set of important distinctions and alternative approaches were thus well established in the philosophical literature. Foremost among these were: (i)
the distinction between logical implication or entailment and presupposition (in the work of Frege and especially Strawson) (ii) the contrast between assertion and presupposition (again, in the work of Frege and Strawson) (iii) the issue ofwhether it was proper to think ofpresupposition as a relation betw€en Jear?ttrJ (as Frege sometimes did), between statemenlt (as Strawson held) or between Jt?aAtu on the one hand and assumptions on the other (as Frege did on othet occasions) (iv) the issue of whether the apparent ambiguity of negation sense and a pte_ between a presupposition-denying supposition-preserving sense is to be thought of as alcope distinction (a structural ambiguity) or a /a.rical ambiguityr (v) the possibility that apparently background assumptions, presuppositions, could in fact be viewed as assertions or ' This wasnot .ctu.lly rn cxplicitct€m€n.in Philolophicaldiscu.sion,but it is rn issueimplicitly rei*d by Srrs$son's.tt.ck on Russcll'sviews.
r73
Plesuppositiofl
4.r Histotical baehground entailm€nts, on a Dar with the rest ofa seDtence,smearri (Russell's ng "pp.o".ht
*:lain rangeof presuppositionatphenomena l:j.|-ol:t:":," had been adducedin thephilosophical literrrture,r_ncluding the presuppositions of: (a)
"
singular terms. e..
(b) quantifiednou" (c) (d)
ln order to achieve such a programme' it was necessary to make some subtle but important changesin Strawson's view. Strawson's soncept of presupposition can be stated as follows: (r8)
d".":'ifl".n".' propernames
temporal clauses (r example quoted above) change-of-stat" r.rl-'.t^lt"St': Bertrcnd has sbpped beating his tttJe can be ! Bertrand hadb-een :'i'.1' "r"i-.lt-l u*ti", 1',f**
notionof presupposition cameto the attentionof IT'l^1,._:^**.'r rngulsts, tt seemedto openuD a
(r9)
rn panicular, namely entail..'""_. fogi."l.o;***J:: ;ratron r-nrs retatron can be defined in terms of valid r;;;,;;;",:. alternatively in terms of the
,
(,""-"nti.uiryr. u"'ilt; ;,::.'il:T" "j":::ilffl,JHI
oehnable as follows:
A semantkally entarTsB (written A Jl_B) iff every situation that B ttue (or: in air wortds in which A is true, ^"*s f;l:;*i*.,
Sucha relationis basicto semar onJvdoes-it.capture rogical truths,but all the o,r.,.. ".".,.,rrull'^l^f-lt possibilityopenedup by thi notronof presupposition wasthat ,,". we o. able to add a new and di"ti"", *;;;;;; lf"nl ,",",a" *" t n v e n to ryo f th e w e l l -k n o w n
contradiction) """b"di..";i;';:;J:i::::i:':ilJ'H:T:::::ffi
o n es In l n .t^;^' " j ' :" doins so we would -_- ,,:'be " ^ .,,^ bringrng togi"a J natural languages"rnunti"" Thi" programme, -oa"t"--o;;t;:;;;: the cr"",ion of" .r"Jtn*"ll-defined semanticrelation that would play a role withi., for-"1 ",n' wrth pragmatic theories of presupposrtron below).
(2o)
cn.a,,.mt.nd roaic.rcons.quenc., but ro8,car,..-,""d,"
;; ;il:i,..,
A sentence A semantically presupposes a sentence B ifr:
(a) A ll- B ( b) - All- B The important and significant difference between (r8), on the one hand, and ( I9) or (zo), on the other, is that the first, Strawson'sview, is a relation between statements(i.e. particular uses of sentences), whereas the second (semantic) view is a relation between sentences. It is clear that Strawson would not have approved of the shift.6 Now it becomes rapidly clear that the definition of semantrc presupposition in (zo) requires some fundamental changes in the kind of logic that can be used to model natural language semantics. To see this, consider the following argument, based on classical logical assumptions: (zr)
:ll1o".",,1*",;J;;;;;";;.#:jl#ll;LlilJil,:;:,:::J: ';i:;**":*i:,,ff:r1,";:i:: j:*:,,:;t*:I;J:":ij.::;
A sentence A semantically presupposes another sentence B ifF: (a) in all situations where A is true, B is true (b) in all situations where A is false, B is true
or equivalently, given our definition of entailment in ( I7) above (and assuming a definition of negation where if a sentence is neither true nor false, its negation is also neither true nor false):
;":"";.:;li'il;T::fl::'lj:X;,H: 11,,,^.i1r_''";1;;1;ffi
r74
(a) if A is true, then B is true (b) if A is false, then B is true
"i:^1"^l"i': simplest view of semantic presupposition on the other hand ;"1r{":Jiiiff.f:,?;ffiL::The "'ffi;';;:;iJ;::""., would be based on the following definition:
f,l':;:li'""'
( rt)
A statement A presupposes enother statement B iff:
B r. A presupposes z. Therefore, by definirion (zo), A entails B and - A entails B 3. (a) Every sentenceA has a negation - A (b) A is true or A is false (Bivalence) (c) A is true or A is true (Negation) 4. B must alwaysbe taue ' Thc 8cn.r.l thrust of Strrwson'r vicws, firmly in th. O{ord school of ordin.ry lansuos€ philosophy, rr. summcd up by thcclosing scntcnc. ofthc (r95o).niclc: " Neith.r Ar;s.otelian nor R'rsscllian rulcs 8ivc th. Gr.ct losic of iny €rprcrsion in ordinsry lansucsc: for ordinrry l.nsu.s€ hrs no .l.ct losic. " Sec lls C..n.r, r9?r
t7 5
Presu,position
1.2 The Phenornena:initial obsetoations
Suppose now A = The Kitg of France is bald, and B = Thete is o present King of Ftance. Then the conclusion of the argument aboeq (which is valid on classical assumptions) is that the sentence The King oJ Flance existsis a tautology, or always true. Since the whole point of such presuppositional theories is to deal with presupposirron failure and to explain the intuition that when their presuppositiong fail sentences are neither ttue nor false, some of the classical logical assumptionsmust be abandonedto avert conclusionsIike that of(2r). The simplest way to reconcile a definition of semantic presupposition like that in (zo) with the bullt of accepted logical apparatus, is ro abandon the assumption that there are only two truth values (the assumption of bivalence). Instead we can adopt three values, ,/ue, Jalse and neither-true-not-false (the latter for sentences whose Drc_ suppositionsare false),and make jusr the modi6cationsin the rest of the logical system that this change requires (notably, the abandoning of modus tollens, and bivalence),t It has been shown that perfectly well-behaved logics with three values can be constructed and it could be claimed that such logical systemsare (by virtue of their abilitv ro handle presuppositions) a notable advance in models of natural languagesemantics(seee.g. Keenan, r 97z). It is alsopossibleto .etain what is formally a two-valued system by allowing lruth-value gaps insteadofa third value, and this would now be the preferred method. However, such systemshave many ofthe samefotmal properties(e.g. the invalidity of modus tollens) and will prove just as inadequate as models of presuppositionfor the same reasonsthat we shall adduce againstthree-valued models, (Since students tend to find value-gao systemsharder to conceptualize,they are not discussedh".a _ b.,t """ Van Fraassen,r97r.) The intellectual moves made I
theorycalled at;oe sener
""-",,;:';;::i";::ilf:j",tljd;;t1:: workers in this theory were concerned to expand ana mod;fy iogicat models of semantics to accommodate as many of tle aistinJti"e pioperties of natural languageas possible. It thus becametheir aim to reducepragmatic phenomena to the orderly domain of semantics (see especially G. Lakoff, 1972, tg75), However it soon became apparent that there are some presupposition-like phenomena that don't bebave in quite the way that the concept 0""_ "f ""rnurr,i" 7 Mo&' to .n' L thc infeicnc€ from, An d e ' sso n& Da h t, 1 9 7 7: ror).
\1 6
r
q rnd _ q ro _ p (sce Altwmo,
noted that the use of the supposition requires. For example, Keenan (22) to presuppose that " the seems sentence oronotn t, iattna French to the speaker' or inferior socially child, lddr"""". is an animal, (r97I : 5I ): personallyintimate with the speaker" 'fu es Napoldon
(22)
obtains - it But suppose I use (zz) when none of these conditions nor false: true was neither said I what that to say would be strange and false Napoleon indeed is just addressee case the in it is true just truth same the (23) shares polite formal or otherwise, And the conditions: Vous 6tes Napol6on
(zt)
Thus the ' presuppositions ' concerning the relationship holding b€tween speaker and addressee, expressed by the use of tu ot vous, simply do not affect truth conditions. Keenan (I97r) therefore held that such examples form an independent and distinct class of pragmatic inferences which he called pragmatic presuppositions, which are best described as a relation between a speaker and the appropriatenessof a sentencein a context.s Other putative casesof presupposition that do not fit the definition of semantic presupposition soon emerged, caseswhere the inferences in question seem to be context-sensitivein a way that will occupy us below. Hence, for a while it was suggest€d that there ate two distinct presuppositions kindsof presuppositionin naturallanguages,semantic and pragmatic presuppositions, existing independently (see e.g. Keenan, rgTr). But from I973 onwards it became increasinglyclear that there were so many problems with the notion of semantic presupposition that a theory oflanguage (and specifically ofsemantics) would do better without it. The reasons for abandoning the notion of semantic presupposition rest 6rmly in the nature and properties ofthe phenomena when properly explored, a task to which we should now tufn. The phenomena: initial observations Frege's and Strawson's claim that presuppositions are preserved in negative sentencesor statements * a claim embodied in 4.2
that wc h.vc slr€sdv a.su€d that .his kind ot infe'e'c€ is in ' Notc, thoush, f.d an aspectof sochl d€ix is (scc 2 2.5) .ncod€d as. conv€nt;onal imPlic'ture (s ..3.2.3).
Pletuppotition Strawson's definition (t8) above - provides us with an initial operational test for identifying presuppositions. We can simply take 6 s€ntence, negate it, and see what inferences survive - i.e. are shareq by both the positive and the negative sentence. It should be noted that from now on we shall sometimes talk as if sentences are the objects that presuppose; this is a looseness adopted simply for purposes of exposition, and in fact it is a theory-relative matter as ro whether it is sentences or utterances (sentence-context pairs) that presuppose, as we shall see.r Let us start by taking the relatively simple sentencein (24): (24)
John managed to stop in rime
From this we can infer;
lzs) (26)
John stopped in time John tried to stop in time
Now take the negation of (24) (note that ,the negation ' here means the negation of the main verb or the topmost clause in a complex sentence): (27)
John didn't manageto stop in time
From this we caaror infer (25) - in fact the main point of the utterance could be to deny (25). Yet the inferenceto (26) is preservedand thus shared by both (24) and its negation (27). Thus on the basis of the negatron test (and the assumption of its sufficiency), (26) is a presupposition of both (24) and (27). Note that whenever (24) is true, (25) must be true, but that when (27) is true, (25) need not be true. So, (24) entails (2S), but (27) does not entail (2S), by the definition of entailment in (r7) above. Clearly, then, when we negate (24) to obtain (27), the entailments of (24) are no longer the entailments of(22). In short, negation alters a sentence,s entailments, but it leaves the presuppositions untouched. Thus (25) is an entailment of(24) which constitutesat leastpart (and it has been claimed, all)to of the truth conditions of (24), while (26) is a
.rz 8
. In th.lineui.tics lircre.ur., .t.ny r.r., rhc rh;rd possibt. norion of. soe.ker prcsupposina he! pl.ycd tird€ impo,rsnr rote in theorizins_ However, thosr thco.ic' (ditcuss€db.tow) rh.t !c.k to icducc prcsupposition to convcrscrional irnplic.tur€ could b. scen .s buitt on this third not;on. rc Se€ e.s. H.tvorsen, 1978; on thc s€mentic view of ptesupposition the prcsuppGnion (26) *outd .lso bc part, but : rpccial part, of thc trurn condi.ions of (ra).
4,2 The phenomera: initial obseroations presupposition of both (24) and (27). Behaviour under negation mak€s a basic distinction between presupposition and entailmentWhere does the presupposition in (24) come from ? From the word in (24) the inference lanage of coutse,If we substitut€ the wotd' tried aJis shown to (26) ofcourse is the same, but this is now an entailment by considering the negative sentence(28): (28)
John didn't try to stop in time
or' as we So presuppositions seem to be tied to particular wolds general' We shall call in structure iut"., aspects of surface """ presupposition"h"il items such presupposition-generating linguistic iriggers. (29) Let us now take a somewhat more complex example Consider and its negation (3o):
(zs) (3o)
John, who is a good friend of miDe, regr€ts that he stopped doing Iinguistics before he left Cambridge he John, who is a good friend of mine, doesn't regret that stopped doing linguistics before he left Cambridge
There are quite a large set of inferences that seem to hold good both for (29) and for its negation (3o), for example: (3r) (32) (33) \34)
(3s)
There is someone uniquely identifiable to speaker and addressee a s 'Jo h n ' John is a good friend of the speaker's John stopped doing linguistics before he left Cambridge John was doing linguistics before he left Cambridge John left Cambridge
Since these are constant or invariant under negation, they are candidate presuppositions under the Frege/Strawson conception' Notice too that each of the inferences can be tied back to particular words or constructions that give rise to them. Thus (3 r) seems to be tied to, or arise from, the use of the proper name Johz; (32) seems to arise because relative clauses of this informative (non-restrictive) sort are not affected by the negation of a main verb outside the clause' and are thus preserved in their entirety under negation; and similarly for (35), which seems to arise from the fact that temporal clauses (initiated by before, after, while, when, etc.) are likewise unaffected by the negation of a main verb, The source of (33) is a little more opaque: it arises because(33) is the complement of a particular kind of verb (called factive), here regtet; it appears that it simply makes r 79
Ptesupposition
4.2 The phenomena: initial obsen)ations
no senseto talk aborJt X leglctting y, or alternatively X not legret,rng Y, unless y is an event that has happenedor wilt a"nnitety h'afpsn. So the complement y is prerupposedby both positiue anj neiJtiu" sentenceswith main verbs in this class.The of (34) i" Ias,e, to locate: if one asserts that X sropt ed Ving, "o,rr". then or,. ir."*Or"". that X had been Ving, an inference shared by th. ihat 21 has not stopped /izg. So the verb sro, is "ss.rtion responsible f", ifr.'p..supposition (34). These.are fairly heterogeneous sources, and natural questions then arise of the sort: what are all the structrrrc. an.t t-*-_-: .*^, _,-.-" .
topresuppositions ?,dothey#:T:ffiili,i:ffi
i:;: il;":";
some linguistic items have such inferences Luilt into th."ri.,o, others ?and so forth. But before we explore these, let us note that there rs a way in which there is an intuitive unity to this set of inferenccs. For the basic intuition is that they are all in some important serrse bachgtoutd assumprrozragainst which the main import of,h.;;,;;;""" of (29) is to be assessed.A useful analogy here is the andgrozzd in-Gestalt psychology: in a picture "",;;;;-f;r" a figure sturrd"oui irrty relative to a background, and there are well_known visual illusions or 'ambiguities' where figure and ground ure ..r,.."ible, d"mo.r_ strating that the perceptionof each is relative to the pe.""ption oiin" other. The analogy is that the 6gure ofan utterance is wf,"i 1"1"""r,.a or what is the main poinr of what is said, *f,lt at gr"r',"j i"ii" of presuppositions against which the " figure is asselsed. (Tn;;;".. "., even some cases where figure and ground, i.e. assertion and prcsupposition,seemto get inverted like the classic Gestalt see Langendoen, r 97r.) To see that the "rnUig"li."; set of pre",rppori,lo'L""ity formsa set of background assumptiorr", noij.l.t of i;r";;." prcl(edout by some technical definition"rrd " ".t of presupposition, consider what happens when we convert (29) into question: a (36) D-oesJohn, who is a good_friend of mine, regret that he sropped oorng trngursticabefore he left Cambridge ?
Here the main point of an utterance of (36) will be to question J"hn really does regret stopprng doing linguistics, rather Il:tlt:. to assert than that he does (as in (29)) o, to d.r,y thufh" a*"-("" rn (3o)).,But (36) shares all the presuppositions listed abo* fr. i"qil"a (3o). Thus the main point of an utterance may be to assert or to deny or ro questlon some proposition, and yet the presuppositions can .r8o
the figure can vary remain constant, or-to employ our analogyis of course the within limits, and the ground remain the same' This Frege and Strawson' by position taken the behind that lies intuition presupposition is and the way in which the technical notion of intuitions about pre-theor€tical part ofour least intendedto captureat presupposed sense) (in language ordinary the what is presumed or when we speak. Let us now return to the questions that arose above What sort of range of presuppositional phenomena is there? We may begin by listing some of the constructionsthat have been isolated by linguists as sourcesof presuppositions,i.e. by constructing a list of known Karttunen (n.d') has collected thirty-one presupposition-triggers. kinds of such triggers, and the following list is a selection from these (the examplesproYidepositive and negativeversionsseparatedby '/' to allow the readerto checkthe inferences;the presupposition-triggers themselvesare italicized; the symbol )) stands for 'presupposes'): I.
\37) )) 2.
(38) ))
(3e) ))
(40t ))
(4r) ))
\42) 3. (43' ))
(44)
(+s)
))
4 (+6) ))
Defaite descriptions (see Strawson, 195o, I952): John saw/didn't see the man uith tuo heads there exists a man with two heads Factioe L,erbs(see Kiparsky & Kiparsky, I97t): MAtth^ legretsfdoesn't regtet drinking John's home brew Martha drank John's home brew Frankenstein was/wasn't aua/e that Dracula was there Dracula was there lohn realized/didn't lealize th^t he was in debt John was in debt It vtas odd/it wasn't odd how proud he was he was proud some further factive predicates: hnow; be sotry thati bc Ptoud that; be indifferent thati be glad thati be sad that l9? tb): Implicative DczbJ (Karttunen, Johd manoged/dida't n anag€ to open the door John tried to open the door Jolrn Jotgot /didn'r Jotget to lock the door John ought to have locked, or intended to lock, the door some further implicative predicates: X happened to V))X didn't plan or intend to ViX aooided Zizg ))X was expected to, or usually did, or ought to V, etc. Change oJ state uerDr (see Sellars, r954; Karttunen, Ig73): lohtr stopped/didt't srot beating his wifc John had been beating his wife
r 8r
Presupposition \47t (+8) (4e)
)) .. ))
loan began/didn't begin to beat her husband Joan hadn't been beating her husband Kissinger continued/didn't conttnueto rule the world tl,rsslngerhad been ruling the wortd some further change ofstate verbs: Jral t.,frnishi caft, on; cear...
tahe(asin X tooh y ftom Z )) y was it/in/ ini ii;i"i',
5. (50, (5 r) (s2)
(sr) 6.
(s+) (ss) 7'
(s6) (sZ)
(58)
(ss) 8.
enlet; come; go., arrir.,ei etc, Itetath)et:
. . lfe lvins saucer came/didn't come agan )) The flying saucer came before You can't get gobstoppers anymoretl )) You once could get gobsroppers Catter returnedfdidn,t ieturn to r,ower )) Carter held power before further iteratives: another lime; lo come bachi restorci repeati for the ,rth t;me Verbs oJjudging (see Fillmore, r97ra): This kind of implication is, arguably, not really presuppositional at alt; lor,-unltkeother presuppositions,the implications are not arrrrbuted to the spesker,so much as ro the subjcct of the verb of judging (see Wilson, r975). .. f-eatha accused/didn't accuse lan of plagiarism )) (Agatha thinks) plagiarism is bad .r,it.n:!Fidn'r cr;ti.ize Agatha for running away ,, (lan :?n thinks) Agatha ran away )) Tempotal clauses(Frege, r89z (r952); Heiniimiiki, r97z): Be/oze Strawson was even born, Frege noticed/didn;t notice presupposttrons )) Strawson was born I/}rle Chomsky was revolutionizing linguistics, the rest of social science was/wasn't asleep .. )) Chomsky was revolutionizing linguistics Since Churchill died, we,ve L.tJ7*. fra.rent lacked a leader .. )) Churchill died further temporal clause constructors: aJter; during; uheaeler; as (as in As John s)as geat;ng up, hc slipteA Clelt sentcnces(see Halvorsen, rgTg; prince, t97ga; Atlas & Levtnson, r96 r ): Sentence (60) exhibits what is known as the clelt construction (cf. unclefted Henry hissedRosie),(6r) *fr", i"i""*" rf,. construction (cf. unclefted O::y" ". John tost his atallet). -r,!rDorn conslructrons seem to share approximately the same rrln-BrirshXntatish,a,r,o,.isanesativepotarityir€m,i.e.canontyaenerslty occurrn nesaov€dcch.ativcscntenccs, hcnccth€ trck ofr posni,e;xempt.; In l5 r l.
.r8 z
4.2 The phenomena: ititiql
(6o) (6r) 9.
(62)
(63)
IO.
(6+)
(6s)
(66) (67) rr.
obselaotions
presuppositions, and share in addition - it has been claimed ("". iuluo.".tt, 1978) - a further presupposition that the focal element (I{anry in ( 6o) and hisuatlet in (6r)) is the only element to which the predicate aPPlies. It was/wasn't Henry th.t kissed Rosie )) someone kissed Rosie What John lost/didn't lose was his wallet )) John lost something Implieit clefts uith stressed constituents (see Chomsky, r97z; Wilson & Sperber, I979): The particular presuppositions that seem to atise from the two cleft constructions seem .lso to be triggered simply by heavy stress on a constituent, as illustrat€d by the following examples \r,/hereupper-case characters indicate contrastiv€ stress: Linguistics was/wasn't invented by CHOMSKY! )) someone invented linguistics (cf. lt was/wasn't Chomsky that invented linguistics) John did/didn't compete in the OLYMPICS )) iohndid compete somewhere(cf. It was/wasn't in theOlympics that John competed) Compaisons and contratts (see G' Lakoff, t97t): Comparisons and contrasts may be marked by stress (or by other prosodic means), by particles like too, bach' in Tetutn, ot by comparative constructlons: Marianne called Adolph a male chauvinist, and then HE insulted HER )) For Mariannc to call Adolph a male chauvinist would be to insult him Adolph called Marianne a Valkyrie, and she complimented him bach/in tetutrl / loo )) to cail someone (or at least Marianne) a Valkyrie is to compliment themr2 better lirrguist than Barbara Carol is/isn't ^ linguist is a Barbara )) Jimmy is/isn't as unpredictably gauche as Billy )) Billy is unpredictablY gauche Non-tesrrictioe rclatioe clauses: Note that there are two major kinds ofrelative clause in English - those that restrict or delimit the noun phrase they modify (restrictive zs in Only thc boys uho dr' tall can r'ach 'he ctPboatd) and those that provide additional parentheticel inlormation (non-resarictivc as io IltJ loty, who climbed Evercst (ot .t l€rsr " But p.rhcps the infcrcnccis mor€ 'estrict.d: 'For somcoDc Adotph)to call 6om.o." (or .. l€.st M..hnnc) s Vdkvri€ i3 to complimcnt them'. Sc. ihc cautionaryoot€ rc vcrbsofjudSina in 6.bovc.
r83
PlesuPPosition
(68) )) I2.
(6e) )) (lo) ))
r3.
\ 7r ) ))
\ 72) ))
t 73) ))
in t95j, was the greatest explotet ol out day). The latter kind is not aflected by the negation of the main verb outside the relative clause and thus gives rise to presuppositions: The Proto-Harrappans, who flourished z8oo-265o B.C., were/were not great temple builders The Proto-Harrappans flourished z8oo z65o B.C. C ount erf ac tu al condi tiona I s : If Hannibal had only had nteloe mote elephants, the Romance languages would/would not this day exist Hannibal didn't have twelve more elephants II ahe iotice hod only said'mine-field' ix English as well as Welsh, we would/would never have lost poor Llewellyn The notice didn't say mine-freld in English Questions (see Katz, tgTz:. zorffi Lyons, rg77a: 5g7,762tr) As noted inconnection with (36) above, questions willgenerally 6hare the presuppositions of their assenive counterDarts. However, interrogative forms themselves introduce firrther presuppositions, of a rarher different kind, which are what concern us here. lt is necessary to distinguish difrerent types of questions: yes/no quesiions will generally have vacuous presuppositions,being the disjunction oftheir possibleanswers, as in (7r). These are the only kinds of presuppositions of questions thri are invariant under negation. Atternaaive questions, as in (72), presuppose the disjunction of their answers, but in this case non-vacuously. WH-questions introduce the presuppositions obtained by replacing the WHword by the appropriate existentially quantified variable, e.g. uho by someone,uhere by someaohele,hozl by somehout, etc., is in (73). These presuppositions are no, invariant ro nesation. Is there a professor of linguistics at MtTl Either there is a professor of linguistics at MIT or there isn't Is Newcastle in England or is it in Australia ? Newcastle is in England or Newcastle is in Australia Who is the professor of linguistics at MIT ? Someone is the professor of linguistics at MIT
The above list contains perhaps the core of the phenomena that are generally consideredpresuppositional.rsHowever it is important to bear in mind that any such list is crucially dependent on one's dehnition of presupposition. For example, taking constancy under negation alone as the dennitional criterion one would. include phenomenalike those immediately below, even though these would r! Thc.e.re other s@d ccndidar$, rhoush, which happen ro haye received tcss aftention. F'o. ellmpte, adverbs, .nd especia y manner adverbs, gencrally trias€r presuppositions i rht s john ron/didn,t ,,a r/ooly witt prcsupposc ' John lan' .
r 84
4.j
The Problematic properr;es
pragmatrc probably be better accountedfor under different aspectsof indicated by the rubrics in parentheses after each example lfr"o.r, "" (where )) ? stands for 'putatively presuPposes'): \74' OS\
06)
Do/don't close the door )) ? the door is open (felicity condi ion on requestt)
Vous €tes/n'€tespas le professeur ))? the addresseeis socially superior to or non-familiar with the speaker (corverrtiottal inplicature) The planet Pluto is/isn't larger than Ceres ))? s the speakerbelievesthe proposition exptessed(The marim o! Quolity, or alternatively' siacerity condilionon atsettiont)
Or suppose instead we abandon constancy under negation as the acid test ofpresuppositionhood (as Karttunen ( r973) advised), substituting behaviour in say /... ,L"r, clauses (see below), then we might be led to claim that certain particles like ozIy, eoen'just are presuppositiontriggers. The grounds would be that, even though they do not yield inferences that survive negation, the inferences do survive in conditional contexts where entailments do not, as illustrated below: \77)
(28)
(ts\
ll only Harry failed the exam, it must have been easy failed the exam I Harry )) (cl.lf orly Harry didn't fail the exam, it must have been €asy )) I Harry didn't fail) lf evea Harry didn't cheat, the exam must have been easy )) ? Harry is the most likely person to cheat (cf. lf eoen Harry cheated, the ex.m must have been easy )) ? Harry is the least litely person to cheat) If l.Jalt caught the train, it was because I ran )) t I almosr didn't catch the train (cf. If I r..,J, didn't catch the train, it was because I ran ? I almost did catch the train) ))
The isolation of the range of the phenomena thus depends crucially adopted. But any theory of of presupposition on tbe definition presupposition might reasonably be required to handle at least the majority of the cases listed in r - r 3 above. We shall use this set of core that basic properties some further phenomena to investigate prcsuppositions exhibit.
The probletnatic properties Constancy under negation is not in fact a rich enough definition to pick out a coherent, homogeneous set of inferences. 4.3
r85
PlesuLPosiaion
4.j
The Ptoblemaric Pro,erties
Howcver, if we cxamine the core phenomena listed above we soon find that actually presuppositions do exhibit a further set of distinguishing characteristics. We shall find that presuppositiong seem to have the following properties:
do not Similarly, when it is mutually known that certain facts presuppose those otherwise obtain, we can use sentences that might if For example' arising' facts, with no consequent presuppositions get doctoral into a p"rti"ip"r,t, mutually know that John failed to
(i) They ate defearrbleta in (a) certain discoursecontexts, (b) certain intra-sentential contexts: (ii) They are apparentlyried to particularaspectsof surface structure The first properry will prove to be the undoing of any possible semantic theory of presupposition, while the second property may servetodistinguishpresuppositionsfromconversational implicatures, the other major form of pragmatic inference. Defeasibility turns out to be one of the crucial prop€rties of presuppositional behaviour, and one ofthe touchstones against which all theories of presupposition have to be gssessed.In addition there is another problematic property of presuppositions, known as the projection problern, namely the behaviour of presuppositions in complex sentences, In part the problems raised here overlap with those raised under the rubric of defeasibility, but we shall deal with the problems one by one.
course' we can say:
Dcfeasibility One of the peculiar things about presuppositionsis that they are liable to evaporate in certain contexts, either immediare linguistic context or the less immediate discourse context. or rn circumstances where contrary assumptions are made. A simple example of this is provided by a certain asymmetry to do *ith ihe factive verb Azonr.In sentenceswhere Aroar has second or third Derson subjects,the complement is presupposedto be true, as in (go). But where the subject is first person and the verb is negated, the presupposition clearly fails; thus (8r) does not presuppose (gz): 4.3.r
(8o) (8r) (82)
John doesn't know that Bill came I don't know that Bill came Bill came
The reasonofcourse is that the presupposition that the speaker knows (82) is preciselywhat the sentencedenies,and such denials override contradictory presuppositions (see Gazdar, t4zff). ry7ga: r' Se 3.r rbov€ foi Gxplicition of this r€,m.
.r 8 6
At least John won't have to regret that he did a PhD
(83)
presupposesits complement The despite the fact thatregret nofirr^lly by prevailing assumptions Note cancelled simply pr."upporition is job after where e.g. John has just finally got a ih"t in oth", "ont"xts, will hold'15 finishing a PhD, the normal presupposition propositions expressed above, Consider another example . As noted Hence if I say (84) I presupposed' by 6elore-clauses are generally that I know communicated shall - other things being equal - have
(8s), Sue cried before she 6nished h€r thesls Sue finished her thesis
(84) (85)
But now compare (86): Sue died before she finished her thests
(86)
which certainty does not presuppose (85), but rather conveys that Sue never finished her thesis' Thus in (86) the presupposition seems to drop out. The reason for this seemsto be the following: the statement of (86) assertsthat the event of Sue's death precedes the (anticipated) event of her finishing her thesis; since we generally hold that people (and we assume Sue is a person) do not do things after they die, it' follows that she could not have finished her thesis; this deduction from the entailments of the sentence together with background assumptions about mortals, clasheswith the presupposition (85); the presupposition is therefore abandoned in this context, or set of background beliefs (see Heinim?iki, r97z). Again, presuppositions prove to be defeasible. This sensitivity to background assumptions about the world seems to be something quite general about presuppositions, and not some peculiar property of those due to 6e/ore-clauses, as shown by the following examples (Kantunen, r 9?3): If the Vice-Chancellor invites Simone de Beauvoir to dinner, he'll regret having invited a feminist to his table
(87) "
Fot cnothcr
cxample of th. ssm. lind
.e. (2oo) bclo*.
t8 ?
j..J The Probletnatic Ploqerties
Plesuhqosition (88)
(8s)
If the Vice-Chancellor invites the U.S. President to dinner. he'll regret having invited a feminist to his table The Vice-Chancellor has invited a feminist ro his table
Now (88) here seems to presuppose(89) (assuming that the U.S, President is not a feminist). The presuppositionis due, of course,to the factive verb regrel, which presupposes its complement. But if we compare (87), w€ see that (87) does not seem to presuppose(89), despite the identical presence of reglet its complement. This, !q ^nd is clear,is becauseif we know that Simone de Beauvoiris a well-known feminist, then we tend to interpret the phraseafeministasanaphorically referring back to Simone de Beauvoir. But since the use of the conditional in (87) specifically indicates that the speaker does not know for certain that the Vice-Chancellor has invited Simone de Beauvoir,r6the presupposition (89), where a feminist is assumedto refer to Beauvoir, is cancelled. The crucial point here is that the presupposition(89) is sensitiveto our background assumptions:if we assumethe U.S. Presidentis not a feminist, then (88) will presuppose (89); if weassumeBeauvoiris a feminist, then (87) will not presuppose (8q). Again, then, a presupposition turns out to be defeasible in certain belief contexts, Here is yet another example of the same kind (due to Karttunen, r974). Consider (9o): (qo) ( 9 r) {92)
Either Sue has never been a Mormon or she has stoDDed wearing holy underwear Sue has stopped wearing holy underwear Sue used to wear holy underwear
The presuppositions inferrable from (9o) depend on one's beliefs about whether Mormons wear holy underwear. For the second disjunct or clause of (qo) is (qr), which as we have seen will presuppose (92) by virtue of the change of state verb srop. The whole sentence,(9o), shares this presupposition (92) with (9r) azlers we assumethat only Mormons habitually wear holy underwear,rTIn that I' Thc indication isdu€ ro the chusat impticaru'esof rh€ co.dirion,t: y'r rr., q implic.tcs lPp, P i.e. thsr rh€ sp€ske. do€sn't know wh€rh€r, is or - ,), r s n o t th e csse ,.s d iscu ssedi n 3.2.4. I' Acr u a ll- 1 ,b e ca u s€ th e r e i saecnerati zedconversati onati mpti caturef.omro, 9 to rh€re bei.A non-t.uth-funcrion.t conn€crions b€tween, and I (ss discussed by (;ricc, we rend .o favour this assumprion. pc,haps a '967), cl€arer casein which the presupposition (92) would seneraly survivc $r,utd ba Eith., Su. hat tcnsth.n d hq dtetscs, ot Suc ho, stopp.d uearias hotr
' r8 8
a Mormon) case,the first clause might be true (Sue has never been this holy underwear; wear did never with the implication that Sue (92), latter the and presupposition implication is inconsistentwith the thereby evaPorates. Another kind of contextual defeasibility aris€s in certain kinds of like discourse contexts. For example, recollect that a cleft s€ntence (93) is held to presuppose(94):
(sr) @4)
It isn't Luke who will betraY You Somse6s will betray You
Now consider the following argument that proceeds by elimination (see Keenan, IgTt ; Wilson, ry75:. zgff):
(e5)
You say that someon" ltt thls 16em will betray you. Well maybe so, But it won't be Luke who will betray you, it won't be Paul, it won't be Matthew, and it certainly won't be John. Therefore no one in this room is actually going to betray you
Here each of the cleft sentences (It won't De ZaAe, etc.) should presuppose that there will be someone who will betray the addressee' But the whole purpose of the utterance of (95) is' of course, to persuadethe addresseethat no one will betray him, as stated in the conclusion. So the presupposition is again defeated; it was adopted as a counterfactualassumption to argue to the untenability of such an assumption. A slightly diffetent kind of discoursecontext can also lead to the evaporation of plesuppositions, namely where evidence for the truth of the presupposition is being weighed and rejected. For example, consider (96):
(e6)
A: Well we've simply got to find out if Serge is a KGB infiltrator B: Who if anyone would know? C: The only person who would know for sure is Alexis: l've talked to him and he isn't aware that Serge is on the KGB payroll. So I think Serge can be trusted
The sentence (97) in the exchange in (96) should presuppose (98), for be awate that is a factive predicate which presupposes the truth of its complement (i.e. (q8)). srlarueor. The presupposition eould tben only be canc€ll€d if we made the (unlikely) .3sumption 'All pcoplc who l.nsth.n their dresscs havc never worn holy underw€ar'.
r 89
4,j
Ptcsu,Position
(e7) (s8) However is true, context number
He isn't awarethat Sergeis on the KGB payroll Serge is on the KGB payroll the point of C's utterance in (96) is to argue that since (97) (98) is probably false. So once agai-n a specific discourse inference. There are a can override a presuppositional of further kinds of discourse setting that can have similar
effects. So far we have shown that some of the core examples of presuppositional phenomena are subject to presupposition cancellation in cenain kinds of context, namely: (i)
Where it is common knowledge that the presupposition rs false, the speaker is not assumed to be committed to the truth of the presupposition (ii) Where what is said, taken to8ether with background dssumptions, is inconsistent with what is presupposed, the presuppositions are cancelled, and are not assumed to be held by the speaker (iii) In certain kinds ofdiscourse contexts,e.g. the constiuction ol reductio arguments or the presentation of evidence against some possibility or assumption, presuppositions can systematically fail to survive There are no doubt many other kinds of contextual defeasibility as well, but these examples are sufficient to establish that presuppositions are defeasible by virtue of contrary
beliefs held in a context.
In addition
to such cases, there are also many kinds of intrasententialcancellation orsuspensionof presuppositions. Forexamplc, bearing in mind that (99) presupposes (roo), note that when we embed or conjoin (99) in the range of sentences that follow, (roo) cannot be a presupposition of the resulting complex sentences: (CC) (roo) (ror) (roz) (roj) ( ro+)
John didn't manage to pass his exams John tried to pass his exams John didn't manage to pass his exams, in fact he didn't even try John didn't manage to pass his exams, if indeed he even tried Either John never tried to pass his exams, or he tried but he ncver managed to pass them lohn didn't manage to pass his exams; he got through without even rryrng
But the problems raised here are best dealt with in conjunction with the general problem of how presuppositions of component sentences too
The problematic ptopeftiet
part of complex and compound behavewhen these components are sentences,a problem to which we should now turn'!8 The Ploje.tion Ploblem Frege held that the meanings of sentences are compowhole expressionis a function sitional, i.e. that the meaning of the suggestedby Langendoen originally parts. was It ofthe lfth. too' and presuppositions -""ning of true was (r97I) that this & Savin is the whole complex of the presuppositions moreover that the set of is a if So parts' i e the of presuppositions simple sum of the constituents' Sn as S", S,, sentences containing "' "arrt.rr"" "ompl"* : the presuppositions of Sr + the ,h"r, ,h" o""".,ppositions of So presuppositionsof S, ... * the presuppositions of Sn' But such a simple solution to the presuppositions of complex sentences is far from correct, and it has proved in fact extremely difficult to formulate a theory that will predict co.rectly which presuppositions of component clauses will in fact be inherited by the complex whole' Thts compositional problem is known as the projection problern for presuppositions, and the particuler behaviour of presuppositions in complex sentencesturns out to be the really distinctive characteristic
L,1.2
of presuppositions. There are two sides to the projection problem. On the one hand, presuppositions survive in linguistic contexts where entailments cannot (i.e, the presuppositionsofcomponent sentencesare inherited by the whole complex sentence where the entailments of those components would not be). On the other hand, presuppositions disappear in other contexts where one might expect them to sutvive, and where entailments would. Let us start by considering the peculiar survival properties of presuppositions. The first and obvious kind of context in which presuppositionssurvive where entailmentsdo not is, ofcourse, under negation,One may, but need not, take this as a de6ning characteristic of presuppositions.Thus ( I o5) could be held to presuppose( to6) and entail ( Io7): t' In tt.ditiontl 8r.mm:r, comPlcr s€nlcnc.B,rc tho3e fo'med bv cmb'dding (or subo'dinitins) s.ntenccs within sentcnccs, comPound scntcnccs lhosc fotm.d bv scntcncc! linked bv conj unc.ion ( Lvon!, I e68 : ! ?8, 266) Hcr'rft€r' wc shall usc thc r.rm complcr 3cntcncc io substrmc both' simplv.s. lhotth.nd, rcs.rving the ttrm comPound scntcncc for scnt€nce' coni'inin8 clau3.s linked by.ny ofth.losical conn.ctiv€s (wh.rheror not, forc&mPle, the condilional constiriction is thoushr of.s subordinating). er
PlesuPPosition (r05) ( ro6) (ro7)
The chief constablearrestedthree men There is a chief constable 'I'he chief constablearrestedtwo men
If we nou negate (ro5), as in (ro8), the entailment (ro7) does not survive; but the presupposition(ro6) does; this being of course thg initial observation from which presuppositionaltheories sprang. (ro8)
The chief constabledidn't arrestthree men
So much is obvious, But in a precisely similar way, presuppositions survive in other kinds of context in which entailments do not. One such is modal contexts, i.e. embedding under modal operators like possible,there's a chance that and so on. Thus (lo9) intuitively continues to presuppose( r o6): ( r09)
It's possible that the chief constable arrested three men
But ( r og) certainly doesnot entail ( r o7), becauseone cannot logically infer from the mere possibility of a state of affairs that any part of it is actual. This survival in modal contexts will turn out to be an extremely important fact, and it is worth while noting that the same behaviour occurs under, for example, deontic modalities like those expressed14 ought, should and the like. Hence (rro) presupposes (ro 6 ) b u t d o e s n o t e n ta i l (ro7), j ust l i ke (ro9): ( r ro)
The chief constableought to have arrestedthree men
Consider also a sentencelike (r r r) which has severalinterpretations dependingon how corld is taken - e.g. in the permission sense,or tne ability sense;but whichever interpretation is taken (t I t) presupposes (ro 6 ) a n d fa i l s to e n ta i l (ro 7 ): (t r !)
The chief constablecould havearrestedthree men
A rather different setofcontexts in which presuppositionsdistinguish themselvesby the ability to survive, are the compound sentences formed by the connectivesand, ot, iJ,,. thea and theit equivalents.re Take for example (r rz): rr The losical connectives can always be exprBsed in various . hc rnrtivc ways: c.g. thc condirional by Ctuen A, then B, o. Sepo'. A, th.n B, <'t As'unias A, then B so on. The rcmarks rhrouahout rhis Chaprer concernins ^nd compound scntences formed from the connecrives shoutd carrv over to atl these equivalent or near-equivalent m€ans of exFressing thc samr toAi.al
l..j (rrz)
The two thieveswere caughtagainlast night
( t I4) by virtue of the which entails,izter alia, (t r3) and presupposes iteralive again: (r r 3) irtil
A thief wascaught last night The two thieves had been caught before
as in ( I r 5): Now embed (I r z) in the antecedentof a conditional lf the two thieveswere caughi again last night, P C Katch will ( r r S) get an honourable mention ( I Here ( r r 3) is not an entailment of ( I I 5), but the presupposition t 4) in a (Irz) is embedded when survives unscathed. Similarly, survive: its entailments not but disjunction, its presuppositions (116)
Either the two thieveswere caughtagain last night, or P'CKatch will be losing his job
Presuppositions also have a habit of disappearing within such compound sentencesformed with the connectives (as will be discussed below at length), but the circumstances ate quite specific' There are other environments in which it could be claimed presuppositions survive in a special way. Karttunen (1973), for example, lists a large set of comPlement-taking verbs or sentential operators, which he calls hotes because they allow presuppositions to ascend to become presuppositions of the comPlex whole, where entailments would be blocked. The list includes the factive verbs, modal operators, negation and so on. lt then becomes possible to define presuppositions not as inferences that merely happen to survive negation, but that also systematicallysurvive in a range of other contexts where entailments do not. A problem here is that tn many of these cases it can be reasonably claimed that the positive sentences constructed with ,o/es in f^ct entail their alleged presuppositions, and it is only in negative, modal, disjunctive or conditional contexts that the uniquely presuPPositional survival behaviour manifests itself. Let us now turn to the second side of the projection problem, namely the way in which presuppositionsof lower clausessometimes fail to be inherited by the whole complex sentence. In other words, presuppositions are sometimes defeasible by virtue of intra-sentential conlext.
t9 2
The prcblernatic prcpetties
193
4.3 The Ploblematic Ploqel lies
PresuLPotition The most straightforward way in which such disappearancesoccur is where the presuppositionsof a sentenceare overtly denied in a co-ordinate sentence,as for example in: (r rz) (r 18) (r rq)
John doesn'tregretdoing a uselessPhD in linguisticsbecau56 in fact he never did do one! John didn't manageto passhis exams,in fact he didn't even try Le Comte de Berry claims to be the King of France,but of coursethere isn't any such King anymore
Obviously, one can't do this with entailments on pain of direct contradiction: (rzo)
rJohn doesn'tregretdoing a uselessPhD becausein fact he does regret doing a uselessPhD
The possibility of denying one's own presuppositions is a fundamentally important property of presuppositional behaviour, which forces semantic theories of presupposition into specialclaims about the ambiguity of negation in ways which we shall describebelow (see also Wilson, r975: 3?ff). In connection with overt denials as in (r r7)-(r r9), it is important to note that at least in many casesthey are not possiblewith positive sentences.Thus the following sentences seem in contrast quite unacceptable: (l2r) (rzz) (rz:)
'John regretsdoing a PhD becausein facthe neverdid do one *Florence has stopped beating her husband and in fact she neverdid beat him *lt was Luke who would betray him, becausein fact no one would
A simple but important explanation of this is to claim that, at least in these cases,the amrmative sentencesezrail what we have hitherto called the presuppositions of each of them. Thus (rzr)-(rz3) are simply contradictions and thus semantically anomalous.This claim leaves it open whether in addition to being entailed the alleged presuppositionsare also(redundantly) presupposedin the affirmative sentences,although most presuppositionaltheoristswould claim that they are.'loThe asymmetriesthat thus show up betweennegativeand to But
hot
uho 6.€k to reduc. p..supposition ro conv.rs.tional s.e discussion in r,.4.2 below. Norc rh.r the enrailment ctaim allows.n.ss.ntially Russellian rcatmentof, forc,.ample, de6niredescridions in the sfnrm.iive clses. implicature
t 94
thos.
of presuppositions oositive sentenceswith respect to overt denial positive sentences(see argu" strongly for the entailment analysisin Wil"on, r975, 25-gi G^zd^r, rg79z', rrg-23 for further argument)' ln addition to the overt denial of presuppositions there is the possibility of what Horn (r972) has called suspension' FIere the use follo*ittg y'-clause can very naturally suspend the speaker's of " commitment to presuppositionsas illustrated by: (rzt\ ir"5i
John didn't cheata8ain,if indeedhe ever did Harry clearlydoesn'tr€gtel being a CIA agent,if he actually ever was one
Such suspensionbehaviour is probably just part of the specialways in which presuppositionsbehavein conditionals,which we shall turn to immediately below. Much more controversial is another kind of blocking of the presuppositionsof constituent parts of complex sentences,which appearsto take placeunder certain verbs ofpropositional attitude like uant, belieae,inogine, dream and all the verbs of saying llke sa!, tell, mumble,retort, etc. Apparently clear casesare the following: Oz6) lr27) (rz8)
Loony old Harry believeshe's the King of France Nixon announcedhis regret that he did not know what hrs subordinateswere uP to The teachertold the studentsthat even he had once made a mistake in linear algebra
which do not seem to presuppositions: (rzs) (t30) (l3l)
have, respectively, the
expectable
There is a presentKing of France were up to Nixon did not know what his subordinates The teacheris the leastlikely personto makea mistakein linear algebra
ln view of this behaviour, Karttunen (Ig7l) has dubbed such verbs of propositional attitude and verbs of saying plugs, because, in contrast to holes, they block the presupPositions of lower sentences ascending to become presuppositions of the whole. However, it is far from clear that this is generally true. Consider for example: \r32)
a. The mechanic didn't tell me that my car would never lun properly again b. My car used to run properly
r 95
PresuPPosition (r3 3 )
a. Churchill said that he would never regret being tough with Stalin
13
0tt)
b. Churchill was tough with Stalin Here the a sentencescontinue to presupPosethe 6 sentencesdespit€ the presenceof Plrgs. So if one believesin tbe existenceof plagsone is forced to account for these apparently presuppositionalinferences in another way (Karttunen & Peters (r975) employ the notion of generalizcd conversational implicature). This is such an awkward solution requiring non-presuppositional inferences to produce presupposition-mimicking inferences- that one has to concludethat the existenceof plugs is very dubious indeed. We come now to the most troublesome aspect of the projection problem, namely the behaviour of presuppositions in cornplex sentencesformed using the connectives and, or, iJ,.. liez and the related expressionsthat include but, altelnatioely, supposethat and many others. As we have already noticed, presuppositionstend to survive in disjunctions and conditionals where entailments do not, and one might thereforebe tempted to claim that theseconstructions ate holes that just let presuppositionsthrough. That this is not the caseis shown by examples like: (r34) (r:S)
lf John doeslinguistics,he will regretdoing it John will do linguistics
Here the consequent(secondclauseof the conditional) alone would presuppose (r:S), but the whole conditional does not -clearly becausethe presuppositionis mentioned in the first clauseand is thus made hypothetical. This turns out to be completely general. Now consider: (rt6)
Eithet John will not in the end do linguistics,or he will tegret doine it
Here again the secondclausealone presupposes( r 35), but the whole does not. The presupposition seems to be cancelled in this case becausethe alternativeexpressedin the first clauseis the negationof the presuppositionofthe secondclause.Once againthis is a completely general phenomenon. Becauseof this treatment of presuppositionsin compounds formed by the connectives,Karttunen ( r 973) dubbed the connectivesfiltets: they let some presuppositionsthrough but not others. He stated the filtering conditions as follows: r9 0
(r:8)
The Ptoblematic Ploqelties
In a In a sentence of the form if p then q, (and also' Perhaps' parts the of presupposilions p the & form the 9) sentence of by the whole arlers g presupposes t and *itt U. lttt".i,.a ' entails / of the.parts presuppositions p q' the ot f"rm of tn" tr, t anq - P will" "".,a.n." be inherited by the whole unlessq presupposes r entails
and cntailment are mutually F'orthosewho think that presupposition both presupposeand entail the exclusive,i.e. that a sent€ncecannot propo";,ion' ,hen it alsomakessenseto set up filtering conditions "r-" t. Thus one might want to claim that ( r 39) does not io, "onju.t",iot it: presuppose(I35) but rather ass€rtsor entails rt (r39) John is going to do linguisticsand he is going to regret the first On this account, (r:q) fails to prcsuppose (t35) because to see difficult is not lt presupposes conjunct assertswhat the second is conjunctions for condition that,.riewed in this way, the filtering it (r37) However, above identical to that for conditionals stated in doctrine the things: to view is far from clear that this is a sensibleway to of the mutual exclttsivity of presuppositionand entailment seems between be left over from the contrast in the philosophicalliterature presuppositionand assertionwhich has not Proved of much use to linguistic analysis.ln addition' as we showed above, a good casecan be made for viewing many casesofalleged presuppositionsin positive sentencesas entailments,in which caseeither one will have systematically to block presuppositionsin such simple positive sentencesor simply acceptthat a sentencecan both entail and presupposethe same proposition. The filtering conditionsstatedin ( r 37) and ( r 38) aboveare to a large extent observationally adequate, and any would-be theory of presupposition that cannot predict this kind of behaviour cannot tre taken very seriously.One way in which they arc not quite adequate' though, was noted by Karttunen (r974) himself : we have to allow for the fact that the 6rst clausemay be taken together with background information and that thesepremises(in conditionals)or the negation of the 6.st clauseplus the background assumption (in disjunctions) may then filter out a presuppositionof the secondclauseby entailing it. This is the explanation for the context-scnsitivity of thc presuppositionsin (88) and (9o) noted above.2r :r Consider. for examplc, (9o): if we take the litst cl'r se' Sue hat qe'el be'a d nen^teir, lve obrain 'lt's not lhe @s€ rhat Su€ has nckr b€en a Motnon.t
1.4 Kinds of explanation
PlesuPPosition We nou, have the essentialdelimitations of the projection problem. Any theory of how presuppositions are compositionally collecte6 must be able to deal with the following basic facts: (i) Presuppositions maybe overtlydeniedwithoutcontradiction or anomaly;and they may also be suspendedby the useof y'-clauses (ii) Presuppositionsmay be filtered in specifiablecontextswhen they arise from sentencesthat are pert of compounds formed by the use of th€ connectivesot, if... lhenand others (iii) Presuppositionssurviv€ in contextswhere entailments cannot: in modal contexts,conditionalsand disjunctionsin particular One influential way of talking about these projection properties,due to Karttunen (rg7S, rgj+) is to talk of the contexts in (iii) as Aoles, and those in (ii) as filtets - a terminology we introduced in passing. For Karttunen there is also the third important category of plagr, including the verbs of saying, which we have already shown to be a dubiously genuine property of the projection problem. Although this discussion has introduced no great complexities, testing out potential solutions to the projection problem in fact involves considering how presuppositions behave in multiplyembedded sentencesconstructed out of such -liltelJ,Aolesand so on, up to a complexity that strains the intuitions, Readers may for example like to compare their intuitions with the predictions made by the filtering conditions, and other principles discussedabove,on the following sentence:22 (r+o)
If after taking adviceyou determineto file form PFror, then either you have paid arrearsand no deductionswill be made from sourceor beforePFror is 6ledthe lnland Revenueregrets that deductionswill be made from source a M o r m o n ' , i.e . ' Su e has been. Mormon'. Ifqe now take the backgtound a ssu m p tio n' M o r m o n s al w .ys $ear hol y und€rw .ar' (oserherw i rh'S ue has been . Mormon', we crn infe.'Sue has worn holy unde.,err'. This €nt.ils the p.esupposition (92) of the s€cond clausc, (9r). Therefore, on the background *.umption thar Moimons *clr holy undcrwcar, the p..supposition (92) will be filtered in lihe wirh the condirion in (r3E). !r Hinr: ro workour rh. prcdicrions from rh€ 6hcring.ules nore rh.r thc logical ((q & r) v r). *herc r has, ;zr.r a/d, t*o fom of thc sentence is t presuppositions,on€ entailed by (mak;ns certzin .ssump- t and the other
r9 8
Kinds of exPlanalioo The properties of presupposition that we have surveyed theories of are sumciently intricate to narrow down the contending we shall this plesupposition to a handful of current .unners :fo show presupposition is hrst of all demonstratethat no semantic theory of three likely to be viable, and we shall then proceed to evaluat€the proposed' been have that pragmatic theory of kinds main 4.4
S er4onricPl esuPPos;tiotl There are two main classesof semantic theories available to linguists at the present time. One is the truth-conditional classof theories,around which this book is primarily organizedsinceit alone makes clear predictions about what cannot be captured in semantics' The other is the (not necessarily mutually exclusive) class that assumesthat all semanticrelationsaredefinablein terms oftranslations ofsentencesinto atomic conceptsor semanticf€atures'Attempts have been made to formulate semantic theories of presupposition in both frameworks; but both attempts, we shall argue' are misplaced' We shall deal with the theories one by one. In order to incorporate presupposition into truth-conditional theories, presupposition has been characterized as a special species ofentailment, as in (19) and (zo) above' namely one in which a logical consequencerelation can be dehned in such a way that it is unafrected by negation. Such theories, we noted, require a drastic re-organization of the entire logical structure of a semantic theory' Such a reorganization might be justified if the properties of presupposition could thereby be captured, but it is not difficult to see that any such 4.4.1
theory cannot in principle succeed. What dooms such semantic theories of presupposition are the two cardinal properties of presuppositional behaviour we isolated above: defeasibility and the peculiar nature of the projection problem' The point about defeasibility is that presuppositions do not always survive in certain discourse contexts, as we showed above in connection with examples (gl)1g8). It is often sufficient that contrary beliefs are held in a context to cause presuppositions to evaporate, without any sense of semantic or pragmatic anomaly. Now, the definition of semantic presupposition in (zo) is constructed using the notion of semantic entailment; and the definition of semanticentailment in ( I7) specifies that for a proposition p to semantically entail a proposition g it is r99
4.1 Kinds oJ etqlanation
PlesuPPositiorl necessary that in all utorlds in which p is true, q is true. T[e consequence is that semantic presupposition is a necessarily invariont relation: if p semantically presupposes q, thel p always semantically presupposesg (providing that ? is not embedded in a linguistrc environment - other than negation- in which 2 failg to entail g). But the examples that we raised above under the rubric of defeasibility are not special linguistic contexts, they are specific extra-linguistic contexts where presuppositions drop out. If we now turn to one side of the projection problem, namely the way in which presuppositions are defeasible or fail to project in specified linguistic environments, exactly the same problems emerge. Consider, for example, (r4r) and (r4z): (r+r) (r42) (t+f)
Either John is awayor John'swife is away Either John hasno wife or John'swife is away John hasa wife
( r4 r ) straightforwardly presupposes( r 43) (although getting semantrc presupposition to model even that may not be so easy, as we shall see immediately below). But (r4z) fails to presuppose(r43) as of course predicted by the filter for disjunctions in ( r 38) above. Again we ate faced with the problem of cancelling presuppositions in sorhe environments and not others, here just in casethe first disjunct when negated entails the presupposition of the second disjunct. While it is easy to imagine that a semantic relation like semantic presupposition should be affected systematicallyby embedding in a disjunction, it is not easy to see how such an invariant relation could be sensitivc to the content of another disjunct (but cf. Peters, r979). An exactly similar point can be made with respect to conditionals: on the semantic theory of presupposition ( r 44) and ( r 45) should have the same presuppositions,but in fact only (r44) presupposes(r46): (r++) (r+S) (t+6)
lf Harry haschildren,he won't regretdoing linguistics If Harry doeslinguistics,he won't regretdoing it Harry is doing linguistics
In linguistic contexts like (r45) (as generally described by (rgZ) above) presuppositions are not invariant relations as semantic presupposition would require: they sometimes do and sometimes do not survive when the constructions that give rise to them are embedded in the consequentclauseof a conditional. ioo
We noticed also that it is possible to overtly deny a presupposition ( without causinganomaly,asin ( r47) and examples r r7)-(r r9) above: passed (r47\ John doesn't regret having failed, becausein fact he semantic Now cleatly such examples pose severe Problems for the survive presuppositions presuppositionalist,forbyde6nition semantic a contradiction: negation- but in that case(r+7) should amount to it both semanticallypresupposes(r48) and entails by virtue of the that (r48) is false: because-clause (r+8)
John failed Faced with examples like these, there is only one way out for tbe semantic presuppositionalist: he must claim that negation is ambiguous between a presupposition-Preserving kind of negation and a kind in which both entailments and presuppositions get negated. These are sometimes called iniernal or predicate negation and external or sentence negation respectively, but here thrs terminology is misleading because the claim required to salvage Eemantic presupposition is not the Russ€llian claim that there are different scopes for negation, but rather that the negative morphemes are actually ambiguous (Wilson, r975: 35). Further, the semantic presuppositionalist can point to the fact that his trivalent logic (or equivalent truth-value gaps) allows the definition of two distinct logicalnegations,thus making the ambiguity claim technicallyfeasible (seeGazdar, ry79a:65 for details). The problem with this claim is that there is no evidence whatsoever that there is such an ambiguity in natural language negations, and considerable evidence that there is not. Linguistic tests for ambiguity do not confirm the claim (Atlas, t977), and there appear to be no languagesin which the two sensesare lexically distinguished (Horn, t978i Gazdar, r979a), whereas the claim would lead one to expect that it was sheer coincidence that only one word exists for the two sensesin English. (For sundry other arguments against the claim see e.g. Altwood, rgTz; Kempson, r975: 95-Ioo.) Moreover the notion of a presupposition-destroying negation lands in technical difficulties as.soon as itetations of such an operator are considered (see Atlas, r98o). The failure of the ambiguity claim means that semantic presuppositionalists have no account ofsentences like ( r4?), or rather the semantic theory makes the wrong predictions (here, that (r+?) should be drastically anomalous due to semantic contradiction). 201
4.4 Kinds of exPlanation
PlesuqPosition Let us now turn to consider how semantic presupposition fares with the other side of the projection problem: namely accounting fot how presuppositions survive in contexts where entailments don't' Such contextswe noted include modals ofvarious sorts, as illustrated by (r+g), which when embedded in a modal context, as in (t5o), continues to presuPPose( I5I ): John is sorry that he was rude It's possiblethat John is sorry that he was rude J o h n w a s ru d e When this was first noted, it was correctly pointed out that in order to maintain a presuppositional relation between (r5o) and (t5I) it would be necessary to change the definition of semantic presupposition, so that instead of reading as in (zo) above it would read
(r4s) (rso) (r5 l )
a s i n (r5 z ) b e l o w : (rsz)
A semanticallypresupposesB iff: (a ) OA IF B (b )o -A l l -B
(see Karttunen, r97ra). The problem with this definition is that it has been proved that none of the standard logical systems can accommodatesuch a semantic relation.23The technical dilicultres here militate strongly against the possibility of maintaining any coherent notion of semantic presupposition' In addition, possibility is not the only modal operator presuppositionssurvive through - as pointed out above deontic modalities also let presuppositions through in a way that is qurte irreconcilablewith a relation basedon entailment Also, except under the specialconditions noted above, presuppositionssurvive embedding in conditionals and disjunctions where entailments do not. lfp entails r, and we embed p in either p or q, we c^n no longer infer r; but if p presupposes s then eithet p or g will presuppose s unless filtered under the condition in (I38). Thus (r 53) below entails (r54) and presupposes(rss), but only (r55) survives embedding in a disjunction as in ( r 56): p r o o f is d u € to .n unpubl i shednote b) H e'zbe'ser ('97t); a furth'r '! The d.monstr.tion that luch a rclat;on ctn be accommodatcd in much more complex losical systems,namelv two-dimensionrl fout-valued modtl losics' to be cons;derabl€ but there would is duc ro M.rtin (r97s. 'eed 'e79), ind€pcndcnt iusti6..iion for adopting such losical svsiems as models ror naturtl lanaurae s€montic'
(r53)
(' s+) (r55) (r 56)
The Duke of Westminstet has four houses The Duke of Westminster has three houses There is a Duke of Westminster piti". ttt" O,rt . of Westminster has four houses or he borrows other people's stationery
presuppositioncould It isquite unclearhow the definition of semantic preserved in such be to presuppositions be modified to allow disjuncttve contexts. of semantic i" a 6rr"l problem, note that even if the definition contexts ln these all accommodate could be altered to presupposition -pra".rppo"itions the same survive"' and not entailments *hi"h would negation problem that arose concerning the ambiguity of such in wherevet plugu" ,u.h a definition with a vengeance For presuppositions contexts it is possible to add an overt denial of the of other clauses,one would have to claim that there was an ambiguity between ptesupposition-preservingand presupposition-destroying given that sensesof the expressionsinvolved (Wilson' r975)' Thus to claim necessary would be it ( anomaly, without r one can say 57) just the in ambiguous ( is above r in 5z) that the possibility operator same way that negation rs: (ls7) lt's possiblethat Nixon regrets tampering with the tapes' although I don't believe he ever did possibility This assortmentof problems is sufficient to rule out the theory of a truth-conditional within presupposition of an account of semantics. Let us now turn to the attempts to accommodate presupposltlon within a semantic theory based on atomic concepts or semantlc prlmes or features. The properties of such semantic theories are much less well defined than logical models' and to a certain extent this makes them more adaptable to handling new kinds of supposed semantic relations. Thus Katz & Langendoen ( I976) maintain that semantic presupposition is a perfectly viable concept, indeed the only viable on", *h"., mod"ll"d within a feature-style semantics (see also Leech' 1974). In actual fact it has been shown that Katz & Langendoen's suggestions simply cannot handle the projection problem (see the critique in Gazdar, r 978) Given the informal nature of such semantic theories, it is open to Katz & Langendoen to make another attempt note that thcse would include thc ve.bs of srvins if one do's not 'r And subscribc lo the vicw thar thcse ate pli.gr' zo1
4.4 Kindt of exPlanation
PresuPPosition using quite different apparatus invented for the purpose, and it rs therefore difficult to prove that no such attempt could be successful. However it is not difficult to show that any such attempt, given tl'c avowed goals of such semantic theo.ies, is simply misplaced. For the aim of such theories is to teaseapart our knowledge of the semantics of our language from our knowledge of the world, and to isolate the relatively small set of atomic concepts required for the description of the semanticsalone (see e.g. Katz & Fodor, r963). Semanticson this view is concernedwith the context-independent,stablemeanings of words and clauses, leaving to pragmatics those inferences that are special to certain contexts (see e,g. Katz, rg7'7:. rgff). Given this much, it is clear that presupposition belongs in pragmatics and not in semantics. For presuppositions are not stable, context-independentaspectsof meaning - that is shown conclusively by the examples discussed under defeasibility above, one of which rs repeated here: (rS8) (rS9) (160)
Sue cried beforeshe finishedher thesis Sue died beforeshe finishedher thesis Sue finishedher thesis
where the presupposition due to the before-clausein (r58) does not go through in ( r 59). Why ? Becauseour knowledgeof the world, taken together with the truth of ( r 59), is inconsistentwith the assumption that (r6o) is true. To sum up: semantictheories of presuppositionare not viable for the simple r€asonthat semanticsis concerned with the specification of invariant stable meaningsthat can be associatedwith expressions. Presuppositionsare not invariant and they are not stable, and they do not belong in any orderly semantics. Ptagmatie thcoies oI presupposition For the reasons adduced above, and others catalogued by S ta l n a k e r (r9 7 4 ), Ke mp s o n (r975), W i l son (r975) and B oE r & Lycan (r976), semantic theories of presuppositionhave largely been abandoned(but seeMartin, r979). In their place,various theoriesof pragrnatic presupposition have been put forward. The earlier of these were programmatic, and offered little more than possible de6nitions of presupposition using pragmatic notions (a list of such definitions and a discussion of them can be found in Gazdar, rg79a:. to3ff). These definitions, despite differing terminology, utilized two basic concepts in particular: appropriateness (or felicity) and +.4.2
ground, or joint assumption) in 6rutual knowtedge (or cornrnon the way indicated in the following definition:t5 a proposition B iff A An ulterance A pragmaticall! presupposer r r 6r ) ' by participants Anoa;z nutually o ly if B is is aU1ro1riate The idea, then, was to suggestthat there are pragmatic constraints used on the use of sentencessuch that they can only be appropriately by the indicated propositions the that if it is assumed in the context whose sentence a So to utter presupposition-triggers are truepresuppositions are, and are known to be, false, would merely be to produce an inappropriate utterance' rather than (on the semantrc view) to have asserted a sentence that was neither true nor false' Apart from the sketchiness of such proposals, there ar€ objections to the utility of the notion of qpblopliatcness which we raised in Chapter r. In addition, as Sadock has pointed out (see Stalnaker, r 9?7: r45-6), the mutual knowledgecondition is far too strong: I can very well say (162) in conditions where my addresseedid not previously know the presupposition (I63): I'm sorry I'm late, I'm afraid my car broke down The speakerhasa car
(162) (16:)
It is sumcient, as G azdar(r97ga ro5ff) notes,that what I presuppose is consistentaitft the propositions assumed in the context' It ls interestingto note that (r64) is probably not appropriate in circumstances where it is not mutual knowledge that the presuPposition (r65) i s t r ue: I'm sorry I'm late,my fire-enginebtoke down The speakerhas a fire-engine
(16+) (t6s)
presumably becauseit is not consistent with the averageman's beliefs that an average man owns a fire-engine (but see Prince, r978b for some more complex exPlanations). Such problems indicate that definitions like ( 16r) are at least in need of refinement. But in the long run what we are interested in ls not a definition, but some model that will accurately predict presuppositional behaviour and capture in particular the problematic pioperties of defeasibility and projection reviewed above. In fact there are only two sophisticated formal models that get anywhere near accounting for the observable facts, and we shall now review these 'r
On th. /.I;tlt
conccPts of z utual see 5.r below-
hntul.dg.
tnd af,P.o,riat.n
tt te.
t '2 lbovc:
on
PresuPPosition in detail, returning later to ask whether any other kinds of approach are availableas alternatives. We have established that presuppositional inferencescannot b€ thought of as semantic in the usuat sense,and we have indicated above that presuppositions seem to be tied to the surface form ofexpressions. Tlrus it could be claimed, not necessarily correctly but nevertheless plausibly, that the following sentences all shate the same truth conditions: (166) (16l) (168)
John didn't give Bill a book It wasn't a book that John gaveto Bill It wasn't John who gavc Bill a book
and differ only in that ( r 67) has the additional presupposition(r69), and (r68) the additional presupposition (r7o): (r6c) (r7o)
John gaveBill something Someonegave Bill a book
The presuppositionof a cleft sentence(like those in (r6Z) and (r68)) can therefore be identified with a proposition formed by taking the material after the relative clause marker (uho, that, and inserting a variable or indefinite existential expression like sonebody, someth;ng that agreesin number, gender (and indeed grammatical category) with the item in focus position. There seems therefore to be a conventional association between the surface organization of constituents in a cleft construction and particular presuppositions. The two theories we are about to review both assume that presuppositions are therefore part of the conventional meaning of expressions,even though they are not semantic inferences. Thls should serve to distinguish presuppositions from conversational implicatures, which otherwise share many of the same prdperties of defeasibility, for conversational implicatures are (as we noted tn Chapter 3) non-detachableti.e. it is not possibleto find anothet way of conveyingthe sametruth conditions that will lack the implicatures in question. On the other hand, there appears to be no problem rn finding a way of expressing the same truth-conditional content as in (r 67) or ( r 68), while avoiding conveying ( r 69) or ( t ?o) respectivelyfor example by saying (r66).'z6 p!.aphras.will in fsct bequ.stioned " Thc detacb.bility ofpr€suppositions by b € lo w; a n d it is n o t in fact cl eaf th.t (166),(167).nd (168) rcrual l y share tnrth conditions (s€e Atlas & Levinson, r98r).
Lo6
+l
Kinds oJ exPlanation
The first such conventional theory we shall review has been is developed by Karttunen & Peters (rg?5, r97 . The theory which grammar' in Montague of expressed in the framework clausesare built up from their constituents from the bottom up rathe! than from the top down as in transformational generative grammar'2? In such a theo.y, the semantic content of an expression is built up in tandem with the syntax, so that in the process of sentence generation s€mantic representations are constructed stage by stage in parallel to the construction ofthe surface natural language expression' Thus every word, clause or syntactic operation can have associated with it a semantic representation or extension expression, as Karttunen & Peters call it. Now the basic idea in Karttunen & Peters' theory is simply to add to the framework of Montague grammar an additional set of meaning expressions to be generated in the same sort of way as extension expressions, as sentencesare built up from therr constituentparts; these meaning expressionswill, just like extension expressions,be associatedwith words, clauses'and constructions - but here just with what we have called presupposition-triggers. And unlike extensionexpressionsthese presuppositionalexpressionswill not generally play any part in the specification of truth conditions, for their function is purely to represent the ptesuppositions of constituents,Thus, on this theory, the distinction between truthconditional aspects of meaning and presuppositional inferences is captured by the generation of two quite separate kinds of meaning for each natural languageexpression. Karttunen & Peters call the meaning expressions that capture or conventiontl erpressiotls presuppositions implicature identifiesPresuppositions and theterminologyovettly implicatures, with those pragmatic inferences that Grice (1975) isolated as being conventional, non-cancellable and yet not part ofthe truth conditions' For on Karttunen & Peters' theory, presuppositions (or' as they would have it, conventional implicatures) are in fact non-cancellable. But Karttunen is well aware of the defeasibility and projection properties of presuppositions - indeed he was the 6rst to explot€ them in detail. How then can it be claimed that presuppositions are non-cancellable ? The answer lics in the details of Karttunen & Peters' system. The idea is that in addition to implicature expressions capturing the .n introduction to Montryu. a'ammrt. " Sc. Doq,ty, Pet€rc & W.ll, ' 98 r for 207
4.4 Kinds of exPlanation
Pt esupposiaion presuppositional content of each presupposition-triggering item, there will be associatedwith each constituent a herilage expression whose sole function will be to govern the projection of the presuppositions expressed in the implicature expressions. ln this way, Karttunen's (r973) classification of embedding constructions into plugs, flters and holes can be incorporated into the Montague grammar framework: for example, where an embedding complement is a plug it will have a heritage expression that will block the presuppositions (expressed by the implicature expressions) from ascendingto be presuppositionsof the whole sentence.Thus ( r7r) will not have the presupposition (r7z) because the word claims wrll have an associatedheritage expressionthat will block it: (r7r) (t'lz\
Nato claimsthat lhe nucleardeterrentis vital There existsa nucleardeterrent
As we noted above, it is not clear that plugs are a useful category, but if they are, here is a coherent way of modelling them. Similarly with the classof filters: each connective will have associatedwith it a heritageexpressionthat will block the presuppositionsof the lower constituent sentencesjustin casethe filtering conditions in (r37) and ( t 38) are met. For example,the heritageexpressionthat capturesthe filtering condition for conditionalscan be thought ofas somethinglike ( r 7 3 ): ( r 73)
The conventionalimplicatures of r/ p then9 (and also perhaps of p and q) ate the conventionalimplicaturesofp together with the expression'if , then the conveDtional implicaturesof g'
To see how this works apply it to a case like (r74) where rhe presupposition,(r75), of the consequent is filtered: (rZ+\ ( r75)
lf John haschildren,all of John'schildrenmust be away John has children
Here the presuppositions of the whole will be whatever the presuppositions of the antecedent are (e.g. John exists), plus the proposition that if John has children, then he has children. Since this proposition is tautologous,it is vacuous,and the speakeris speci6cally not committed to (r75) even though the phtase all oJJohn's children presupposes(or conventionally implicates,in the terminology of thrs th e o ry ) (r7 5 ). For holes Karttunen & Peters can obviously just let the heritage 2o8
sxpression allow the implicature expressions to ascend to become the conventionalimplicatures of the whole' Thus, on this theory, presuppositions are not actually cancelled, they are blocked during the derivation of the sentence and simply do not arise from the whole. In many ways this is a highly sophisticated and carefully constructed model that can be fully formalized within what is perhaps the most rigorous of contemporary linguistic theorles. Karttunen & Peters connect their theory to the earlier attempts to define pragmatic presupposition, along the following lines: cooperativeparticipants have the obligation to "organize their contrlbutions in such a way that the conventional implicata of the sentence uttered are already part of the common ground at the time of utterance" (t975: z69). As we have seen, this is too strong a constraint, and it witl be sufficient to require that the so-called conventionalimplicata are consistentwith the common ground. There are a number of substantial problems for this theory. It is formulated specifically to deal with the problems of projection that we reviewed above, and the solutions offered are what we may call 'engineering solutions'-i.e. whatever is required in the way of formal apparatus is simply built into the compositional process of sentenceconstruction. In order to handle the intricacies of the projection problem, therefore, the details of the engineering must become increasingly complicated. It is possible, for example, to show that the latest formulation does not in fact handle some of the more intractable cases. For example, the filtering rule for conditionals we sketchedin (r73) is identical to the rule for conjunctions, and so the rule for conjunctions incorrectly predicts that (176) has the presupposition(r77) (this count€r-exampleis drawn from the substantial set assembledin Gazdar, r979a: ro8-r9): (rZ6) (r7j\
It is possiblethat John haschildrenand it is possiblethat hrs children are away John has children
This happensbecauserhe filtering rule in (r73) will predict that the presuppositionsof (r76) are (or at least include) those in (r78): (rZ8)
Johnexistsand ifit is possiblethatJohnhaschildrenthen John haschildren
But since the antecedentof the conditional in (I78) is entailed by
Plesupposition (tZ6), (tZ6) plus the conditional entails (rZZ). So it is predicted, incorrectly, that (r76) will have (r77) as a presupposition. Since the solutions are simply of an engineering sort, it remains open ro Karttunen & Peters to try to re-tool the solutions to cope with the known counter-examples of this sort, Rather more troublesome is the evidence that the proposed filtering constraints are asymm€trical in the way thar (r37) is above - this makes it impossible to account for the filtering in ( r 79) (drawn from Wilson, r 975) where the consequent entails what the antecedentpresupposes,namely (r8o): (tZ (r8o)
If Nixon knows the war is over, the war is over The war is over
Again, though, it is possible that with sufficient ingenuity more complex filtering rules that will acount for (r?9) can be built into the appararus. Where the theory begins to get into the greatestdifficulty is where it has to deal with some ofthe other aspectsofcontextual defeasibility that we have reviewed above. For example, to handle the simple examples of overt presupposition denial like (r8r) and (r8z), the conventional implicature theory is forced to adopt the view that the negative morphemes in natural languagesare ambiguous between presupposition-preservingand presupposition-negatingsenses: (r8r) (r8a)
John didn't manageto stop- he didn't eventry John didn't regretlosingthe game,becausein fact he won
Because presuppositions are, on this theory, really conventional implicata, they cannot be cancelled,and since they must ordinarily survive negation (and this has to be built into the heritage expressions for negative morphemes), the negation in (r8r) and (r8z) must be a different kind of negation, namely one which does not let conventional implicata survive. But this view runs into all the objectionswe raised above against the view that negation is ambiguous (and others: see Atlas, r98o). But the main objection is that such a theory cannot handle contextual defeasibilityof the sorts illustrated in examples(84)-(96). It cannot do this for the same.easons that semantic theories of presuppositioncannot: there is no reference,in the calculationof the presuppositionsof a sentence,to the assumptionsthat are made ln the context. There is merely an additional pragmatic constraint that the speaker should not presuppose what is not already mutually
1.4 Kinds of erPlarration if there sssumed (which is too strong as we have noted)' Therefore, of discourse, modes are any ways in which contextual assumptions, or the like serve to nullify presuppositions - which, we hav-eargued, wrong there are in abundance - such a theory is going to make the predictions about what inferences participants make from sentences It is also going to make the wrong predictions wherever in "o.,"t,. of linguistic items into holes,plugs andflters is itself classification the pragmatic re-classification. A number of relevant cases to subject (rgx), who pointed out that two Liberman up by brought were ought to behave quite differently under like the following sentences (as in (r3?)), and yet in fact both for conjunctions rule the filtering clauses filtered out: presuppositions their second of have the (r8:) (r84)
PerhapsJohn has children but perhapsJohn's children are away PerhapsJohn hasno children,but perhapsJohn'schildrenare away
Now we have already noted, in connection with (r76) above,that the filtering theory makes the wrong predictions with sentences like (r83): let us therefore assume,as a way of patching up the theory, that the presuppositions of modal sentencesare calculated first on the basisof their non-modal subordinate sentences(this expedient will not, in the long run, work - seeGazdar, rgTga',rrr-rz). Then (I8:) will not presuppose that John has children, despite the potential presupposition due to the phrase John's child.ten, for the first clause (ignoring the modal) will entail the presupposition' and the presupposition will therefore be filtered in accord with the filtering rule for conjunctions in (rg?) or ( I?l). This seemsthe correct result' and is to be expected on the assumption that 6at has the logical properties of and (as argued in Chapter 3). However, now consider (184): intuitively this also fails to presuppose that John has children. But wecannot account for this in termsofthe filtering rule for conjunctions, as readers may verify for themselves. However, we colld account for it if 6u, was here functioning like or, for then the Fltering condition for disjunctions in (r38) would correctly predict the loss of the presupposition,And, intuitively, this is the correct analysis:the most likely use of (r8f) is as a single speculation, but of (r84) as two alternative or disjunctive speculations. So it is the use of an utterance in discourse for specific conversational purposes, rather than the logicalpropertiesofthe particular connective,that seemsto determine 2r I
,t.l
PtesuPPosition the appropriate filtering condition. Once again, presupposition proves contextually dependent. In short, Karttunen & Peters' theory suffers from much of ths inflexibility of theories of semantic presupposition, even though i1 differs from those theories by not including presuppositional inferencesin the truth conditions of sentences. The other sophisticated attemptto deal with the projection problem handles the problems of contextual defeasibility as well. In thrs theory, which is due to Gazdar (rg79a, ry79b), presuppositions are assumed once again to be non-truth-conditional aspects of the meaning of linguistic expressions.As on the prior theory there is no way to predict the presuppositionsof any linguistic expressionsimply given its truth-conditional characterization; instead presuppositions haveto be arbitrarily associatedwith linguistic expressions,principally in the lexicon, In contrast to the prior theory, in Gazdar's theory presuppositions are actually cancelled.First, all the potential presuppositions of a sentenceare generatedasa completeset,asin the original Langendoen & Savin (r97r) suggestion.So at this stage, the presuppositionsof any complex sentencewill consist of all the presuppositionsof each of its parts. Then a cancellingmechanism is brought into play which culls out of this total set of potential presuppositionsall those that will survive to become actual presuppositions of a sentence uttered in a particular context. (Note that this distinction will allow us to talk sensiblyabout both sentencesand utteranc€spresupposing:sentences will be associatedwith potential presuppositions, utterances with actual presuppositions.) The cancelling mechanism works in this way. The context here consistsof a set of propositions that are mutually known by participants, or which would at least be acceptedto be non-controv€rsial. Participantstherefore bring to a conversationor discoursesome set of accepted propositions: e.g. 'France is a republic', 'the second world war ended in 1945', 'Joe Bloggs lives in Liverpool', or whatever.When they converse,participants augment the context by the addition of the propositions they express.tsCrucial to Gazdar's theory is that this augmentation should proceed in a specificorder: phr.scd only in tcrms of sn i'dividual " Acrually, Cazdar's formulstion i3 3p€aker'scommitm€nt to whct his utteranc€scn tail, imp licateand p rcsuppose, bur thcrc is: natural. though not n€ccssarily simplc. eitension to what it Jointly essumed by p.rticip.nts. 212
Kinds oJ exPlanation
to the context, then 6rst the entailments of what are said are added presuppositions' the finally only and the conversationalimplicatures, are added inferences an utterance's 14ore precisely the order in which i s that i n ( r 85) : (r85)
r. 23. 4.
the entailments of the uttered sentence S t}i.eclautal conversational implicatures of S the s.a/a/ conversational implicatures of S the presuppositions of S
The ordering is important becausethere is a crucial constraint put on the addition of new propositions to the context: at each step, th€ additional proposition may only be added if it is consistentwith all the propositionsalready in the context, It is essentialto the formallzation of the theory, although it will not concern us here, that all potential implicatures and presuppositions are epistemically modified - i.e. what is implicated or presupposedas the proposition p on other theories, will here have the form 'the speakerknows that 2' or symbolically, KP. Some exampleswill quickly demonstratehow cancellationof both conversationalimplicatures and presuppositionsworks. In Chapter 3 we showed that the conditional and the disjunction have the clausal implicatures indicated in ( I86): (,86)
of the form if p thertq or p or q will clausallyimplicate A sentence p, P Pq,P - 4} (whereP, is to be read'lt is consistent {Pp, with all the speakerknows that P')
We also showed that the assertion of a low point on a scale will implicate that a higher point on the scale does not hold, as in the exampl esin ( r 87) : (r87)
someof the boysimplicates'K(not all of the boys)' ,€z 6oyJimplicates 'K(not elevenor more)' the co;feewas uarm implicates 'K(the coffee was not hot)'
Now given the ordering in (I85) and the consistencyrequrrement' (r8q) will not have the same implicatures as ( r88) (as we noted in 3.2.+ )| (r88) (r8c)
Someof the police,if not all of them, beat up the protester Some of the police beat up the protester
Only ( r89) implicates ( I9o), and this is accounted for by the fact that zr 3
4.4 Kixds oJ exqlanation
Prctuppositiort (r88) has the additional clausal implicature (due to the parenthetical conditional) (r9r) which is added to the context before the scalar implicature (r9o). But (r9o) is not consistentwith (Igt ), so when we come to add (r9o) to the context, we cannot, due to the fact that (t9r) has already been added. The implicature in (I9o) is therefore rejected. (rqo) (r9r)
The speakerknows that not all of the police beat up the protester It is consistentwith all the speakerknowsthat all of the police beat up the protester
Notice that if there had been an inconsistententailment, as in (tqz), that also would block (I9o), which could not therefore be added to the context: (rcz)
Someofthe police,and in factall of them,beatup the protester
If we now turn to p.esupposition cancellation,we seethat the same mechanismswork. Thus, (r93) potentially presupposes(t94) due ro the definite description in the consequent,but this is cancelledby the clausal implicature of the conditional construction, here (r95): (r93) (r94) (rSS)
lf there is a King of France,the King of Francedoesn'tany longerlive in Versailles The speakerknows that ther€ existsa King of France It is consistentwith all the speakerknows that there ts not a King of France
For (r95) will be added to the context prior to the potential presupposition(r94) and thus will block the addition of the latter, which is inconsistent with (rqS). The advantagesof this mode of presupposition-blocking over the one utilized by Karttunen & Peters' theory become especially clear when one considers disjunctions and conditionals: on Karttunen & Peters' theory the filtering rules treat the clausesasymmetrically with the difficulties pointed out above in connection with (r79), but Gazdar's theory makesthe order of constituentsirrelevant to the cancellationprocess. Gazdar's theory also handles the casesof overt presupposition denial very straightforwardly. A sentencelike (r96) will entail (r97), which will be addedto the context prior to the potentialpresupposition (t98) so ensuring that the latter is cancelled: (rS6) 2 r4
John doesn'tregretfailing, becausein fact he passed
0gZ) (rS8)
John Passed John failed
As a result this theory is the only extant presuppositional theory that can handle sentenceslike (rgg): (rss)
The King of Francedoesn'texist
(I99)' Other theorieswould commit their authors, given the truth of and of France to the inconsistent propositions that there is a King there isn't. In precisely the same way Gazdar's theory handles those caseslike (zoo), where a presupposition is cancelled simply by background knowledge: (zoo) (zor)
Kissinger ceasedto be Secretaryof Statebefore the third wo'ld war started The third world war started
For the presupposition (zor ) will simply not be added to the context if it is inconsistent with what is already there. It is for this reason that Gazdar car. happily dispense with Karttunen's plugs -for example, the presupposition due to realize in (zoz) will be rejected not because it falls under a verb of saying but because we happen to know it ts not the case: (zo2\
The student said that he hadn't realized that Wales was a republic
Similatly, for those sentencesabove like (8+)-(q6) where referencc ts made to contextual assumptions in calculating the presuppositions of a complex sentence, only Gazdar's theory allows such reference to be made. Thus the presupposition of the beJote'clausein (2o3) ls cancelledjust because it is inconsistent with what we already take for granted (namely, that people without heads do not continue to do things): (zos)
King Charles I had his head cut off half an hour before he finished filing through the bars
But the great strength of Gazdar's system is that while handling the casesof contextual defeasibility, it predicts correctly the solutions to the projection problem for sentencesof arbitrary complexity, There are relatively few counter-examples known (but see Gazdar r979a: I 56-7, also Soames, ry19 66o). Given the complexities of the ^nd 2r5
PrcsuPPotition projection problem, this suggeststhat there must at least be something correct about Gazdar's solution. It contrastshere with the Karttunen & Peters' solution using the categories of plugs,filtets and ioles, where no independent reasons for the existence of these categories can be advanced, and where the imperfect filtering conditions also have an unmotivated and ad hoc existence. The two theories discussed above are the most developed theories of presupposition that deal with the projection problem in anything like an adequate way- However, they are by no means the only directions in which the best solutions may ultimately be found, In particular, both theories assumethat each presupposition-trigger will have its own presupposition recorded in the lexicon or elsewhete.A theory that would be preferable, if it could be found, would not treat presuppositionsitem-by-item in this way, but rather would predict the presuppositions f.om the semantic content of presuppositiontriggers, by means of general pragmatic principles. There are a number of indicstions that such a more powerful explanation will ultimately prove correct. First, there always seem to be intuitively close relations between the semantic conient of presuppositiontriggers and their corresponding presuppositions. In this way, presuppositionscontrast with conventionalimplicatures,which often have no close telation to the semantic content of the linguistic items that give rise to them (e,g. in Javanese there is a word prtaag that means 'banana', but conventionally implicates that the addresseeis sociallysupe orto the speaker).Secondly,the item-by-it€m treatment suggeststhat presuppositionsare attachedto presupposition-triggers merely by arbitrary convention. In that case'there would be no reason to expect presupposition-triggers in different languagesto be parallel in any way; however, even in languagesof quite different families, the linguistic items that give rise to presuppositions seem to be preciselyparallel, in so far as the syntax and semanticsof particular languagesallow (seee.g. Annamalai & Levinson, in press). It seems reasonable, then, to hope thai some theory of presupposition can be found that, given a trigger's semantic specifcation, will predict its presuppositions. In order to show that alternativetheoriescould be viable, it is useful to appf y what we may call the re-allocation programme, a programme independentofany particular theory of presuppositionand a sensible preliminary to any such theory. The 6rst step is to assumethat part ' 2 ro
4.4 Kitrds of ex,lanat;on of the difficulty of formulating adequate theories of presupposition is arises from the fact that what is normally called plesupqositiot quit€ distinct and differ€nt of collection heterogeneous a actually phenomena, some perhaps semantic, others different varieties of pragmatic implication. The task then is to try to reduce presupposition io other kinds of infcrence, in particular to semantic entailment snd matters of logical form on the one hand, and to conversational implicatures, conventional implicatures, felicity conditions and the like on the other. If this reductionist programme leaves no residue, then the notion p/esuPpotition wo|uld be successfully reduced to other more useful concepts. If, on the other hand, some clear cases of pr€suppositional phenomena remain unreducible, then we can formulate a theory of presupposition to handle just these cases. Most theorists have assumed that at least some such re-allocation of the phenomena is due, and have argued sccordingly (for different versions see e.g. Keenan, rgTI; Kempson, lg75; Wilson, 1975; Karttunen & Peters, rg77, rgTg). Karttunen & Peters have argued for total reduction, mostly to conventional implicature, but this is Iittle more than a terminological switch, and displaces other phenomena that seem better thought of as conventional implicatures (see Chapter 3 above). In reality their concept of conventional implicature has largely been fashioned to deal precisely with the class of facts once called presuppositions. More genuine reductionism - in this case mostly to matters of entailment and conversational implicature - has been advocated independently by Atlas (rq7Sb), Kempson (r975), Wilson (rq7S), Bo€r & Lycan (I976), and more recently by Wilson & Sperber (I979) and Atlas & Levinson (r98r). The attraction and initial plausibility of the reduction to matters ofentailment and conversational implicature can be gauged best from some examples. If we take the cleft construction as in (zo4) and its associated presupposition as in (2o5): (2o4) (2o5)
lt was his coat that John lost John lost something
we can seeimmediately that in fact (2o4) entails (2o5) - in all worlds in which John loseshis coat it will also be true that he'losessomething. It is therefore only necessaryto invoke the notion of presupposition in the negativecases,as in (zo6): (zo6)
It wasn't his coat that John lost
4.4 Kinds of ex,lanation
Presupposition which still continues to pragmarically imply (zo5). But here we could say that the implication is in fact a conversational implicature, of tng generalized variety. To show this, we must produce a Gricean argument of the standard sort that will show that in order to preserve the assumption of co-operation, a hearer of (zo6) must assume (zo5). The argument might go roughly as follows: r. (2o7)
(2o8)
(2o9) (? rq)
The speakerhas said (zo6), and not the simpler (zo7): John didn't lose his coat The logical form of (zo6) might be roughty as in (zo8): (lr (Lost (j, x) & (x: jcoat)\\ Like mostnegativesentences(zo8) is not very informative; therefore if the speaker is co-operating it is likely that he intended to convey more than what the relatively uninformative statement actually means The utterance (zo6) would be relatively informative if the speaker meant in fact to convey one ofthe following related propositions: 3r (- 1-o", (j, x) & (r = jcoat)) 3r (Lost fu, x) & (x + jcoar\ But (zo9) is more directly expressedby (zr r),
( 2r r )
It was his coat that John didn't lose so if the speakerhad meant that he should, by the maxim of Manner, have said it directly; since he didn't, (zro) is left as the more informative reading of (zo6). To preserve the assumption of co-operation, the relatively uninformative sentence (206) should be read as (zro), which entails the'presupposition'(zo5); the speakerhas done nothing to stop me so reasoning, so this is what he must intend to convey
An argument of this sort can be faulted in various ways. It is based in fact on the principle of infotmativeness (outlined in 3.2.4) rather than on Grice's maxims, and it fails to explain why the cleft sentence was used in the first place. Moreover such an approach to presupposition in general would be both ad /rocand piecemeal: for each kind of presupposition-trigger an argument of this sort will have to be made, An approach based on generalprinciples that would apply to z r8
prcferable if it a large range of presuppositional phenomena would be could be found. Here two recent suggestions deserve mention' The first, advanced by Witson & Sperber (rq7g), is that semantic representations should be enriched in such a way that simple pragmatic principles interacting with them will predict what is pres.,pposed. They suggest that all the entailments of a sentence are par; rather an adequate semantic representation would not on " an ordered set of entailments, divided into two sets of consist baclground and foreground entailments' The actual ordering of entailments is logical: if entailment A in turn entails entailment B, then A is ordered before B. However, a sentence may have a number of such chains of entailment, and the imPortance of one such chain, and the distinction between foreground and background entailments' is determined not by logical considerations, but by grammatical form (including stress). For example, (z I z) with heavy stress on Sa/alr, will determine the focal scale (or chain of entailments) in (2r3): (2rz\ (zrl\
John is married to Sarai a. John is married to Sarah (fotegroutd) b. John is married to someone(rst bachgrouadentailme'rt) c. John has some Property d. Something is the case
This scaleisobtained by substituting existentially quantified variables (or someone,someaiirg) for constituents in the sentence, starting with the focus constituent, here Sa/ai (seeChomsky, I972). Now, the first entailment obtained by substitution of a variable for the focus (here 6), is the 6rst background entailment; all those cntailed by it (here, c and d) are also part ofthe background. All entailments ordered above the background, here only a, are part of the foreground. Given thts much semantic structure, we can then bring a simple pragmatic ru[e to bear: the background entailments of a sentence are assumed to be not relevant in the context. What is assumed to be relevant, and thus the poin, of saying thc sentence, is whatever information has to be added to the background to obtain the foreground - namely the entailments ordered above the background (here a). Thus the point of saying (zrz) would normally be to assert that it is Sarah that is John's spouse, against an assumed background that John is married to someone. Hence, under denial or questioning, the background will continueto be assumed,and only the foreground denied orquestioned. In short, so-called' presuppositions' arejust backgroundentailments. zr 9
4.1 Kinds of exPlanalion
Presupposition For example, (zr+) will have the same structure of entailments as (2 | z ): (2141 It is Sarahthat John is married to This semantic structure is again determined by grammatical structure - here by the cleft construction rather than by heavy stress. So the allegedpresuppositionof clefts is simply the first background entailment, here (z r 3b) above. The idea of enriching semantic representationsso that pragmatic principles can interact with them in complex ways seems the correct theoretical move. However, the use of entailment in this way will again raise all the problems that undermined semantic theories of presupposition, namely the joint difficulties of defeasibility in linguistic and extra-linguistic context, and survival in modal and opaque contexts.where entailments cannot survive. We will not willingly re-invoke these difficulties if any alternativecan be found. And if Wilson & Sperber wish to reireat to an account in terms of conversational implicatures in complex sentences,then they have not shown us how to do this. The other approach, advocatedby Atlas & Levinson (r98t), is to take much more seriously the role of logical form (or the structure of a semantic representation)in the production of pragmatic inferences.We have already argued (in 3.2.2) that conversationalimplicaturesare sensitiveto the detailsof logical form; sentenceswith the same or similar truth conditions, but different logical forms, can have quite different conversational implicatures. But on what grounds, other than predicting the right entailment relations, should we hypothesizea particular logical form for a sentence? Perhaps these: (a) it should capture the intuitively significant semantic structure of the s€ntence,(b) it should accuratelypredict the pragmatic inferences it will generatein context. Amongst the aspectsof structure in (a) might be the identificationofwhat a sentenceis a6ozt(Putnam, r 958). (What a sentence is about might then have a close relation to pragmatic notions of what is gloer or assumed in discourse.) For example, there seems to be an intuition that what a sentence is about is indicated by its grammatical structure; and that this has some relation to its logical structure. In simple sentences what a sentence is about seems to coincide with the logical subject: thus Mary slept would be about Mary. We might now try and regiment our logical fotms fot complex sentences so that what such sentences are about eoincides with their Iogical subjects. Such a line leads to quite 2Z O
complex logical forms, and yet these do seem to intuitions about the significant semantic stlucture of example, the logical form hypothesized for the cleft can be argued on detailed semantic and pragmatic bt6): (zts) (z16)
capture some sentences' For sentence (zt 5) grounds to be
It wasJohn that MarY kissed ,lx(r: John) (TxKiss(MarY,r))
We have made use here of two complex logical devices: larnbda' extractiot!, which can be used to construct complex properties (Allwood, Andersson& Dahl, I97? : I55) and th€ group- or gatnmaoperator, which constructs collective terms, so that 7rA(x) reads 'a group of individuals r that have the property A' Thus (z16) as a whole reads 'A group kissed by Mary has the property of being identical to John'. The logical sutrject is thus 'A g.oup kissed by Mary', and this is what the sentenceis aDoat;this correspondsto the surface structure clause (oae(s)\that Mary kissed' Such a logical form will entail that Mary kissedsomeone,and that Mary kissedJohn, but it does not have exactly the same truth conditions as the unclefted just John). Mary hissed John (since it entails that Mary kissed We now invoke a generalpragmatic principle: ifa sentenceis about ,, then the existenceor actuality of , can be assumed to be noncontroversial or given, unless there are specific indications or assumptionsto the contrary. The cleft sentence(zl5) is about its logical subject in (zr6): those kissed by Mary. This logical subject is responsible for the entailment 'Mary kissed someone'. For positive cleft sentences we now have the following account: such sentencesentail their alleged presuppositions, but since these propositions are derived from what the sentence is about, and are thus assumed to be given, they will normally not be the main point expressed by asserting such sentences. For the negative cleft, as in (z I7): (zrl)
lt wasn'tJohn that Mary kissed
the accountwould run as follows. The logical form of (z I7) is (zl8)' where negation is (as genetally in natural languages)external or wide-scope.2' Such logical forms with wide-scope negation are not t' This is the norm.l assumption madc by p'dgacl'6, 'altical to m.ximally simplify $mantics by d€v€lopins prasmatics However, rather more complex approaches to n€8.tion re q u i re d
i.e. the attempt (se€ Colc' r98I). mav
in fact be
see Allas, 1977, 1979.
221
PresuPPosition very informative: the logical form of (z17) merely statesthar (zr5) i8 not the c8se, without indicatihg how it fails to be true. Howevsl, there is again a general pragmatic principle, the principle of informaaiveness (discussed in Chapter 3), which legitimates the interpretation of wide-scope negation as narrow-scope or predicate negation. The utterance of (z17) with the logical form (zr8) will therefore have the prefered interpretation indicated in (zr9): (zr8)
(zrC)
- (,{x(r: John)(TrKiss(Mary,*))) i.e. 'lt is not th€ casethat a 8roup thar Mary kissed has the propertyof beioSidenticalto John' ,lr{r g John)(yrKiss(Mary,*)) i.e. 'A group that Mary kissedhas the propertyof not being identicalto John'
Once again, then, the statement will be about its logical subject, 'one(s) who Mary kissed' (in general, if F(a) is about a, - F(a) rs about a). Now since saying (zr7) implicates (zr9), and (zr9) has the logical subject outside the scope of negation, the implicature (z r g) entails that Mary kissed someone. So, in the negative cleft, the proposition that Mary kissed someone will be entailed by an implicature, and thus itself implicated. Moreover, it is the logical subject (what the sentence is about) that is responsible for this implicature, so the proposition 'Mary kissedsomeone' will once again be assumed to be given. An approachof this sort is meant to have generalapplication,along the following lines. First we motivate the setting up of complex logical forms by making them iesponsible for capturing aspectsof significant semantic structure. Then we examine how these enriched semantic representations interact with pragmatic principles of interpretation,not only of Grice's sort, but of a sort that actually add information to the semanticcontent of the sentence(e.g.the principle of informativeness). Here we look for general processes: for example, the relation between logical subjects, 'aboutness', and a preferred interpretation in which what a sentence is about can be presumed. The hope is that by enriching both semantic representations and pragmatic principles in this way, they will interact in a more intimare manner, and that this interaction will be seen to be responsiblein a systematic way for the appa.ently ad hoc inferences called presuppositions. There is one immediate objection to any such reduction of pre222
4.4 Kinds of explanation supposition to entailment and implicature: unlike conversational implicatures, presuppositions appear to be detachable in Grice's sense(see 3. t and 3. z. r ), That is, whereas in the caseof implicatures it is generally impossible to find another way to say the same thing that lacks the same implicatures, in the case of presuppositions the inferences seem to be attached directly to certain aspects of the surface form of linguistic expressions - e.g. to the cleft construction itself. In fact, though, the difference is more apparent than real. Consider, for example, the verb regret which is claimed to have, as an arbitrary additional aspect of its meaning, the presupposition that its complement is true. If the presupposition was really detachable it ought to b€ possible to find different ways of making the same statement that lacked the presupposition in question. But this is not easy. Consider for example all the near-paraphrases in (zzo): (zzo)
John b . John John d . John e . John f. John John
regrets that he ate all the pudding is sorry that he ate all the pudding tepents of having eaten all the pudding is unhappy that he ate all the pudding feels contrite about eating all the pudding feels penitent about eating all tbe pudding feels remorse about eatitrg all the pudding
All of these, and all of their negative counterparts, continue to presuppose what the sentence with /eg/e, in it does, namely: (22t)
John ate all the pudding
If readers now return to the list of presuppositional phenomena above, and armed with a thesaurus try to find paraphrases, they will discover that it is in fact very difncult to obtain expressions with similar meanings that lack the presuppositions in question. And where exceptionally they can be found, it may often be because the logical forms in question are in fact quite different enough to trigger distinct implicatures, The reductionist could therefore claim that presuppositions share twoveryimportantfeatureswithconversationalimplicatures - namely defeasibility and non-detachability. The only major distinctive characteristic of presuppositions that remains is the projection problem, the behaviour of presuppositions in complex sentenc€s.But this distinction too can easily be eroded, as some examples will
4.5 Conclusions
PresuPPosiliorl indicate. Firstly, survival under modal operators seemsto be a feature shared by both presuppositions and implicatures. Thus (zzz\ and (zz3), where the latter is (zzz) embedded under a modal, can share the same implicature (zz4): (zzz) (zzi (zz+)
John has some of the tools lt's possiblethat John has some of the tools (Speakerknows thal) John has not got all of the tools
If we then turn to the most specific property of presupposition projection, namely filtering in conditionals and disjunctions,we find again that implicatures can mimic presuppositions. Consider, for example: (zzi
John has someof the tools,if not all of them
where the consequent 1: Qzz\) implicates (zz+) but the whole sentencedoes not have this implicature. But this is precisely the circumstanceunder which presuppositionsare 6ltered, as indicated in the filtering condition in ( r 37) above. Or consider (zz6): (226\
Either John has all of the tools, or he has some of them
where the seconddisjunct implicates(224)but the sentenceasa whole lacksthis implicature. But this is preciselythe condition under which presuppositionsare filtered in disjunctions too (see( r 38) above).So it really is far from clear that presuppositions are distinguished from conversationalimplicatures by their behaviour in compound and complex sentences. The reductionist prograrnme thus remains open. The main difficulties that remain are establishing sufficiently rich logical forms to trigger implicatures that will effectively model presuppositions, and some of the more esoteric parts of the projection problem. Recollect, for e:qample, that Gazdar uses implicatures to cancel presuppositionsand in this way obtains remarkably accurate predictions of presuppositional behaviour in complex sentences. Horr can the reductionist usethe sameapparatus,given that he would have to use implicatures to cancel implicatures? In fact it is possiblein a very large range of casesto adapt Gazdar's mechanisms,allowing entailments to cancel implicatures and allowing implicatures due to higher constructions to cancel inconsistent implicatures that arise from embedded clauses.Thus in (zz7) the implicature from the embedded sentence(zz8) is (zzg): (22j)
Someof the boys wen! to the party, if not all
tzzS) iz"
Some of the boys went to the party Not all of the boys went to the party
but this is cancelled - on this theory - becausethere is an inconsistent implicature from the matrix sentence, namely (z3o) due to the conditional construction: It is consistentwith all the speakerknows that it is not the case that (229)is true
(4o)
This principle of 'mattix wins' works extremely well for the majority of cases. lt is too early to know whether or not this approach, or something similar, is ultimately viable. Conclusions We began this Chapter by noting that philosophical and linguistic treatments ofpresupposition deal with a very much narrower range of phenomena than a.e included within the ordinary language senseofthe term. The general pragmatic effects offoregrounding and backgrounding information within a sentence can be achieved In many ways that are not presuppositional in this narrow sense,e.g. by changing word order, utilizing syntactic subordination, prosodic emphasis or the emphatic particles provided by many languages. There is considerable overlap, but no equivalence, between presuppositional accounts and accounts in terms ofthe topic /comment distinction (not reviewed in this book; see e.g. Clark & Haviland, rg77; Gundel, ry77; Foley & Van Valin, in press).Yet even withtn this narrow scope, we have shown that there are considerable problemsto beovercome.Aboveall, if, asseemslikely, presuppositions are not correctly treated as inferences associated with linguistic elements item-by-item in a non-predictable way, then at present we have no adequate theory at all. In that case, what we need is a theory that predicts presuppositions from the semantic specihcation of linguistic expressions.Such a theory would be an essentiallyhybrid account: presuppositions would not be Jzi geteis, but rather the result of complex interactions between semantics and pragmatics. But to model such interactions we need to know considerably more about both the structure of semantic representations and the pragmatic principles that interact with them. We conclude that p(esupposition remains,ninety years after Frege's remarks on the subject, still only paltially understood, and an important ground for the study of how semantics and pragmatics interact. 4.5
225
5.r PhilosoPhical background
5 Speechacts
Introductionr Of all the issuesin the general theory of languageusage, speech act theory has probably aroused the widest interest, Psychologists,for example,have suggestedthat the acquisition of the concepts underlying speech acts may be a prerequisite for the acquisitionof languagein general(seee.g, Bruner, t 975 ; Bates,r 976), literary critics have looked to speechact theory for an illumination of textual subtletiesor for an understandingof the nature of literary genres (seee.g. Ohmann, r97r; Levin, r976), anthropologistshave hoped to find in the theory some account of the nature of magical spells and ritual in general (see e.g, Tambiah, r968), philosophers have seen potential applications to, amongsr other things, the status ofethical statements(seee.g. Searle,r 969: Chapter 8), while linguists have seenthe notions of speechact theory as variously applicableto problems in syntax (see e.g. Sadock, r974), semantics (see e.g. Fillmore, r97ra), second language learning (see e.g. Jakobovitz & Gordon, I974), and elsewhere.Meanwhile in linguistic pragmatics, speech acts remain, along with presupposition and implicature in particular, one of the central phenomena that any general pragmatic theory must account for. Given this widespread interest, there is an enormous literature on the subject, and in this Chapter we cannot review all the work within linguistics, let alone the large and technical literature within philosophy, from which (like all the other concepts we have so far reviewed)the basic theoriescome. Rather, what is attempted here rs a brief sketch of the philosophical origins, and a laying out of the different positionsthat have been taken on the c.ucial issues,together 5,o
I P!.ts of this Chapter are Used on an €arli€r r€view a.ticle (Levinson, r98o). 220
with indications of some general problems that all theories of speech scts have to face. Philosophical background Issues of truth and falsity have been of central interest throughout much of the discussion of deixis, presupposition and implicature, Indeed those issues derive much of their interest from the way in which they remind us of the strict limitations to what can be captured in a truth-conditional analysis of sentence meaning. Nevertheless in the r93os there flourished what can now be safely treated as a philosophical excess, namely the doctrine of logical positivism, a central tenet of which was that unless a sentence can, at least in principle, be oetifed (i.e. tested for its truth or falsity), it *as strictly speaking meaningless.Of course it followed that most ethical,aestheticand literary discourses,not tomention mostev€ryday utterances,were simply meaningless.But rather than being seen as a reductio ad absurdum, such a conclusion was viewed by proponents of togical positivism as a positively delightful result (seethe marvellously prescriptive work by Ayer (1936)), and the doctrine was pervasivein philosophical circles at the time. It was this movement (which Wittgenstein had partly stimulated in his Tractatus Logico(r9zr )) that the later Wittgenstein was activelyattacking Philosophicus in Philosophical lw)estigations with the well known slogan " meaning is use" (r958: para. 43) and the insistencethat utterancesare only explicable in relation to the activities, or language'garnes, in which 5.r
they play a role. It was in this same period, when concern with verifiability and distrust of the inaccuraciesand vacuitiesof ordinary languagewere paramount, that Austin launched his theory of speech acts. There are strongparallelsbetweenthe IaterWittgenstein'semphasison language usage and language-gamesand Austin's insistence that "the total speechact in the total speech situation is t}l.eonly actual phenomenon which, in the last resort, we are engagedin elucidating" (196z:. r47). NeverthelessAustin appearsto have been largely unawate of, and probably quite uninfluenced by, Wittgenstein's later work, and we may treat Austin's theory as autonomous 2 tq68: sqz, who rrace Austin'3 id..s ' See Furberg, rqz r : sofr and Passmorc, rather to a loos .srablish.d A'istot€lian tradition of conccrn for ordinrry language usage at Oxfo'd, wh€rc Ausrin worked (wittSensicin w.s at
St)eechacts
5. t PhilosoPhical bachground
In the set of lecturcs that were posthumously published as How To Do Things With Words,sAustin set about demolishing, in his milg and urbane way, the view of language that would place truth conditions ascentral to languageunderstanding.His method wasthis. First, he noted that some ordinary languagedeclarativesentences, contrary to logical positivist assumptions,are not apparently used with any intention of making true or false statements.These seem to form a special class,and are illustrated below: (r)
bet yotr six pence it will rain tomorrow hereby christen this ship the H.M.S. Flounder declare war on Zanzibat apologize dub thee Sir Walter object sentence you to ten years of hard labour bequeath you my Sansovino give my word warn you that trespasserswill be prosecuted
The peculiar thing about thesesentences,accordingto Austin, is thar they are not used just to say things, i.e. describestatesof affairs,but rather actively to do things.aAfter you've declaredwar on Zanzibar, or dubbed Sir Walter, or raisedan objection, the world has changed in substantialways. Further, you cannot assess such utte.ancesastrue or false- as is illustrated by the bizarre nature of the following exchanqes: Cambridse). Both philosophers worled our rh€;r l.r€r thcories ar sbour the same time, the late rsros (iudeing from thc cleim in the inFoduction to Austin's basic work How To Do Thiags Wih tt'or&, dcliver.d as lecrur€s fo r th e la st tim e in r 9sS , snd not publ i sh€dri l l r962). Wi ttsenstei n'si deas in ihe late rgjos were only av.ilabl. in manuscript form (see Furb.rs, rez' : 5'). I This is rhe central sourcc for Ausrin's rh.ory of sp€cch acrs, but sec rlso Au stin , r 9 7 o b , r 9 7 r . H i s vi ew s on w ord-m€{ni ns, truth and proposi ti onal content - which do not ell m.sh closely wirh his rh€ory ofspeech ecrs - can be found in Chapters 3, S &nd 6, .e.p€ctively, of Austin, rg?oa- For comm.nt!rieson Austin's *ork, thc rcad..should s.e thecoll€ction in F.nn, 1969, and the monogr.phic treatments in Craham, 1977 .nd €spe.i.lly r tlere, as so often in rhc literature on spcech acrs, ir is tacirty assumed rhat w€ are nor considc.inq n.talingu;tti. uses of sentcnces. as i. linSuisrjc €iamples, or othe. speci.l us€s in which senrencesdo nor clrry rheir full praSmatic force or int.rpretation, as in novels, plays and nur*ry rhymes.
228
(2)
(3)
A: B; A: B:
I secondthe motion That's false I dub thee Sir Walter Too true
Austin termed thesepeculiarand specialsentences,and the utterances realizedby them, perfortnatives, and contrasted them to statements' assertionsand utteranceslike them, which he called constatives. Austin then \\'ent on to suggestthat although, unlike constatives, performativescannot be true or false (given their specialnature, the questionof truth and falsity simply does not arise), yet thcy can go wrong. He then set himself the task of cataloguing all the ways in which they can go wrong, or be'unhappy', or infelicitous as he put it. For instance, suppose I say l.rzrsten,hit ship the Imqetial Flagship Mao, I n:.aynot succeed in so christening the vessel if, for instance, it is already named otherwise, or I am not the appointed namer, or there are no witnesses,slipways,bottles of champagne,etc. Successfully naming a ship requires certain institutional arrangements, without which the action that the utte.ance attempts to perform is simply null and void. On the basis of such different ways in which a perf
A. (i) There must be a conventionalprocedurehaving a conventionaleffect (ii) The circumstances and personsmust be apPropriate, as specifiedin the procedure B.'l'he proceduremust be executed(i) correctly and (ii) completely C. Oftcn, (i) the pcrsonsmust have the requisitethoughts, feelingsand intentions,as speciFedin the procedure,and (ii) if consequentconduct is specified,then the relcvant partiesmust so do
As evidence of the existence of such conditions, consider what happenswhen some of them are not ful6lled. For example,suppose, as a British citizen, I say to my wife: (5)
I herebydivorceyou
I will not thereby achievea divorce, becausethere simply is no such procedure (as in A (i)) whereby merely by uttering (5) divorce can 229
5. r PhilosoPhical background
Speech acts be achieved.In conttast,in Muslim culturesthere is such a procedure, whereby the uttering of a sentencewith the import of (5) three times consecutivelydoes thereby a^d ipsoJacto constitute a divorce. As an illustration of a failure of condition A (ii), consider a clergymin baptizing the wrong baby, or the right baby with the wrong name (Albert for Alfred, say), or consider the case of one head of statq welcoming another, but addressingthe attendantbodyguard in error. As for condition B (i), the words must be the conventionallycorrect ones - the responsein (6) simply will not do in the Church of England marrlage ceremony: ( 6)
Cur at e:
Wilt thou have this woman to thy wedded wife ... and, forsaking all othcr, keep thee only unto
her, so long as ye both shall liveI Bridegroom: Yes The bridgegroom must say / toi1l.Further, the procedure must be complete as required by B (ii): if I bet you six pence that it will rain tomorrow, then for the bet to take effect you must ratify the arrangement with You're o'' or something with like effect - or in Austin's terminology, there must be satisfacto.y uptake. Finallr, violations of the C conditions are insincerities:to advisesomeoneto do somethingwhen you really think it would be advantageousfor you but not for him, or for a juror to 6nd a defendantguilty when he knows him to be innocent, would be to violate condition C (i). And to promise to do something which one has no intention whatsoeverof doing would be a straightforward violation of C (ii). Austin notes that these violations are not all of equal stature. Violationsof A and B conditionsgiveriseto misfires ashe puts it - i.e. the intended actionssimply fail to come off. Violationsof C conditions on the other hand are abuses, not so easily detectedat the time of the utterance in question, with the consequencethat the action is performed, but infelicitously or insincerely. On the basis of these observationsAustin declaresthat (a) some sentences,performatives,are special: uttering them doesthings, ano does not merely say things (report states of affairs); and (b) these performative sentencesachieve their correspondingactions because linking the words to institutional there are specific conz.tentions procedures,Performatives are, if one likes, just rather special sorts in terms of of ceremony. And unlike constatives,which are assessed 210
assessedas felicitous or truth and falsity, performativescan only be conditions are met or felicity their whether to according infelicitous, not. wedge But Austin is playing cunning: given this much, he has his home' it taps he systematically and into the theory of language that warned be should Wotds With Readers of How To Do Things ls what so that argument, the there is an internal evolution to what starts Indeed proposed at the beginning is rejected by the end' e6 as a theory about some special and peculiar utterances kinds pertains to all Derformatives- ends up as a generaltheory that of u,,"run""". Consequentlythere are two crucial sliding definitions or concepts:firstly, there is a shift from the view that performatives pragmatic are a specialclassof sentenceswith peculiar syntactic and properties, to the view that there is a general class of performative (the old that includes both explicit performatives ,l,r"."n"." lots including the latter performatives, implicit and class) familiar a shift from is there all.5 Secondly, if not of utterances, of other kinds the dichotomy performative/constative to a general theory of illocutionary acts ofwhich the variousperformativesand constatives are just specialsub-cases.Let us take these two shifts in order, and ", as he review Austin's arguments for the theoretical " sea-change P U tS l t.
If the dichotomy between performativesand constativesis to bear rhe important load that Austin indicates, namely the distinction in utterancesand thoseassessed betweentruth-conditionally assessed i e' the difference possible to tell be it had better then felicity, of terms to characterizeperformativesin independent terms. Austin therefore teasesus with an attempt to characterizeperformatives in linguistic terms. He notes that the paradigm cases,as in (I)Ebove' seemto have the following properties: they are 6rst person indicative active sentencesin the simple presenttense.This is hardly surprising, since, if in utteting a performative the speakeris concurrently performing an action, we should expect just those properties. Thus we get the : Austin docs not oppose thc terms r.nr.n.. rnd !rl./arc. in the wtv donc in p.rJo'natio. utt.to"c.t t.,ten .' this b@k - hc talks sbo,r p.tfo,nativ. ^nd pr€try much intcrchangeably (althouSh hc not.s thal nol all unerances are in so fa' I it is p$sibl. Austin, re62: 6). In our terminolosy, sentcnces b€ing p€rformed by sPeci6c typ€s !o charactcrize p€rfotmative utterrnces.s of scnt.nc€ it mak€s sense to talk about performative scntcnc.s too - this b.in8
less obviously
possible fot implicit
P€rfotm.tives-
5.r PhilotoPhical bachgrouad
Speech aets contrast betweenthe following sentences:only the 6rst can be uttered performatively. ( ?)
a. I bet you 6ve pounds it'll rain tomorrow b. I am betting you five pounds it'll rain tomotro* I betted you five pounds it'll rain tomorrow6 d. He bets you five pounds it'll rain tomorrow
The progressive aspect in (7b) renders that (most probably) q reminder, as does the third person in (7d), while the past tensein (7c) indicatesa report; none ofthese constativesseems,then, to be capabls of doing betting, unlike the performative (7a). However, convincing though this paradigm is at first sight, there are plenty of other uses of first person indicative active sentencesin the simple present, for example: (8)
I now beat the eggstill fluffy
which can be said in demonstration,simply asa report ofa concurrent action. So we shall need other criteria as well if we are to isolate performatives alone. Here one might fall back on a vocabulary definition - only some verbs appear to be usablein this performative syntactic frame with the special property of performing an action simply by being uttered. To distinguish the performative simple present from other kinds, one can note that only the performative usage can co-occur with the adverb heteby; and thus one can isolate out the performative verbs by seeing whether they will take hereby:
(e)
a. I hereby declare you Mayor of Casterbridge b. ?I hereby now beat the eggs till fluffy c, ?I hereby jog ten miles on Sundays
Declate is shown thereby to be a performative verb, while 6eat and tua are cleatly not. So now we can take all these criteria together: performative utterances are identifiable because they have the form of first person indicative active sentences in the simple present with one of a delimited set of performative verbs as the main verb, which will collocate with the adverb AereDy. However that won't quite do either. Consider (ro)-could thrs performative not be expressedequally well as (rr)? Or (rz) as (r3), o r e v e n (r4 )? ' Somc vari€rics of Enslish hrvc past tcnsc 6cr; .e.ders finding (7c) odd may try substitutina dtd ,.r for 6?tt.d.
( ro) (r t) lr 2)
(rr) (r+)
I hereby warn you You are hereby warned | 6nd you guilty of doing it You did it Guilty!
go But if that is so, then the grammatical properties of performatives deGnition just vocabulary the back on fall we Nor can board. by the alone, for performative verbs can be used non-performatively as rn (7b) above,and ( I4) contains no verb at all. Moreover even when all the conditions we have collected so far are met' utterances exhibiting these properties are not necessarily performative, as illustrated by
( r s) : (r5)
A: How do you 8et me to throw all these parties? B: I oromise to come
just So what Austin suggests is that explicit Performatives are really specific about relatively specialized ways of being unambiguous or what act you are performing in speaking' lnstead, you can employ cruder devices,less explicit and specific,like mood? (as in 'S"r' it, instead of I otder you to shut it'), or adverbs (as in I'll be therc without (like ThereJore,X fail instead of I Plomise I'll be there), or particles instead of I conehde that n. Qr you can rely on intonation to distinguish It's goiag to charge as a \larning, a question or a protest; or simply allow for contextual disambiguation.Perhaps,he suggests, only " developed" literate cultutes will find much use for the explicit performative. Nevertheless, despite the fact that Austin has now conceded that utterances can be performative without being in the totmal fotm of explicit performatives,he suggeststhat performative verbs are still the best way into a systematic study of all the different kinds of performative utterance. This suggestion seems to rely on the claim that every non-explicit performative could in principle be put into the form of an explicit performative, so that by studying the latter alone we shall not be missing any special varieties of action that can be achieved only by other kinds of utterance. (A principle rei6ed by Searle (1969: I9ff) as a general principle of expressibility " anything that can be meant can be said" ; Austin was, as always, more cautious (see Austin, tg6z: 9r).) The aim is to produce a ! This is Aust;n's
tcrm:
below wc shall distinguish
mood ftom t nt.nce'typ.-
5. r Philosophical bachground
Sqeech acts just systematic classificationof such acts, and Austin sees this as hereby (1962: the r48), using " a matter of "prolonged fieldwork test to extract performative verbs from a dictionary. He produces a tentative five-fold classificationthat he implies emergesnaturally' as genera might if you were collecting butterflies, into which may be sorted the many thousands of performative verbs that he estimates to be in the language. Since many other classificatory schemes have since been advanced, there appears to be little to justify his own, and we shall not recount the detailshere, although the taxonomic issue will recur below. Let us now turn to the other major shift in Austin's work, from the original distinction between constatives and pelformatives to the view that there is a whole family of speech acts of which constatives and the various performativesare eachjust particular members How this substantial change comes about is this. First, the class of performativeshas been, as we have seen,slowly extendedto include implicit petformatiues,s so that the utterance Go l, for example, may be variously performing the giving of advice, or an order, or doing entreating, or daring, according to context. So pretty soon the only kinds of utterances that are not doing actions as well as, ot instead of, simply reporting facts and events, are statementsor constatives' But then ate statementsreally such specialkinds of utterance? May they too not have a performative asPect? Once the doubt is voiced, a few observations will confirm the insubstantial nature of the performative/constativedichotomy' For example, there is clearly no real incompatibility between utterances being truth-bearers, and simultaneously performing actions' For examDle: (r6 )
( n) (r8)
I bequeath you my Raphael All of John's children are monks
Presuppositionfailure is thus, in the domain of constatives,clearly paralleled in the domain of performatives, where it renders the utterance infelicitous or void. Similatly, if one offers advice or delivers a warning, one is obligated to have good grounds for the advice or warning, in just the same way as one should be able to back up an asseftionor constative.Ifthe grounds are feeble,all three kinds of utterance share the same kind of infelicity. Or, considering the C condition, requiring the appropriate feelings and intentions, one can see that just as promises require sincere intentions about future action, so statements require sincere beliefs about the factuality of what is asserted.Hence the closeparallel betweenthe infelicity of(r91 and the infelicity of the statement in (zo) (' Moore's paradox'): t r9, (zo)
I promise to be there, and I have no intention of beins there The cat is on the mat, and I don't believe it
The critic might hold that, nevertheless,truth and felicity are quite different kinds of thing - there may be degrees of felicity and infelicity, but there is only eithet true or false.But Austin points out that statementslike those in (zr) are not so easily thought of in such black and white terms: \2t )
France is hexagonal
Oxford is forty miles from London I warn you the bull will charge
seems simultaneously to perform the action of warning' and to issue a prediction which can be assessed as true or false But, most convincingly, it can be shown that statements (and constatives tn general) are liable to just the infelicities that performatives have been ,o be. Indeed for each of the A, B, and C conditions in (4) "ho*r, above, we can find violations of the sort that rendered performatives thc tcrm primrry to impticit, in otd€r to Gmphasizethc ' Aurtin Prcfcrrcd rsthcr sDccializednaturc of.xplicit Perfotmativ€s ( r962: 69); but th' ustse is no longct cutrcnt 234
void or insincere. For example, take the condition A (ii), requiring that the circumstances and persons must be appropriate for the relevant action to be performed. Then, just as (r7) fails if I do not own a Raphael,so (r8) fails ifJohn doesnot in fact have any children:
One wants to say of such statements that they are more or less. or roughly, true. Austin concludes that the dichotomy between state_ ments, astruth-bearers,and performatives,asaction_performers,can no longer be maintained. After all, is not (zz) a statement in the performative normal form ? (zz)
I state that I am alonc resoonsible
The dichotomy betweenperformativesand constativesis thus reiected in favour of a general full-blown theory of speech acts, in which statements(and constativesin general)will merely be a specialcase. 235
SPeech acts So it is nou' claimed that all utterances, in addition to meaning whatevet they mean, perform specific actions (or ,do things,) through having specific forces, as Austin was fond of saying: Besides the question that has been very much studied in the past as to what a certain utterance meanst there is a further question distinct from this as to what was the Jforce,as we call it, ofthe utterance. We may be quiteclcar what,shut the door, means, but not yet at all clear on the further point as to whether as uttered at a cettain time it was an order, an entreaty ot whatnot. Whatu,eneed besidestheold doctrine about meanlngs is a new doctrine about all the possible forces of utterances, towards the discovery of which our proposed list of explcit performative verbs would be a veiy gieat help. lAustin riToa: 25I ) But if this notion that, in uttering sentences, one is also doing things, is to be clear, we must 6rst clarify in what ways in uttering a;entence one might be said to be performing actions. Austin isolates three basrc senses in which in saying something one is doing something, and hence three kinds of acts that are simultaneously performed: (i)
locutionary aci: the utterance of a sentence wtth determinate sense and reference (ii) illocutionary act: the making of a statement, offer, promise, etc. in u ering a sentence, by virtue of thc conventional _/orcaassociatedwith it (or with irs explicrt performative paraphrase) (iii) perlocurionary act: the bringing about of eflects on the audience bv means of uttering the sentence, such effects being special to the circumstances of utterancc It is of course the second kind, the illocutionary act, that is the focus of Austin's interest, and indeed the term speech acl has come ro rcfer exclusively (as in the title of this Chafter) to that kind of acr. Austin is careful to argue that (i) and (ii) are detachable, and therefore that the-study of meaning may proceed independently, Uut mented by a theory ofillocutionary acts. More "ufpt.troubleso-., it s".m.a to him, was the distinction between (ii) and (iii). Some examples of his will indicate how he intended it to apply:
(zr)
Shoot her!
One may say of this utterance that, in appropriate circumstances,lt had the illocutionary force of, variously, ordering, urging, advisi.,g 216
5. t PhilosoPhical bachgtouad effect of perlocutionary the addressee to shoot her; but the her' persuading,forcing, or frightening the addtesseeinto shooting of effect perlocutionary the have it might added, have iOr, n. -Ln. [ez.) Similarly, the uttetance of (24) may have the frightening effects of itto"",r,lor,"ty force of protesting, but the perlocutionary or to his senses' him bringing or checking the addressee'saction, simply annoYinghim. (24)
You can't do that
In sum, then, the illocutionary act is what is directly achieved by the conventional force associated with the issuance of a certain kind of utterance in accord with aconventional procedure, and is consequently determinate (in principle at least)' In contrast' a perlocutionary act is specific to the circumstances of issuance, and is therefore not conventionallyachievedjustby uttering that particular utterance,and includes all those effects, intended or unintended, often indeterminate, that some particular utteiance in a particular situation may cause.The distinction has looseboundaries,Austin admits, but asan operational test one may see whether one can paraphrase the hypothetical illocutionary force of an uttelance as an explicit performative: if one can,the act performed is an illocutionary act; if not' the act performed is a pgrlocutionary act. One particular problem is that, while one would like to be able to identify the perlocutionary effects with the of what has been said, illocutionary acts too have direct consequencet and in-built consequences- there is the issue of uptake (including the understanditg of both the force and the content of the utterance by its addressee(s) - see Austin, 19621 r16), and the need for the ratification of, for example, a bet or an offer, while certain illocutions like promising or declaring war have consequent actions specified' This interactional emphasis (on what the recipient(s) of an illocutionary act must think or do) in Austin's work has unfortunately been neglectedin later work in speechact theory (seeAustin, 196z: Lecture IX). llhese seem to be Austtn's main contributions to the subject; his work, though, is not easyto summarize as it is rich with suggestions thbt are not followed up, and avoids dogmatic statements of position. Of the large amount of philosophical work that it has given rise to, two developmentsin particular are worth singling out. One is the very influential systematizationofAustin's work by Searle,through whose 237
Sqeech acts writings spe€ch act theory has perhaps had most of its impact on linguistics, and the other is a line of thought that attempts to link up closely Grice's theory of meaning-nn (Grice, tg57; discussedin r.z above) with illocutionary force. We-rnay approach the latter through a brief review of Searle'swork. In general, Searle'stheory of speechacts is just Austin's systematized, in part rigidified,'! with sallies into the general theory of meaning, and connections to otber philosophical issues(see Searle, r 969, r g79b). If illocutionary force is somehow conventionallylinked with explicit performatives and other illocutionary force indicating devices(let us call them IFIDs), then we should like to know exactly how. Searle appeals to a distinction by Rawls (r955) between regulative rules and constitutive rules. The first are the kind that control antecedentlyexisting activities, e.g. tramc regulatiorrs, while the second are the kind that create or constitute the activity itself, e.g. the rules of a game. The latter have the conceptual form: 'doing X counts as Y', e.g. in soccer, kicking or heading the ball through the goal-postscounts as a goal. Essentially,the rules linking lFlDs rvith their corresponding illocutionary acts are just of this kind: if I warn you not to touch the dog, that counts asan undertaking that it is not in your best intereststo touch that animal. Of course, as Austin points out, it will only be a felicitouswarning ifall the other felicity conditions are also met (Searleassimilatesthe'uttering IFID X counts as doing Y' condition to the same schema, calling it the essential condition). This prompts Searle to suggest that felicity conditions are not merely dimensions on which utterances can go wrong, but are actually jointly constitutive of the various illocutionary forces. For example, suppose that, by means of producing the utterance U, I promise sincerely and felicitously to come tomorrow. Then in order to perform that action it must be the casethat each of the conditions below has been met l (2S)
r. The speakersaid he would perform a future action r Espccially in ihc s.n3€ th.t wher€ Austin's chaiacteriz.tions of.pe.ch .cts .re in terms ofloose 'f.mily relrtionships', S€arl€ pr.f€rs $rici d€limitations in tcrms of necessary.nd sufficicnt conditions. Ther. are rcasons ro think that Sc.rle's treatment here is much roo stong and inflexible (see e.g. sections s.s and 5.7 below). In sen€ral, studen.s are well sdvised to tuin back to Austin's oficn more subtl. trc.tm.nt of th. issu$.
2't8
5 t PhilosoPhical bachgtound He intends to do it 3 . He believes he can do it 4 . He thinks he wouldn't do it anyway, in the normal course of gction 5 . He thinks the addresseewants him to do it (rather than not to do it) 6 . He intends to place himself under an obligation to do it by
uttering U 7. Both speakerand addresseecomprehend U 8. They are both conscious,normal human beings - not e.g.actingin 9. They are both in normalcircumstances play a ro.TheutteranceU containssomeI I'l D which is only properly utteredif all th€ appropriateconditionsobtain Now some of theseare clearly generalto all kinds of illocutionary act, namely 7-ro, Factoring these out, we are left with the conditions speci6cto promising: and these(namely r-6) are actually constitutive of promising - if one has met these conditions then (if ?-ro also obtain) one has effecrivelypromised, and if one has effectively (and sincerely)promised then the world meetsthe conditions r-6 (and also 7-r o). We can now use thesefelicity conditions as a kind of grid on which to compare different speech acts. To do so it will be useful to have some kind of classificationof felicity conditions, like Austin's in (4) above; Searle suggestsa classificationinto four kinds of condition, depending on how they specify propositional content, preparaloiy preconditions,conditions on sincerity, and the essential condition that we have already mentioned. An example of a comparison that canbe madeon thesedimensions,betweenrequestsand warnings (see Table 5. r ), should make the typology clear (drawn from Searle, I969: 66-i). But Searle is unsatisfied with this procedure as a classificatory 'method.For sub-typesofquestions, for example,can be proliferated, and there may be an indefinite number of tables like the one above that can be compared,What would be much more interestingwould be to derive some overall schema that would delimit the kinds of porsi,D/eillocutionary force on principled grounds. Now Austtn thought that one could come to an interesting classificationthrough a taxonomy of performative verbs, but Searle seeks some more abstract scheme based on felicity conditions. In fact he proposes 239
Speech acts
5.t Philosophical backglound
Table 5. r. A comparison of felicity conditions on tequestsand warnings Conditions
REQUESTS
W A R N IN GS
propositional content preparatory
Future act A of H
Future event E
r. S believes H can do A z. It is not obvious that H would do A without being asked S wants H to do A
I. S thinks E will occur and is not in H's interest z. S thinks it is not obvious to H that E will occut S believes E is not in H's best interest Counts as an undertaking that E is not in H's bcst intcrest
sincerity essential
Counts as an attempt t oget Ht odoA
(Searle, r976) rhat there are just five basic kinds of action that one can p€rform in speaking, by means of the following five types of utterance: (i)
representatives, which commit the speaker io rhe truth of the expressed proposition (paradigm cases: assertirrg, concluding, etc.) (ii) directives, which are atrempts by the speake. to get thc addresseeto do something (paradigm cases: requesting, questioning) (iii) commissives, which commit the speaker to somc future course of action (paradigm cases:promising, threatening, offering) (iv) expiessives, which express a psychological state (paradigm cases: thanking, apologizing, welcoming, congratulating) (v) declarations, which effect immediate changes in the institutional state of affairs and which tend to rely on elaborate extra-linguistic institutions (paradigm cases: excommunicating, declaring war, christening, firing from employment) The typology, though perhaps an improvement on Austin's, is a disappointment in that it lacks a principled basis; contrary to Searle.s claims, it is not even built in any systematic way on felicity conditions. There is no reason, then, to think that it is definitive or exhaustivc. Indeed, there are now available a great many other rival classi6catory 240
schemes (see Hancher, ry7g for a review of five of the more int€resting,including Searle's;seealsoAllwood, r976i Lyons' ry77^i Here the other main strand of Z4Sff; Bach & Harnish, 1979). post-Austinian thought, which attempts to relate illocutionary force closelyto Grice's theory of meaning-nn or communidative intention, g16yultimately prove helpful. Strawson (r964) claims that Austin was misled about the nature of illocutionary force by taking as his paradigm cases institutionally-based illocutions like christening, pronouncingman and wife, 6nding guilty and the like, which require the full panoply of the relevant social arrangements. Rather, the "fundamental part " of human communication is not carried out by suchconventionaland culture-bound illocutions at all, but rather by sp€cificclassesof commuaicath.)eir,tenlioz, in the special sensesketched by Grice ( r 957) in his theory of meaning (see r .2 above).This view suggests that given Searle's essential condition, which generally states the relevant intention, the felicity conditions on each of the major illocutionary actswill be predictable from general considerations of rationality and co-operation of the sort represented by Grice's maxims (a point admitted by Searle(r969: 69); seealso Katz, t977)' A principled classification of such possible communicative intentions may then, it is hoped, be based on the nature of such intentions themselves and the kinds of effects they are meant to achieve in recipients. An attempt at such a classification is made by Schiffer (rg7z: g5fr), and this makes a first cut between classesof intention similar to Searle's ditecthtes, and a class similar to his representatives, and proceedsto 6ner categorieswithin each of these.r0 However, it can be argued that the enthusiasm for this kind of classificatory exetcise is in general misplaced. Thc lure appeats to be that some general specification ofall the possible/uacrroz.rof language (and thus perhapsan explication of the "limits ofour language" that so intrigued Wittgenstein) may thereby be found. But if illocutions are perhapsfinite in kind, perlocutionsare clearly not so in principle, and there seems to be no clear reason why what is a perlocution ln one culture may not be an illocution in another. Or alternatively,one could say that the exercise made sense if Seatle's ptinciple of (t9?3), has himself suSacsted such a 'o G'ice, in an unpublishcd papet classifrcation under a further r€striction: h€ hopes to achicv.. motivated taxonomy by building up complex communicative intentions,or illocurionary forc$, from just two primitiv€ propositional attitud€s, roughly lratlitrg lnd
24r
5.2 Thes6
SPeechactt expressibility, which holds that " anything that can be meant can De said" (Searle, r969: I8ff), was tenable; but the distinction between illocution and perlocution seemsto belie the principle (see also tne critique of the principle in Gazdar, I98r). Neverthelessthere are certain recurring linguistic categories that do need explaining; fq1 example, it appearsthat the three basic sentence-types, intertogaliae, imperatk)e, and declatative are universals - all languages appear to have at least two and mostly three of these (see Sadock & Zwicky, in press).Ir On the assumption (to be questioned below) that these expressthe illocutions of questioning,requesting three sentence-types (or ordering) and stating, respectively,then a successfultypology of illocutions might be expected to predict the predominance of these three sentence-typesacrosslanguages.No such theory exists. Finally we should briefly mention that the distinction between illocutionary force and propositional content can in fact be found rn another philosophicaltradition stemming from Frege. Frege himself placed considerable emphasis on the distinction between the " thought " or proposition, and its assertionor "judgement " as true. To make the distinction systematicallyclear, Frege was careful to place a special assertion sign in front of an assertedsentence(see Dummett, r973; Atlas, r975a). This distinction was honoured by Russell& Whitehead ( r 9 r o), and plays an essentialrole in Strawson's ( t g5o) viewson presupposition(seeChapter 4) and truth. Hare ( t 952) introduced the terms phrastic for propositional content (certainly preferableforWH-questions which donot, arguably,expresscomplete propositions),and neustic for illocutionary force. He later went on to suggest (Hare, r97o) that illocutionary force was in fact an amalgam of neustic(speaker commitment) and a further element, the tropic (the factuality of the propositional content), and Lyons (rg17a 749ft')seessome linguistic merit in these distinctions. Before proceeding,it is important to emphasizesome distinctions essentialto a clear discussion of speech acts. First, the distinction between linguistic expressions(sentences)and their use in context, on concreteoccasionsfor particular purposes(utterances),must never be lost sight of, even though a number of theories of speech acts dr.w aacntion to th€ occurrcnce of languase-specific 'r Thcac .uthors .ls minor.cdicocc-lypei - €.9. English exclam.ti ons likc Hou thoddf that it !, ot Bor, a, h. /un! Thesc will not bc rr€.tcd here, thoush obviously they are of substantirl prasm.tic inrer€sr (s.. Qui.l, Creenbeum, Leech & Sve r tvik, r q Z z; 4 o 6 - r t)242
the term spcechact ,ttempt to conflate them systematically. Secondly, a type of is often used ambiguously, or gene.ally' to cover both (like illocutionary act characterized by a type of illocutionary force by an requesting) and a type of illocutionary act characterized(like propositional content particular a force and illocutionary requestingsomeoneto open the door). Thirdly, and most importantly, we must be careful to distinguish the set of tetms imperative, (ot request)' intertogatitte, and declatati e ftorn the set of terms otdet are linguistic set (ot The first statementr. queslion and atse/tiorr that set are categories second the pertain sentences, to categoriesthat and utterance(i.e. to utterances pertain only to the lse of sentences types), Now the term mood is often used to designate the first set' but this is inaccurate as mood, in traditional grammar at any rate, is a category of verbal inflection, and on this dimension impera,ioe contrasts with indicative and subjunctiae rather than declatathte and irrterrogat&)e.Lyons (I977a: 747ff) therefore proposes a change in terminology; neverthelesswe shall retain the familiar te r ms imperative, intet t oga tht e and declar ativ e, usinghowever the cover term sentencetypes instead of the misleading term mood. (Here see also the helpful discussion in Sadock & Zwicky, in press.) to matters of Thesis: sp€ech acts are irreducible truth aDd falsity We shall here summarize, at the risk of repetition, those aspects of the philosophical work on speech acts that have had the most direct impact on linguistic theorizing. From Austin's work, and in large part through Searle'ssystematizationof it, there hasemerged a coherent theory of speech acts that demands the linguist's attention. This position, which is a judicious selection and slight abstraction fromAustin and Searle's particular views, wemaycall the irteducibility thcsis,or Thesis for short. In brief, the position can be formulated as follows. First, all utterancesnot only serve to expresspropositions, but also perform actions. Secondly, of the many ways in which one could say that in uttering some linguistic expression a speaker was doizg something, there is one privileged level of action that can be called the illocutionary act - or, more simply, the speechact. This action is associatedby convention (pace Strawson, I964 and Schiffer, I97z) with the form of the utterancein question,and this distinguishes it from any perlocutionary actions that may accompany the central 5,2
243
5.2 Thesis
Speech acts illocutionary act, and be done via that central action. Thirdly, althoughany particular illocutionary forcemay beeffectivelyconveyed in various ways, there is at least one form of utterance that (in somq languages at any rate) directly and conventionally expresses it namely, the explicit performative, which in English has the normal form of (26): (26)
I (hereby) /,
you (that) S'
verb drawn from the limited and whete Vo is a perforrnative determinate set of performative verbs in the languagein question, S' is a complement sentence(the content of which is often restrictedby the particular performative verb), and /o is conjugated in the simple present indicative active. There are variations, ofno great significance (but seeSearle, I976), about whether a particular performative verb takesa ,a, complement (as in I statethat p\ ot afor -/zg complement (as in I apologizeJot laughing) and so on. We may also treat the three basic sentence-typesin English (and most languages),namely the imperative, the interrogative and the declarative, as containing grammaticalized conventional indicators of illocutionary force, namely those associatedrespectivelywith the explicit performative preffxes (or phrases)r2 I requestyou to, I ashyou whethet, I state to yor.rthat (with the single proviso that explicit performatives,although in declarative form, have the force associated with the overt performative verb in each case). We may say that sentences in the imperative, interrogative or declarative,and perhaps other kinds of Fourthly, the p.oper sentence format, are implicit performatives. characterization of illocutionary force is provided by specifying the set of felicity conditions (or FCs) fqr each force. FCs may be thatconcern classified, following Searle, intopreparatoryconditions real-world prerequisites to each illocutionary act, propositional content conditions that specify restrictions on the content of S' in (26), and sincerity conditions, that state the requisite beliefs, feelings and intentions of the speaker, as appropriate to each kind of action. (There is also in Searle's schema, as we noted, an esscntial pc/fo.datio. p/ifr i6 us.d herc, as in the sp€echact lite..rurc, as " The rern a shorth.nd for'sentcncc-initirl pcrformative phrasc'or thc lik€; frcm a linguistic point of vicw, of course, such a phr.s€ is not e prcfix, but th€ p€rform.tiv€ claus€ minus one arsum€nr, nrm€ly rhe compl€m€nt ot rhe pcrfo.mativc vGrb.wh ich cxpress€srh. proposh ion.l ontcn r (s.e imm.di.rcly
244
provide the condition, which is of a rather different order.) Thus to how exactly is to specify act illocutionary some for conditions felicity sentence of a particular utterance for a in order to be has context the that is conventionally used to perform that type of act to actually oerform it on an occasion of utterance. Given that felicity conditions speech act, lointly define and constitute the nature of any specific principled of classification and abstract there is hope that a more emerges FCs than provided in terms of Qtace speech acts can be Austin) from a study of performative verbs alone. Theseclaims implythat the illocutionary force and the propositional content of utterances are detachable elements of meaning' Thus the following sentences, when uttered felicitously, would all share the samepropositionalcontent, namelythe proposition that the addressee will go home: (271
a. I predict that you will go home b. Go home !
c. Are you going to go home? d. I adviseyou to go home but they would normally be used with dillerent illocutionary forces, i.e. perform different speechacts.r3There is a problem for this view, namely that in the caseofthe explicit performativ€s, the propositional content appearsto include the force-indicatingdevice. For if, as this version of spe€ch act theory suggests, the propositional aspect of meaning is to be treated one way, and the illocutionary aspect another, then the meaning of promise in I hereby Promise to come $ different from the meaning ofrlonise in He ptomised to eome.ln the 6rst, it has a performative usage,in the second,a descriptive usage; in the first it is explicated by reference to FCs, in the second by appeal to the semantic concepts of senseand reference. One solution to this problem, adopted by Searle but not by Austin, is to claim that the propositionalaspectof meaning is not after all so distinct in kind: one can provide usage conditions for the descriptive usage of ptomise in just the way that one can apply felicity conditions for the performative usage. Searle ( r969, r 979b) thereby attempts to extend speech act theory into a general theory of semantics. There are many objections to such a theory (see Kempson, I977 for discussion), and B C az dar (' 98r) poi nts to s om€ s i s ni fi c ant di mc ul ti €s w i th the noti on of propositional cont€nt emplpyed here (as ..s. by Katz (t977)).
245
5.3 An,iahet.s
SPeechocts we shall continue to be interestedhere in speechact theory solely a5 a theory of illocutionary force. This does, however, leave quire unsolved the issueof the way in which performative and descriptivs usesof the samewords are to be related.(One possibleline for Thesis theorists is to claim that explicit performative prefixes are indeed treatedsemanticallyj ust like other non-performativeclauses,but that in additiot performative clauses have a force-indicating function irreducible to ordinary semantics.) We are now in a position to state the central tenet of Thesis: illocutionary force is an aspectof meaning, broadly construed, thal is quite irreducible to mattersoftruth and falsity.That is, illocutionary force constitutes an aspect of meaning that cannot be captured in a truth-conditional semantics. Rather, illocutionary acts are to be describedin terms of felicity conditions, which are speci6cationsfor appropriate usage. The reason is that while propositions desetibe(or are in correspondence with) states of affairs, and may thus be plausibly characterizedin terms of the conditions under which they would be true, illocutionary forces indicate how those descriptions are to be taken or what the addresseeis meant to do with a particular proposition that is expressed,e,g. for an assertionthe addresseemay be meant to believe the proposition expressed,for an order he will be meant to make the proposition true, and so on (seeStenius, r 967). Illocutionary force belongs firmly in the realm of actioz, and the appropriate techniques for analysisare therefore to be found in the theory of action, and not in the theory of meaning, when that is narrowly construed in terms of truth-conditional semantics.Thesis is thus a theory that proposes to handle illocutionary force in an entirely pragmatic way. Antithesis: the reduction of illocutionary force to ordinary syntax and gemantics Directly opposed to Thesis is a position that we may call Antithesis: accotdrng to Antithesis there is no need for a special theory of illocutionary force becausethe phenomena that taxed Austin are assimilable to standard theories of svntax and truth-conditional semantlcs. The opening move here is to attack Austin's handling of explicit performatives,Basic to Austin's theory is the claim that the utterance of I bet you six penceis simply not assessed, or sensibly assessable, 5.3
zt6
in terms of truth and falsity: you either did or did not manage to bet successfully, and that depends on whether the FCs were met or not. Early on there were dissenters to this (see e.g. Lemmon, 196z; Hedenius, 1963): why not claim instead that simply by uttering sentencesof that sort the speaker makes them true? In this respect performatives would be similar to other sentences that are verified sirnply by their use, Iike: (28)
I am here I can speakthis loud I can speaksome English
There seems to be nothing incoherent with this view held generally for explicit performatives; for example, if you say I hereby @a/n you ot to get i4m! woy, then what you have said is true - you have indeed so warned. Whatever Austin thought of as usageconditions for 6er, warn and the like, are simply part of the meaning of those words.'o To generalize the attack on Thesis, we may then bring in the performative analysis (or perforrnaaive hypothesis) to handle implicit performatives. According to this hypothesis, which we may refer to as the PH, every sentence has as its highest clause in deep or underlying syntactic structure a clauseof the form in (26) - i.e. a structure that corresponds to the overt prefix in the explicit performative, whether or not it is an overt or explicit perforrnative in surface structure. Such an analysis can be put forward on what seem to be plausibte independent grounds, namely that it captures a number of syntacticgeneralizationsthat would otherwisebe lost (seeRoss,r97o; Sadock, r 974). The syntactic arguments are of two major kinds. The first uses anaphoric processes along the following lines: some constituent X of a subordinate clause is first shown to be acceptable only if there is another constituent y in the mattix clause; thus r' l'his linc is more a*kward for those pc.form.tives involved in illcution.'y acts (like christening, dcclaring war, evcn ordcrins) thrt requirc lpccific institutionrl srrrngcmentsi h€r., pcrhaps, on. must allow for falsification, .s '*elf .s vc.i6c.rion, by u.c: .h\!. I d.ch.. uat oa Walcs ztid by somconc not so empo*ercd mry fcil to bc truc in a $iy Frallel to the falshy of I (non-r.cordcd, non-r.l.y.d) uttcrrncc of I aa mt hcrc. Thcre rrc rlso diftcultics with (metalinauistic) n"n&:oncs opporcd to (perfo'msrivc) !r. of such sentenccs,but rhes€ di6cukies ar€ sh..€d by mosr theori€s of specch ads. Fin.lly, thc.e.rc problems *ith thes.mcntic int€rpr€tstioD ofthc tcnse and aspect of p.rformltive utte.anccs (*hich Kempson, r97z: 64-8 chims
247
5.j Antithcsts
SPeechacts without { X may not appear in the lower clause, We now turn to some implicit performatives and find, contrary to our generalization, some X in the matrix clause, unlicensed by an overt Y in a higher clause. Either our generalization about the Y-dependency of X is wrong, or there is in fact a covert Y in an underlying deleted matrix clause,We then show that if the PH is assumed,i.e. there is a higher implicit performative clause, then there would in fact be just the required Yin a higher clause,and our generalizationcan be preserved. For example, in (29) the reflexive pronoun hirzsef seems to be licensed by the higher co-referential noun phrase, ,he Presideat'.
(zc)
The President said that solar energy was invented by God and himself
But in breach of the generalization, the rztssf in (3o) seems to lack any such corresponding antecedent : (3o)
Solar energy was invented by God and myself
Note that such usagesare highly restricted; e.g. third person reflexives as in (3 r ) are unacceptable(at least at the beginning of a discourse): (3 r)
?Solar energy was invented by God and herself
Therefore the acceptability of (3o) seems puzzling. The puzzle disappears, according to the PH, if we note that (32) is acceptable for just the same reasons that (29) is, and if we claim that in fact (3o) is derived from (lz) by a regular process of performative clause deletion: (fz)
I say to you that solar energy was invented by God and myself
Using anaphoric argum€nts of this kind, it is possible to argue that every feature of the covert performative clause is motivated by independent syntactic requirements (see Ross, r97o). For example, on the basis of the parallelism between the following two sentences: (3 3 ) (34)
Herbert told Susan that people like herself are rare People like yourself are rare
we may argue that there must in fact be an implicit second person antecedentin the second,which would be conveniently provided by the indirect object of the hypothesized performative clause. And evidence for the presence of a covert performative verb itself seems to be offered by the adverbial data to which we now turn. zt8
Another major kind of argument is based on the fact that there appear to be adverbs that modify performative clauses appearing in sentenceswithout such overt performative clauses, as in (35) and (36):
(rs) (r6)
Frankly, I prefer the white mcat What's th€ time, becausc I've got to go out at eiSht?
where a natural interpretation is that in (35)/ranAly is an adverb on animplicit I tell yoa performative prefix, and in (36) the because'clause is an adverb on an implicit I ask you pre6x. There are in addition a number of minor arguments' Most of these have as a basis the claim that certain syntactic generalizations that would otherwise have exceptions manifested in the matrix clauses of implicit performatives, will bc fully general if the PH is in fact assumed, For example, sentences generally require overt subjects in English and many other languages,but the imperative is an exception. If, however, we assume the PH, then (37) will have an underlying oerformative clause of the sort made overt in (38): (37)
(s8) (3e)
Wash thc dishes! I order you to wash the dishes tl order you that you wash the dfuhes
Now (39) is ungrammatical because Equi-NP deletion must apply,rb given that order requires that the subject of the complement clause be co-referential with the indirect object of the rnatrix clause. Therefore, on performative clause deletion, one will be left with (3?), providing that Equi-NP deletion applies first. Thus we have simultaneously an explanation for the subjectless nature of imPeratives, and thc understanding that there is a covert second person subject in imperatives (see Sadock, rg74. 3z-3\. Further, if a performative clause was always available, certain morphological problems that arise with honorifics, of the sort we encountered rn Chapter z, might be solved: the subject and object ofthe performative verbcould beassigned a syntactic feature indicating level ofpoliteness, and honorific concord be achieved by requiring the same features on all co-referent noun phrases (see Sadock, tg74:. 4rft). Indeed, the description of deixis in general might be facilitated by the presence of the crucial deictic reference points - speaker, sddressee and time r" Equi-NP d.lc.ion i! . trrnrform.tion.l firl. thrt dcl.tcs subjcc$ of.ubordin.t clcu3€s und.r idcntity with th. subj.ct or indircct objtct of th€ ncxt-hiehcr clause (scc $dock, r9?4: s,34-5).
5.4 CollqPse oJ Antithests
Speeeh acts ofutterance (encoded by the tenseof the performative) - in underlyine structure (see G. Lakoff, rg7z, rg7). The adoption of the PH thus seems, at first sight, to ofler a significant and general improvement over the earlier suggestionsfor dealing with the syntax of sentence-types,Chomsky (1957) had originally suggestedoptional transformations to derive the subjectauxiliary inversion of English interrogatives,and the subject-deletion of English imperatives, from declaratives; while Katz & Postal (r964) had proposed two underlying morphemes, call them Q and I, thar would not only trigger the necessary transformations, but also be available in deep structure for semantic interpretation. The PH achievesall that theseproposalsachieved,providing both triggers for the necessary adjustments in surface structure and structures for semanticinterpretation,but in a much lessarbitrary way (substituting natural languageexpressionsfor Q and I, for example; see Sadock. r9 7 4 i r7 ). On the basis of arguments like these, we may then formulare (following Gazdar, rgTga'. r8) the strongest version of rhe PH as follows: (4o)
r. Every sentence hasa performativeclausein deepor underlying structure z. The subject of this clause is first person singular, the indirect object secondpersoDsingular,and the verb is drawn froma delimited setofperformative verbs, and is conjugated in the indicative activesimple presenttense(or is associated with the underlying representationthereo| This clause is always the highest clause in underlyirrg 3. slructure, or at the very leastalwaysoccursin a determinable position in that structuae 4. There is only one such clause per sentence 5. The performative clause is deletable, such deletion not changing the meaning of the sentence 6. Illocutionary force is semantic (in the truth-conditional sense)and is fully specifiedby the meaning of the performativeclauseitself
In actual fact, the various proponents ofthe PH have usually adopted only some sub-set of these claims - for example, G. Lakofi (t972) avoids claim z in order to allow singular and plural speakersand addressees;Sadock (1974) has abandonedclaim 4 and the first part ofclaim 3 for syntactic reasons;G. Lakoff(rgZS) abandonsclaim r
assertedor expressing timeless truths; forsentencesnot being actively same claim just in the case of ,"hil" L.*i" (1972) avoids the reasons which we will consider in Jeclarative sentences(for semantic We cannot review all these distinct but closely related lu" "otr"";. the very variety oositionshere (see Gazdar, I979a: Chapter 2), but version of the PH of th"-, und the general retreat from the strong difficulties (4o), the considerable reflects in the claims by expressed we see' as shall faces, claims those of that each Armed with the PH, Antithesis theorists may now claim that they have a complete reduction of speech act theory to matters of syntax and truth-conditional semantics. That every sentence when uttered has what appears to be an 'illocutionary force' is accounted for by the guaranteed presence of an underlying or overt performative clause,which has the peculiar property ofbeing true simply by virtue of being felicitously said - hence the intuition that it makes no sense to consider its falsity. The particular so-called ' felicity conditions' on different speech acts are simply part of the meaning of the implicit orexplicit performative verbs, capturable either in terms of entailment or semantic presupposition (see e.g. Lewis, tg7z, and especially G. Lakoff, r975). The basic result is that illocutionary force is reduced to "garden variety semantics" (G. Lakoff, 1972.655). Collapse of Anaiah€sis Antithesis is clearly an elegant theory, ptomising to reduce what seems to be an apparently irreducibly pragmatic aspect of meaning to relatively well-understood areas of linguistic theory. However, it is now all but certain that Antithesis, at least in its full form, is untenable. For it runs into insurmountable difficulties on both the semantic and syntactic fronts. Let us take these in turn. 5.4
Semantic Problems Although a widely held belief is that truth-conditional semantics cannot deal with non-assertotic utterances, using the PH and the notion that performative sentencesare verified simply by their use, such a semantics handles non-declaratives without too much difficulty, Paradoxically enough, where the problems arise is with assertionsand declaratives.Consider for example: 5.4.t
(4r,
I state to you that lhe world is flat 25!
5.4 CollaPse oJ Antithesis
Speech acts On the normal Antithesis assumption, such a sentencewill have the vdlue tlue simply by virtue of being felicitously uttere(. Also by Antithesis, (42) will have as its underlying form something corresponding closely to (4r ): (+e)
The world is flat
By hypothesis,(4r) and (42) should have the same truth conditions, so (42) will be truejust in case the speaker so states. But clearly such an argument amounts to a rcductio ad abswdum. For, whatever our intuitions about (4r), (42) is, given the way the world actually is, simply false (see Lewis, r97z for the full argument). To this difficulty G. Lakoff (r975) had a response. Let us say that an assertion is true if, and only if, both the performative clause and its complement clause are true. However, the response lands one in further diffi culties.ro Consider :
(+:)
I stated to you that rhe world is flat
Here it is sufficient for the truth of (+l) simply that I did so state, the truth or falsity of the complement clause (thc world is flat) playine no role in the overall truth conditions. Hence the non-performative usages (as in (+g)) of performative verbs like rrore seem to have different truth conditions from the performative usagesof the same verb. But in that case, we have in fact failed to reduce performative usages to straightforward applications of uniform semantical procedures,as Antithesis claims to be able to do. Vaiious attempts may be made to salvage the PH from this semantic difficulty, and it is worth considering carefully, at the risk of belabouring the point, the different options that are open to its die-hard supporters. Sadock (in preparation), for example, hopes to escapethe dilemma by appealing to two distinct kinds of truth (and falsity), namely a semantic truth (call it Tr ) which holds of propositions, and a pragmatic concept of truth (call it Tz) which holds only of statements or assertions. We might then say that the ordinary language use of the English word true, namely the pragmatic concept T2, can only sensibly be predicated of the complements of overt or covert performative clauses. Thus we ordinarily say that (4r) is true (i.e. Tz) only if we agreethat (42) is true. However, technically, in rhe theoretical sense (i.e. Tr), the r. This l{as poinrcd our ro m€ by ccr.td
2s"
C.zd!r.
proposition expressed by both sentences (which is identical on the (I state ao ,ssumption of PH) is TI only if the performative clauie (Tr)' p is true too, p'5, views the complement and on some pu that -'nr,r", (42) false (4I while is is true that the view ott" could claim, ) (+z) (or i.e' Fz) of (4r) rather and Tz is due to predicating Tr of preparation; (see Sadock, in to a conflation of the two kinds of truth also G. Lakofi, r975). Nevertheless, although such a distinction may indeed be salutary, this will not solve the present problem. For that problem is precisely that it se€ms to be impossible to maintain a coherent and uniform application of the semantic notion of truth conditions to sentences if one adopts the PH, Let us restate the difficulty-
Q+)
(+s) (46)
Snow is green I state lhat snow is green I stated that snow is green
To accommodate the PH we must find some way in which (44) and (4S)may reasonablybe held to be identical in truth conditions,asthey will haveidenticalunderlying structuresand semanticrepresentations on that hypothesis. Let us adopt the following conventions: let r be the performative prefrx I state to you that (or any of its alternatives), p be the complement clause of the overt or covert performative verb, p' be the past report of a statement (as in (+6))' and s(p) be the overt perfoimative sentence (as in (+S)); further, let [p] mean 'the proposition expressed by p', and so on for [p'], etc, Then, to make (44) and (+S) parallel in truth conditions, we may take one of the following lines. We can, as G. Lakoff (r975) suggested,assigntruth conditions on the following basis (where trae is always Tr): (4i)
(i) 't'is true iff [p] is true and [dp)] is true ( ii) 'dp)' is true iff [p] is true and [s(p)] is true (iii) 'p" is true iff [p'] is true and [r(p')] is true, regardlessof the truth or falsity of the complement p of the eetb state in p'
The problems then are (a), (44) can only be true if someone is in fact stating it, which seemsa short road to solipsism,and (b) the solution forces us (as we noted above) into two kinds of truth conditions for rrat?,those for performative usages,as in (45) (where the truth of the complement is relevant to the truth of the whole), and those for non-performative usages,asin (46) (r'.lherethe truth ofthecomplement 253
Speech actt is irrelevant to the truth ofthe mat.ix senrence).Alternatively, 6nding this untenable, we could hold instead: (+8)
(i) 't'is true iff [2] is true (ii) 's(p)' is true iff [p] is true (iii) 'p" is rrue iff [p'] is truc
The problem here is that we have in effect made the performative clause,whether covert or overt, ,invisible'to truth conditions. !u1 in that casewe have failed to give a semantic characterizationof the performative clause at all. Such a solution might well be congenial to Thesis theorists, leaving open a pragmatic interpretation of both explicit performatives and sentence-types,but it is hardly a routs open to the proponents of Antithesis. Another alternativewould bc: (49) true iff.[s(p)]is true, regardless of the rruth of r, !il. (ii) .p'i: 'sG)' is true iff [r(p)l is rrue. regardless of the rrurh
s.4 Collapse ol Antithesis . One can retreat and accept the PH for all sentencesother declaratives,as Lewis ( r 972) does,but that is an asymmetry that linguists would be attracted to, and inde€d one which the ic arguments for the PH will simply not allow. One should too that whatever the semanlic relation of (44) to (45), there is immediately significant prdgmat;c difference, which will become paragraph with in this earifthe readerprefixeseachofthe sentences general part ofa the PH is 'herebytrat" 1R. Lakoff, r 977; 84-5). But if to reducepragmaticsto ordinary semantics,then appeal i'can h"rdly be made to the semantic/pragmatic distinction in order (45) (Gazdar, rgTg^t 25)' i: to expl"i.t the different usages of (44) and : Now some of the most persuasive evidence for the PH comes from advetbslike Jranhly that appear to modify performative verbs (let us call these performative adverbs without prejudging whether in fact they do actually modify such verbs). However' there are significant semanticdimculties here too. Firstly, it is simply not clear that the meaningsof the relevant adverbs are indeed parallel in the explicit Derformative,the (allegedly)implicit performative and the reported performative usages: (50,
( s' ) Gz')
I tell 1ou frankly you're a swine Frankly, you're a swine John told Bill frankly that he was a swine
According ro the Pll, flanhl! should modify the verb ,"/l (implicit in (5 r )) in each of thesein just the same way. But what/razAly seems to do in (5r) is warn the addresseethat a criticism is forthcoming, whereasin (52) it modifies the manner in which the telling was done (Lyons, r 977a:783). The explicit performative in (5o) perhapsallows both interpretations (though prosody, especially a pause after the adverb,can favour a readingas in (5r); cf. Sadock, r974: 38-9). The allegedsymmetry here certainly does not unequivocably exist. A second fact to note is that there are some adverbs that can onl, modify explicit performatives, notal>ly hereby, as the following sentencesmake clear:
(sr) t54)
I hereby order you to polish your boots lHereby polish your boots
Other adverbs, *hile they may occur with teported performatives (unlike hereby), nevertheless can only modify the illocutionary act concurrent with the utterance. Thus tz brie! in both (55) and (56) 255
5.4 CollaPse of Antithests
Speech a.ts modifies the current speech act, and not the reported one in the second example: ( 55
( s6) '
In brief, the performative analysis is untenable Harvey claimed, in brief, that the performative anslysis is untenable
Such asymmetriesmake it plausiblethat performative adverbscannot in generalbe assimilatedto ordinaty adverbs on verbs of communication (but see Sadock, rg74t 37fr). Thirdll', it is sometimesclaimed that complex adverbialexpressions like the following are evidence in favour of thepH (Davison, t973; S a d o c k , I9 7 4 : 3 8 ): John's at Sue's house, becausehis car's outside \5 7 ' However, it is clear that the because-clausehere does not in fact modify any implicit I stateor I claim,but rather an understood1 Aroro a s ma d e e x p l i c i t i n (5 9 ):
(s8) ( 59'
I state John's at Sue's house trecause his car's otrtside I know John's at Sue's house becausehis car's outside
For if (sz) had an underlying structure similar to (58), then John's car's location would have tobe taken asthe reasonfor statitg, wheteas in fact it is clearly being offered as gtounds for beliedng what is stated. Now whereas it may be true that believing or knowing that p may be a FC on assertingthat p, and thus true that such reasonadverbials provide evidence for certain aspects of speech act theory in general, rhe fact that they do not always modify the implicit performative verb shows that they do not provide direct evidencefor rhe PH. Ilather, it seemsto be appropriate to provide evidence in such a clausethat certain pragmatic conditions on the speech8ct hold (see Mittwoch, rg77: r86ff). In a similar way note that btiefy in (60) does not paraphraseas (6r), but rather as (62): (6o) (6 r ) (62',
Briefly, who do you think will win the gold medal I I ask you briefly who you think will win the gold medal Tell me briefly who will win the gold medal
but the relevant implicit performative verb must be one of asking not one oftelling (though see here the theory that perfotmatives lexically decompose so that asking is derived from requesting to tell, expounded 256
in Sadock, r974:. r49ff).
Finally, performative adverbs participate in the general problem associatedwith the truth-conditional assessmentof declaratives.The issue is this. If we argue that the adverb in (61) is evidence for an implicit performative clause, as in (64), then (63) should have the same truth conditions as (64). But as we have seen, (63) seems to be true just in casesemanticsis a bore, and (64) true just in case I say so. (63) (64)
Confidentially, semantics is a bote I say to you confidentially that semantics is a bore
So to assimilate(6g) to (6+), however it may help us understand the syfllax of performative adverbs, ultimately only clouds our understanding of their semantics.Neverthelessto reject the PH lands us equally in a quandary, for then we are left with the 'dangling' advertt in (63) - how is this to be interpreted in the absenceof a verb it might modify ? Bo€r & Lycan (1978) term one version of this dilemma the performadox. Assuming for purposes of argument that the PH ls syntactically corr€ct, they argu€ that either (a) one takes the Thesls view, namely that the performative clause itself is not semantically interpreted in terms of truth conditions at all, in which case the associatedadverbs (as in (63) and (6+)) must also be uninterpreted, which seems quite ad hoc, or (b) one does interpret the performative clause,in which caseone invariably gets the truth conditions wrong. Note that if we reject the PH, and allow (6:) and (6+) to have different truth conditions, we are still left with the dangling adverb in (61). We could claim th^t confdcntially is ambiguous between a sentencemodifying reading appropriate to (63) and a predicate-modifying reading appropriate to (64), but then we would have to claim this for a// performative adverbs that can show up without explicit performatives, including the productive adverbial modifiers with becouse, since,in case,etc., as in (65):
(6s)
Semantics is a bore, since you ask
Semanticsis a bore, in caseyou didn't know (see Rutherford, r97o for further examples, and the discussion in Creiswefl, rg73: 233-4'1.Itmust be confessedthat the 'performadox' is ultimately a problem for Thesis theorists too. Cresswell's( r 973 : 234)inelegantsolution is to consider(63) strictly speakingill-formed, and pragmatically elliptical for (6+). BoEr & I-ycan (r978) simply 257
5.4 CollaPse oJ Antithes$
Speech acts propose a compromise, which is to accept the PH for implicit performativesjust where one is forced to by dangling performative adverbs, and reject it elsewhere, reaping the reduced harvest of semantic incoherenciesthat one has then cultivated.rB We may concludethis discussionofperformative adverbsby noting that although they seem at first sight the strongest evidence for the PH, they in fact raise a host of problems which the PH in no way solves.As such, they certainly do not constitute evidence in favour of it. There are further difficulties for attempts to reduce illocutionary forceto truth-conditional semantics.Take, for example,the attempted reduction of FCs to aspectsof the meaning of the performative verbs that they are associatedwith. It soon becomesclear that the relevant aspects of meaning cannot be truth-conditional. Consider, for example, (66) and its corresponding implicit performative version (62): (66) (67)
I request you to please close the door Please close the door
Due to the presenceofan explicit or implicit verb ofrequesting, these would have as part of their meaning the FC in (68): (68)
The door is not closed (or at least will not be at the time lhe request is to be complied with)
If (68) was an entailment from (66) or (67), simply by virtue of the meaning of lequest, then (6q) should entail (7o), and (7r) be a contradiction.
(6e) (?o) (zr)
rs78).
Finally, even if it turned out that performative sentences,implicit and explicit, could be simply handled within a truth-conditional fralnework (as Sadock (in preparation) continues to hope), some of the basic intuitions that underlay Austin's work would still not have been accounted for, For the notion of illocutionary force was specilically directed to the action-like Properties of utterances, and these would in no way be captured by such a treatment. For' essentially,an utterance like (72) woutd not be treated as basically difierent in kind from (73); both would be reports of events,but the event reported in the first would simply be concutrent with the utterance.
John requested Bill to close the door At the time the action was to be carried out, the door was not closed John requested Bill to close the door, but it was already closed
Again, these are the wrong results, and by zedactrowe must abandon the assumption that FCs can be captured truth-conditionally as part of the semanticsof the verbs in question.The propertiesof most FCs !. Oth€r rhcorists hop. to cscapcsomeofthcse dilcmmas by alternativc versions o fth e PH. T h u s L yo n ! (r97?a: 782).nd Mi ttw @h (r977) susgestrh.t rhe .ssoci.ted implicit pcrformative clsuse should be Po.ota.tiallr j|]xraposc{ with, r.thcr rhen sup€.ordinate to, th. contcnt ofth. utt.rance. But as Bo€r & Lycan (r978) sho$,, all luch suggcstions floundcr cquelly in thc
258
are in any case far too general to be attributed to the meanings of particular lexical items (Allwood, I977). For example, the ability conditions (i.e. the preparatory conditions requiring that the speaker or addresseecan perform the relevant actions required) onpromising and ofiering seem to be based on the simple rational criterion that it makes no senseto commit oneself to attempting actions one knows one cannot achieve; similarly, for the ability conditions on requests' commands and suggestions:it would simply be less than rational to sincerely attempt to get other agents to do what one knows they cannot. Such constraints on rational action in general are quite independentoflanguage,let alonepart ofthe meaningofperformative verbs. One might try to assimilate FCs to the category of pragmatic presupposition, but they can be shown to have quite different propertiesfrom core examplesof presupposition,and would be bettet assimilated to the category of conversational implicature (see Rogers,
\72 ) (73)
I b€t you six pence I'll win the racc I betted you six pence that I'd win the race
Our senseis that there is somethingover and abovea mere conculrent report in (Zz), which is curiously lacking in other formats for concurrent reports like that in (74):
O4)
I am betting you six pence I'll win the race
That utterancesdo have action-like properties is clear from simple observations like the following. Some utterances, e.g. requests and promises, have actions as rule-governed consequences;actions can substitute for many utterancesand vice versa(consider,for example, 259
Speechacls the utterances accompanying a small purchase in a shop); sornq utteranc€sdo rely, as Austin insisted, on elaborate non-linguisttc arrangements,and in such arrangementslinguistic and non_linguistic actronsare systematicallyinter-leaved (consider christening a ship, performing a marriageservice,etc.). Finally, Austin correctlyattached some importance to what he called j/ locutionaty uptahe; thus if I utter (72) in such a way that you fail to hear, it is fairly clear that (73) would be false as a report of what had transpiaed. lt seemstherefore thar in order for a speechact to 'come off', it is ordinarily required thar the addressee(s) may be supposed to have heard, registered and in some cases(like (72)) responded to what has been said (exceptions. perhaps, are things like curses, invocations and blessings).
5.4 Collapse of Antithesis oB, "
proponentsof the PH are forced by such exampleseither to entertain otherwiseunmotivated rules of'performative clauselowering', or to claim that the illocutionary force of (78) is in fact assertoric, and only by pragmatic implication a request. Further problems arise from the fact that many sentencesseem to involve more than one illocutionary force. For example, (79) has a non-restrictiverelativeclausethat is clearly assertoricin force despite being embedded within a question:
Oe) Sjntact;cproblems In addition to these semantic incoherencies and inadequacies,the PH required by Antithesis is assailedby syntactrc problems. We can do no more here than indicate the scopeof these (the reader is referred to Anderson, r97r, Fraser, rg74a,Leech, t976 and Gazdar, r979a: Chapter 2, for further details).But the following is a sample of the problems. First, as Austin himself noted, there are many caseswhere explicit performativesdo not refer to the speaker, as in the following examples: s.4.2
\7 5 ) (? 6 )
The company hereby undertakes to replace any can of DoggoMeat that fails to please, with no questions asked It is herewith disclosed that the value of the estate left by Marcus T. tsloomingdale was 4,785,758 dollars
and others where the addtesseeis not the target (see z.z.r) as in: t7 7 )
Johnny is to come in now
However such examples were handled, they would considerably complicate the PH. For unless the performative clause has strictly definable properties, it will be impossible to specify ir uniquely in syntactrc terms; and if that cannot be done then the very special, indeed extra-ordinary, syntacticrules that applyjust to performative clauses(notably, wholesaleperformative clause deletion) cannot bc properly restricted.One such crucial de6ning property might be that the performative clauseis always the highest clausein any sentence. However, examples like (78) seem to be clear counter-examoles to such a generalization: 26o
We regretthat the companyis forcedby economiccircumstanc€s at your earliest to herebyrequestyou to tenderyour resignation convenience
Does John, who could never leatn elementary calculus, really intend to do a PhD in mathematics )
If every sentencehas only one petformativ€ clause,it would seem to be necessaryto derive (79) from an 'amalgamation' of two distinct derivations(sec G. Lakofi, r974). Similar difficulties arise even with tag-questionslike: (80)
Wittgenstein was an Oxford philosopher, wasn't he ?
where the tag carries a question force that modifies the assertoric force And even of the declarativeclause(seeHudson, r 975 for discr.rssion). where we have one unitary syntactic clause in surface structure, in order to capture the intuitive illocutionary force we may have to hypothesizea conjunction of two underlying performative clauses. Thus (8r) hasbeen analysedashaving an underlying structure similar to (82) (Sadock, r97o; but see Green, t975): (8r) (82)
Why don't you become an astronaut ? I ask you why you don't become an astronaut and I suggest that you do
But clearly a better paraphrasewould bc: (83)
I ask you why you don't becomc an astronaut, and if you can think of no good reasons why not, I suggest that you do
Yet clearly (8g) is not syatacticallyrelated to (8I). There therefore seem to be distinct limits to the extent to which one can hope for illocutionary force to be mirrored in syntactic structure. But perhapsthe most important syntacticobjectionsto the PH are the following. Firstly, it would require an otherwise atypical and 20r
Speech acts unmotivated rule of performative deletion in the majority of cases(for all implicit performatives),and much more complex rules, again no1 independentlymotivated, to deal with caseslike (7g)_{gr). Secondly, exactly the sameieasoningthat led to the positing of the performati,g clause in the first place leads to arguments that undermine it. For example, the same anaphoric arguments that were discussedabove as motivations for the performative analysis,lead to the conclusion that there must in fact be a clausestill higher than that, and so on ad infinitum (see Gazdar, r979a: zr). Further, the anaphoric phenomenathemselvesseem to be pragmatically conditioned rather than syntactically conditioned (as indicated by the qualification we had to make about the unacceptability of (3 r), discourse_initially). Even the facts about the adverbs that seem to modify implicit performatives,do not in fact support the pH (BoEr & Lycan, r97g,. For performative adverbsunfortunately turn up in syntacticloca;ions that are not easily reconciled with the claim that they modify the highest (performative) clause (Mittwoch, 1977). Note, for example, the following possible locations for Jrank$:
(8+) (8s)
It's because, frankly, I don,t trust the Conservatives that I voted for Labour I voted for Labour because, frankly, I don't trust the Conservatives
There seemsto be no independentlyrequired syntacticapparatus tha( can be held responsible for lowering these adverbs from therr hypothetical location in the performative clauseinto the embedded clausesin which they in fact appear. In the caseof (g5), one might try to rescue the hypothesis by claiming that rhere are in fact two performative clausesand./raz&/y modifies the second, as in (g6): (86)
I tell you that I voted for Labour because I tell you ftankly I don't trust the Conservatives
But that ofcourse gets the semanticsof the becaase-clause wrong: (go) asserts that I'm telling you something because I'm telling you somethingelse,which is not the meaning of (g5) at all (seeMittwoch, rg77 : r79 for futther syntacticdimculties with performativeadverbs). Finally, as we shall see when we come to talk of indirect speech acts, the syntactic mechanisms that are required to handle thosc phenomena are powerful enough to entirely replicate the effects of 262
5.5 Indirect speechacrc the PH without actually having performative clauses(see Sadock. I s75). For all these reasons,and others, Antithesis cannot be considered an adequate theory of illocutionary force. It fails both on internal grounds,becauseit leadsto semanticand syntacticincoherencies,and on externalgrounds becauseit fails to capture the basicintuitions that led to the theory of speech acts in the first place. The collapse of Antithesis would appear to leave Thesis unassailed, though not without its own problems. For of course it inherits in part the problems with the evaluationof performative adverbs,and is obliged to offer some pragmatic account of all the distributional phenomena that prompted the PH in the first place. No such account has been worked out in detail, and in generalthere has been surprisingly litde recent thought on how the apparent pragmatic conditioning of syntactic facts should be accommodatedwithin a general linguistic theory (what ideasthere have been will be consideredin section 5.5; see also the remarks in earlier Chapters in connection with deixis (z.z), conventional implicature (3.2.3) and presupposition (4.2)). However, there are further reasons to doubt the adequacy of Thesis too, and there is at least one altetnative and elegant way of thinking about speech acts. Before proceeding to it, let us discuss a pervasive phenomenonthat is a seriousproblem for both Thesis and Antithesis as they are usually advanced. Indirect speech acts: a problem for Thesis aad Antith€sis A major problem for both Thesis and Antithesis rs constituted by the phenomena known as indirect speech acts (or I SAs for short). The notion only makes senseif one subscribes to the notion of a literal force, i.e. to the view that illocutionary force is built into sentenceform. Let us call this the literal force hypothesis (or LFH for short). As Gazdar (r98r) has pointed out, LFH will amount to subscribing to the following: 5.5
(87) .
(i) Explicit perfo.mativeshave the force named by the performativcverb in the matrix clause (ii) Otherwise,the three major sentcnce-types in English, namely the imperative, interrogativeand declarative,have the forces traditionally .ssociatedwith them, namely ordering (or requesting),questioning and stating respectively 263
5.5 Indirect speechacts
Speech acts
Would you mind awfully if I was to ask you to close the door ? I am sorry to have to tell you to pleaseclose the door g. Did you forget the door? Do us a favour with the door, love How about a bit lessbreeze? Now Johnny, what do big people do when they come in ? Okay, Johnny, what am I going to say next i
(with, of course, the exception of explicit performatives which bappen to b€ in declarativeformat) It is clear that Antithesis theoristshave to subscribeto LFH by virtue of their commitment to the PH: by that hypothesis explicit performatives directly express their illocutionary forces, and the three basicsentence-typeswill be reflexesofunderlying performative verbs of ordering, questioning and stating. However, Thesis theorists are also committed to LFH in so far as they think that they are engaged in a semantical exercise characterizing the meaning of the various IFIDs (illocutionary force indicating devices),which clearly include explicit performativesand the main sentence-types.Certainly Searle is overdy committed to LFH, and Austin's emphasis on the " conventional" nature of illocutionary force and its indicators would seem also to commit him to LFH. Given the LFH, any sentencethat fails to have the force associated with it by rule (i) or (ii) in (87) above is a problematic exception,and the standard line is to claim that, contrary to first intuitions, the sentence does in fact have the rule-associated force as its literal force, but simply has in addition an inferred inditect force.Thus any usages other than those in accordance with (i) or (ii\ are itdirect speechacts. The basic problem that then arisesis that rros, usagesare inditcct. For example, the imperative is very rarely used to issue requestsin English; insteadwe tend to employ sentencesthat only indirectly do requesting.Moreover the kinds of sentencesthat are thus employed are very varied (see e.g. Ervin-Tripp, r976 for some empirical generalizations),For example,we could constructan indefinitely long list of ways of indirectly requesting an addresseeto shut the door (seealso Searle, r 975): (88)
a. I want you to close the ooor I'd be much obligedif you'd closethe door b. Can you closcthe doorl Are you able by any chance to close the door? c. Would you closethe door? Won't you closethe doorl d. Woutd you mind closing the door ? Would you be willing to closethe door? e. You ought to close the door It might help to close the door Hadn't you better close the door? f. May I ask you to close the door?
Given that the primary function of each of these could, in the right circumstances, amount to a request to close the door, the LFH theorist has to devise some way of deriving their request force from sentence forms that, according to rule (ii) in (87) above, are prototypically assertions and questions rather than requests (since they are not, with one exception, in imperative form), The diversity ofactual usagethus constitutes a substantial challenge to LFH, th€ theory that there is a simple form:force correlation. On the face of it, what people do with sentences seems quite unrestricted by the surface form (i.e. sentence-type) of the sentences uttered, However, before we ask how Thesis and Antithesis theorists might respondto this challenge,we should first consider another but related problem that is posed by ISAs. This problem is that ISAs often have syntactic (or at least distributional) teflexes associatednot only with their surfacesentence-type(and thus, on LFH, with their literal force), but also with their indirect or effective illocutionary force. A few examples of this phenomenon will make the dimensions of the problem clear. First, consider the quite restricted distribution of pleate in t}re pre-verbal position - it occurs in direct requestsas in (89), but not in non-requests as in (9o) (the ? here indicates at least pragmatic anomaly, and some would claim ungrammaticality):
(8e) (90)
Please shut the door You pleaseshut the door I ask you to please shut the door ?The sun please rises in the West
?The Batrle of Hastings pleasetook place in. ro66 However, please also occurs pre-verbally in certain indirect requests (roughly, those that incorporate the propositional content of the direct request),as in:
26s
5.5 Indirect sPeech acts
Speech actt ( 9 r)
Can you please close the door ? Will you please close the door ? Would you please close the door ? I want you to plcase close the door
Consequently,in order to describesuccinctly the distribution of this English morpheme, we seem to need to refer to a single functional class, namely the set of effective requests, direct or indirect (for further discussionseeGordon & l-akoff, r97r; Sadock, r974: 88-9r, ro+-8). Similarly, consider a performative adverb like obviously, or a parenthetical clause like I belieoe,which seem to be restricted to assertions,as (93) makes clear: 19z)
(9r)
a. b. a. b.
The square root of a quarter is, obviously, a half The square root ofa quarter is, I believe, a half ?ls, obviously, the square root of a quarter a half? ?Is, I believc, the square root of a quarter a half?
b7l
a, I want you to pass me the wrench, if yor.r can b. Will you pass the wrench, if you can
(e8)
c. Let me have the wrench, if you can ?Have you got the wrench, if you can b . ll want to know if you have the wrench, if you can c. ?Let me ask you if yor-rhave the wrench, if you can
Again, we seem to need to refer to the effective force of an utterance, irrespective of its form, if we are to express the restrictions on these clauses. Another kind of distributional pattern that is associatedwith ISAs is the sort of contraction or deletion illustrated by the sentences below: (99)
a. Why don't you read in bed ? b. Why not read in bed I
Ho*,ever, such expressionscan occur not only with direct assertions as in (92), but with assertionsin the guise of inte!rogativesas in (94) or in the form of imperatives as in (95):
Here the 6rst sentencecan either be used as a genuine request for reasons,or as a sugg€stion,but the form with do-deletion in the second sentenceseems only to allow the suggestion interpretation (Gordon & Lakoff, r975). Similarly, the contraction from (rooa) to (roob) forces an advice interpretation of the latter:
(s+)
( roo)
(9s)
a. May I tell you that, obviously, the square root of a quarter is a halfl b. May I tell you rhat, I believe, the square root of a quarter is a half? a. Let me tell you that, obviously, the square root of a quarter is a half b. Let me tell you lhat, I believe, the square root of a quarter is a half
Again the genetalization is that these modiiers seem restricted to utterances that can have the force of an assertion, whatever the sentence-typeof the linguistic expressionthat performs the assertion (seeDavison, r975). Similar remarks can be made for certain kinds of rf-clause that seem to mention felicity conditions on the illocutionary act being performed, as in:
(e6)
Pass me the wrench, if you can
where the y'-clause serves to lift the normally assumed ability condition on requests.Now notice that such a clauseoccurs happily with indirect requests,as in (9?), but not with questions, whether direct or indirect, as in (98) (see Heringer, rgTz): i66
a. You ought to pay your bills on time b. Oughta pay yotrr bills on time
and this explains the oddity of: \rot,
?Oughta pay your bills on time, and you do
since one cannot felicitously advise a course of action that has already been adopted (Brown & Levinson, ry78; 275\. Such examples, of which there are many, appear at least to provide ptirnalccte evidence for the systematic pragmatic conditioning of various syntactic, or at least distributional, processes. There are many otherkinds ofapparent interactionbetweensyntax and indirect illocutionary force (for further examples see Sadock, rg74: Chapter 4; Mittwoch, t976', Gazdar, r98oa). Ross (r9?5) concluded, on the basis of one such putative interaction, that pragmatic constraints must be referred to during the syntactic detivation of sentences and suggested that just as Generative Semanticists have argued for a hybrid 'semantax', so these facts motivate a general 'pragmantax'. An alternative,much more in line with current thinking, is not to restrict the syntax by pragmatic 267
Speech acts constraints at all (thus generating all the ? sentencesabove), bur te havean additional setof pragmaticfilterc that screenout pragmatically anomalouscollocations.But in any case,a general linguistic theory seemscalled upon to provide an account of the interaction between illocutionary force, both direct and indirect, and apparentlysyntacuc paocesses. The LFH is thus confronted with a two-pronged problem: on the one hand, it seemsto make the wrong predictionsabout the assignment of Jorce to sentence Jfoz., and on the other it needs to provide an account of how and why sentencesseem able to bear the syntactic stigmata,or distributional markers,of their indirect forces.Two basrc kinds of theory have been proposed to rescue LFH, which we may call idiom theory and inference theory. According to idiom theories, the indirectness in many putatrve casesof lSAs is really only apparent. Forms like those in (gga)_(ggd) are in fact all idioms for, and semantically equivalent to, ,l hereby request you to close the door,. Forms like Can you Zp? are idioms for 'l request you to VP' in just the same way th^t hich the buchet is an idiom for 'die', i.e. they are not compositionally analysed, but merely recorded whole in the lexicon with the applopriate semantrc equivalence.As a point in their favour, idiom theorists can point to lexical idiosyncrasjesof ISA formars for example Caa y'ou Vp? seems a more standard format for indirect requests than Are you able to VP?; there are moreover forms like Could you Zp? that seem difficult to interpret appropriately in a literal way at all. Further, thcre appear to be some ways in which the hypothesized idioms behave syntactically like their corresponding non-idiomatic direct countcrparts. For example, consider again the distribution of pre_verbal p/ear"in direct requestsand apparentlyindirect requestr. Brt "uppo"" the latter are really idioms for requests,then they will have thqsame underlying structure or semantic representation as direct requests (indeed, they are also direct requests,in the relevant sense of direcr;. Therefore, on the idiom theory the distributional constraint can be simply captured: pre-verbal p/easecan be conditioned so that it can only occur if there is a verb of requesting in the highest clause of the underlying structure or the semantic representation (the actual mechanismsinvolved are dependent,ofcourse, on views ofthe nature of, and the relations between, semanticsand syntax), Idiom theory has been seriously and energetically maintained, 268
5.5 Inditect speechacts especiallyby Sadock (ry7+, rgTS; see also Green, r975). However, thereare overwhelming problems for it. First, responsesto utterances can attend to both the literal force (i.e. that associatedby rule (i) or (ii) in (82) above with the syntactic form in question) and the alleged idiomatic force, as in (roz): (roz)
A: Can you please lift that suitcasedown for me? B: Sure I can: here vou are
This suggestsat leastthat both readingsare simultaneouslyavailable and utilized, but not in the way that they might be in a pun. Secondly, the argument that idiom theory is the only way to get the syntacric or distributional facts right for phenomena like pre-verbal p/casehas the embarrassment that whenever there's a grammatical reflex of indirect force, idiom theorists must claim an idiom. It follows that every sentence (other than direct requests) with pre-verbal p/ease must be an idiom with requesting force, e.g. the sentencesin (t03): (tol)
I'd like you to pleaseX May I remind you to pleaseX Would you mind if I was to ask you to pleaseX I am sorry that I have to tell you to pleaseX
Unfortunately this list seems to be of indefinite length, so if we are to treat these forms as idioms for 'I request you to X ', th€ lexicon will have to contain an indefinite number of such forms, But lexicons are strictly 6nite, and this suggeststhat forms like those in (ro3) are not really idioms at all.rr Thirdly, idiom theory suggeststhat there should be a considerable comprehension problem: forms like Can you VP?, Will you VP? and so on will each be z-ways ambiguous. How does a listener know what's meant? Although prosodic, and particularly intonational, factors may clearly help, they do not seem to fully 'disambiguate' the forces with which sentences are being used (Liberman & Sag, t974). In effect, idiom theory will need to be complemented by a powerful pragmatic theory that will account for which interpretation will be taken in which context, i.e. a theory that will bridge the gap 'r A corollary of this point is thar thc ser of lSAs rhar .llows rhe synr.dic or distributional markins of their indir€ct fo.c. L nor coincideht with the !.t of idiom.ric lSAs (stc Brown & l,€vinson, ,e78: rsff); in which cesr thc artempt to solve the distriburional problems of ISAS by appeat to idiom iheory fails in anv cas€.
269
Speerh acts between what is said and what is meant (intended). But if such s theory is required anyway, then we don't need idiom theory at all, because *'e will in effect have need of an inletence theory in any case (seebelow). Similarly, since idiom theory could at most handle cases like (88a)-(88d)(and not (88e)-(88g)),we would need an independenr inference theory to get the rest of the ISAs which are based on the inventive use of hints and the like, in which caseagain \!,ecould uss such a theory to do what idiom theory does. Finall-v, idioms are by de6nition non-compositional, and are therefore likely to be as idiosyncratic to speechcommunities as the arbitrary sound-meaningcorrespondencesof lexicalitems. However, most of the basicISA structurestranslateacrosslanguages,and where rhey don't it is usually for good semantic or cultural reasons(sec Brown & Levinson, 1978: r43-7). Such strong parallels across languagesand cultures in the details of the construction of ISAs constitute good ptima /acie evidence that ISAS are not, or nor primaril-v, idioms. We are left with inference theories as the only way of maintaining l,FH. The basicmove here is to claim that ISAs have the litEral force associatedwith the surface form of the relevant sentenceby rules 1ry and (ii) in (87) above. So, Can you VP? has the literal force of a question; it may also in addition have the conveyedor indirect foree of a request,by virtue of an inference that is made taking contextual conditions into account.One can think of the additional indirect force as, variously, a perlocution, a Gricean implicature, or an additionar conventionallyspecifiedillocution. There are, therefore.a number of distinct inference theories, but they share the following essentral properties: (i)
The literal meaningand the literal forceof an urrerance is computedby, and availablero, participants (ii) For an utteranceto 6e an indirectspeechact. thcre must be an inference-trigger, i.e.someindicationthat the literat meaningand/or literalforceis conversationallv inadeouate in the contextand musr be .repaired'by someinference (iii) Theremust be speci6cprinciplesor rulesofinferencethat will derive, from the literal meaningand force and thc context,the relevantindirect force (iv) There musr be pragmaticallysensitivelinguisticrulesor constraints,r+,hichwill govern the occurrenceof, f
5.5 Indirect speechacts & The first such inference theory was that proposed by Gordon (i) property was met by assuming ln that theory, r LakoffOg7 r, 975). rhe PH; while the trigger in (ii) was provided whenever the literal property (iii), forceof an utterance was blocked by the context. For postuconvergational some specific inference .ules wete offered, (which postulates state |ates, modelled on Carnap's meaning system analyticequivalencesnot captured elsewherein a semantical see Allwood, Andersson & Dahl, r977: r44), but with additional referenceto contextual factors.Thus, an inferencerule was suggested rhat stated that if a speaker says Caa you VP? (or any other expression of the same concepts)in a context in which a question .eading could not be intended, then his utterancewould be equivalent to his having said I tequesl you to VP' Similar rules wete proposed for Will you VP?, I uant yon to ZP, and so on. So far this was merely a descriptive enterprise, but Gordon & Lakoff went on to note a compact generalizationbehind such inference rules, namely that to state or questiona felicity condition on a speechact (with some restrictions), where the literal force of such a statementor question is blocked by context, counts as performing that specificspeechact. More specifically, Gordon & Lakofi suggested that one can state a speaket-based FC as in (ro4), and question a hearetbasedFC as in (Io5): ( t o +) (ro5)
I want more ice-cream Can you pass me the ice-cr€am please?
althougha more accuratedescription would be that one can only state speaker-basedFCs, as in (ro4) (Forman, t974), while one can state or question all other FCs, although to state them may be less than pol i te,' oa s in ( r o6) : (ro6)
You will do the washing up You can pass me the salt
Such a generalprinciple elegantly captures the kinds of examplesof ISAs illustrated in (88a){88d). Thus the examples in (88a) are statementsof the sincerity condition on requests,that one sincerely wants what one requests;the (88b) examplesare questioningsof the ability (preparatory) condition on requests, to the etiect that one believesthat the addresseehas the ability to do the thing requested; ro For some eeneral prediciions of what makes spcech acts more, or ltss, polite s e L e e c h , rq z z ; B ro q . n & L . v i n s o n . r9 ? 8 : r4 0 r.
SPeechocts the (88c) examples are questionings of the propositional content condition on requests, namely that the propositional content be a specificfuture act of the addressee's;and the (88d) examplescan be claimed to be questioningsof the FC that distinguishesrequestsfrom ordersor demands,namelythatthe speakerbelievesthat the addressee might not mind doing the act requested(here seeHeringer, rgTz c(. Lyons, r977a: 748-9). The account is not limited to requests and extends naturally to offers for example, as readers may verify for themselves. Moreover this general principle, that by questioning or assertinga l'C on an act one can indirectly perform that act itself, successfullypredicts ISAs across quite unrelated languagesand cultures (see Brown & Levinson, r978: r4rff). In fact, the general principle makes the specific conztetsatiotalpostulotes redundant, for there will be no need, given the generalprinciple, for a languageuser to learn such specific rules of inference. Finally, to handle property (iv), Gordon & Lakoff suggestedthe use of context-sensitive transderivational constraints. Transderivational constraints were rules already proposed within the theory of generative semantics that allowed one derivation to be governed by reference to another, and could thus be used to block, for example, certain structural ambiguities (see G. l,akoff, r973). These could now be used to govern processeslike p/ea.re-insertionrn indirect requestsby referenceto the parallel derivation of the explicit performative or direct request. Such rules allowed one to state that the pleasein (ro7) is acceptable,just becauseit can also occur in this pre-verbal position in (ro8), a sentence related to (ro?) by a conversational postulate- that is, a context-sensitive rule of interpretation. (roZ) (ro8)
Can you pleasepassth€ salt? I requestyou to pleasepassthe salt
However, there appear to be serious problems with such rules thought of as syntactic operations. In the first place they belong to the now defunct framework of Generative Semantics. Secondly, syntactic processesare generally thought of as being strictly intraderivational. But such rules can be equally well stated as pragmatic 6ltering conditions on syntacticstrings (asshown by Gazdar & Klern, r977). More problematic, perhaps, is a methodological objection: 272
5-5 Indiect speechaclt transderivational rules are so powerful that they undermine, for example,all the argumentsfor the PH (as Sadock (r975) points out)' For, given such rules, the troublesome reflexive pronoun in (3o) above could be governed by reference to the parallel derivation of (32), without hypostatizing a covert performative.clausein (3o) to gove.n the pronoun instead. However, it is arguable that the elimination of the PH is in fact a desirable result (as argued in section 5.4 above), in which case such rules (or pragmatic filters) provide an alternative account of whatever genuine observations survive the collapseof Antithesis. Another version of inferencetheory is suggestedby Searle( I975). Property (i) vrill be handled by his version of speech act theory; property (ii), the trigger requirement, will be provided by Grice's theory of conversationalco-operation(Grice, r975)' although on this account the literal force will not be blocked,2r but rather judged conversationallyinadequatealone; and property (iii), the inference principles,will be provided by Grice's generaltheory ofconversational implicature. Since the latter is a general theory of pragmatic inference, this approach,unlike Gordon & Lakoffs, proposesto assimilatelSAs to a broad range of other phenomena that includes metaphor, irony and all other caseswhere speaker's intent and sentence-meaning are seriously at variance. Such an approach has the great advantage of promising to explain ISAs that are not directly based on FCs, as tn (88e){88g) above, and thus seems to ofter, at least potentislly, more than a mere partial solution to the ISA problem. It then becomes necessary,though, to explain why those lSAs based on FCs are so prevalent and successful, and this Searle fails to do satisfactorily (here see an alternative inference theory sketched in Brown & Levinson, r978: r 43 ) . Incidentally, both these inferenceapproachesfail to attend to the motivation for lSAs: why, for example, do speakersso often prefer the contortions of (rro) to the simplicity and directnessof (ro9)? Clearly, on the assumption of Gricean co-operation there must be reason to depart from the di.ect expression of the relevant speech acr. problem here which he does not address: he has to claim thar, 'r Searle has a for €rample, (r07) is ,t?/at' . question, and only by .dditional inf€r€ncc a rcquest, ycr ( ro?) used in this way will fril to m€€t just about tll of his FCs on quc s ti ons(C Mda., rgE r).
Speechac,s (roq) (r ro)
Pleaselend me some cash I don't supposethat you would by any chancebe ableto lend me some cash, would you ?
Labov & Fanshel (1977) suggest that (I ro) is simply (ro9) with a bundle of "mitigators", or arbitrary politenessmarkers, tacked on in front. But this does nothing to explain why the mitigators do the job they do, and besideswill not explain the verbal inflection (here -d4g)in such examples as (r r r): ( r r r)
Would you mind lending me somecash,by any chance?
pessi. Attempts to explain the rationale behind the interactional tnism in ( r ro), and elsewhere,appeal to the systematicpressuresof strategiesof politeness(seeBrown & Levinson, r 9?8; also R. Lakoff, I9?3b and Leech, r977). By deviating from the simple and direct (ro9), one can then communicate by conversationalimplicature that these omnipresent considerations of politeness are being taken into account in performing the relevant speech act. However, there is a third solution, more radical than idiom or inference theory, to the problem of ISAs, and that is to reject the fundamental assumption (LFH) that sentenceshave literal forces at all (seeGazdar, r98r). It will follow that there are no ISAs, and thus no ISA problem, but merely a general problem of mapping speech act force onto sentencesin context. Illocutionary force is then entirely pragmatic and moreover has no direct and simple correlation with sentence-formor -meaning, But what would such a radical theo.ist say about explicit performatives and the major sentence-types, fol these seem to embody the corresponding illocutionary forces ? What he must say is something along the following lines. The three major sentence-typesin English must be given a distinguishing truthconditional characterization of a very general (and relatively uninformative) sort. For example, the meaning of the interrogative sentence-type can be thought of as an open proposition, closed by the setofappropriateanswers(seeHull, r 97S), or a particular interrogative may be held to denote the set of its t.ue answers (see Karttunen, r 97? ; and seeSchmerling, t978 fo. a similar approachto imperatives).Such meanings are intendedly general, and are consistent with quite different illocutionary forces. Thus interrogatives can be used with the illocutionary forces of 'real' questions, 'exam' questions, rhetorical questions, requests, offers, suggestions, threats and for 274
5.5 Ind;tect sqeechacts many other functions, without over-riding some 'literal force' Such an approach will fit well lwhich concept has been abandoned). with the demonstration that there are no isolable necessary and sufficient conditions on, for example, questionhood, but rather that the nature of the use to which interrogatives ate put cart-vary subtly with the nature of the language-garnetor contexts in which they are used (seeLevinson, 1979afor th€ arguments here). ln a similar way, explicit performatives can be assigned truth conditions that are as general as is consistent with their actual use. Contrast this approach with the long-standing tradition, supported by Hare (I949), Lewis (r969: t86), Hintikka (rq7+), Gordon & Lakoff (I975)' and in part by Sadock (r974 rzofr), to the effect that questions in interrogative form are in fsct /equesrsro tel/. Such a view simply does not fit with all the usages of questions, and predicts wrongly, for example, that no as a response to a yesfno question might be interpretable as a refusal to comply (see Lyons (rg77a: 753-68), who suggeststhat interrogatives simply " grammaticalize the feature of doubt "). Such a radical solution is obviously more than just a way of handling the problem of ISAs; it is also a general approach to speech acts in which semanticsplays only a minimal role, by assigningvery broad meanings to sentence-types,and also, where appropriate, to explicit performatives. What evidence can be adduced in favour of it ? Firstly, it is consistent with the very general use to which the three basic sentence-types are put in English and other languages. For example, imperatives are rarely used to command or request in conversationalEnglish (seeErvin-Tripp, t976), but occur regularly in recipes and instructions, ofrets (Haoe another dtinh), welcomings (Coze in), wishes ( Haxe a good time), curses and swearings (.S,rtttrp)' and so on (seeBolinger, I967). On the alternativeset of theoriesthat subscribe to LFH, just about all the actual usages of imperatives in Engtish will therefore have to be considered ISAs, whose understanding is routed through a determination of a literal otder or request, usually quite irrelevantly. Even sentences in explicit performative form can be used with different illocutionary forces from those named in the performative verb, as illustrated by ( r 5) above. Secondly,theoristswho hold LFH will find themselvessubscribing to an inference theory of ISAs (since the idiom theory has the difficulties outlined above). They therefore hold that the indirect force of an ISA is calculated on the basis of the literal force, But there
Speech acts are a number of caseswhere this seemsnot only implausibte(as with the use of imperativesin English), but quite untenable. For exarnpls, the following would have to have the literal force of a request fol permission to remind: (l t 2)
May I remindyou thatjacketsand tiesare requiredif you wistl to use the bar on the toTth floor, sir
Yet (r rz) cannot felicitously have that force, becausereminding is done simply by uttering ( r r z) without such permission being granted. LFH landsone in an awkward position on a numberofsuch examples (s e eG a z d a r, r9 8 r). Proponents of LFH may perhaps point to the reliable appearance ofthe three basic sentence-types in the world's languages(seeSadock & Zwicky, in press) as evidence that some such form:force correlation does exist. But it is important to see that a mcre approximate correlation of the three sentence-types with therr traditional corresponding forces (questions, orders and statements) is not sufficient evidence for LFH. Such a correlation can be accounted for, in so far as it has a firm basis, by assigning truth_ conditional meanings to each sentence-type in such a way that rational language users would find them generally useful for the associated purpose. Nevertheless, one may hope that more cross_ linguistic work can be brought to bear on the tenability of I-FH For these and many other reasons, a very good case can be made for abandoning LFH. We are then thrown back on the need for an adequate pragmatic theory of speech acts, or at least a theory that subsumes whatever is valid in the intuitions that lay behind speech act theory in the frrst place. The context-change theory of speech acts One candidate for such a pragmatic theory of speech acts is a view that treats speech acts as operations (in the set-theoretic sense) on context, i,e. as functions from contexts into contexts, A context must be understood here to be a set ofpropositions, describing the beliefs, knowledge, commitments and so on of the participants in a discourse.The basic intuition is very simple: when a sentence is uttered more has taken place than merely the expression of its meaning; in addition, the set of background assumptions has been altered. The contribution that an utterance makes to this chanqe rn 5.6
' zj6
5,6 The conter.t-changetheoty of s,eech acts that the context is its speech act force or potential. Thus if I assert p. o, I add to the context that I am committed to On this view, most speech acts add some propositions to the ' e.g. assertions,promises and orders work in this way We "on,"*,, each of these as functions from contexts into contexts express may along the following lines: roughly very An arrertion that p is a function from a context where th€ speak€rS is noi committed to p (and perhaps,on a strong theory of assertion,where H the addresseedoesnot know that p), into a coot€xt in which S is committed to the justi6edtrue beliefthatp (and,on the slrongversion,into one in which H does know that P) (il) A promite that p is a functioo from a contet t where S is not committ€d to bringing about the state of aflairs describedin r, into one in which S is so committed (iii) An otder that t is a function from a context in which H is not required by S to bring about the state of alTairs describedby p, into one in which H is so required (i)
Such analysesare capable of considerable refinement, and the reader is directed to work by Hamblin (r97I), Ballmer (I978), Stalnaker ( r978) and Gazdar ( r98I ) foi sophisticatedtreatments. One should note that not all speech acts add propositions to the context; some remove them - e.g. permissions, recantations,abolitions,disavowals.Thus, for example,we could characterizethe giving of permission as follows: (iv\ A permissionthat (or for) p is a function from a context ln which the stateof affairsdesctibedby p is prohibited, inro one in which that state of affairs is not prohibited thus capturing the intuition that it makes no sense(at least in some systemsof deontic logic - see Hilpinen, r97r) to permit what is not prohibited. One of the main attractionsof the context-changetheory is that it can be rigorously expressed using set-theoretic concepts. There is no appeal,as there is in most versionsof Thesis, to matters of intention and other concepts that resist formalization. The theory is only now becoming generally considered, and it is too early to assess its prospects with any confidence.22lmportant questions that arise, though, are the following: 4 One may, thoush, hav. iniri.l r€servations the'e are doubrs about de6n;ns coniexts \.holl).as sersofpropositions, and there is.lso a realpo$ibility that
5.7 Beyond theories oJ sqeechacts
SPeechacls
(D ( ii)
Hou general a theory is it? Can exhortations, curses, expletives, remindings and the like all be adequatsly expressed in such a framework ? Can the full range of speech acts be accommodated with reasonableeconomy, i.e. how large is the set of primitive concepts, like comrzitfieflt, obligalion a d so on, that have to be marshalled in definitions like those above ? The real interest of the theory depends in part orr just how few of these are actually required
(iii) Can such a theory capturerhe intr,ritiverelationsthat wc feel to exist between some pairs of closely related speech acts, like requestsand orders, suggestionsand advice, questionsand requests,promisesand threats? We await the full-scale theories that would provide answersto these questions.Meanwhile the approachoffershope of systematicformahzation in an area of pragmatics that has long resistedit, There are, however, a number of reasons,to which we now turn, why one mignt be scepticalthat any such theory of speechacts will be viable in the long run. Deyond theories of speech acts There are some compelling reasonsto think that speechact theorymayslowly be supersededby much more complex multi-faceted pragmatic approachesto the functions that utterancesperform. The 6rst setofthese haveto do with the internal difficultiesthat any speech act theory faces,of which the most intractable is probably the set of problems posed by ISAs. Note that any theory of speech acts rs basically concerned with mapping utterances into speech act categories,however those are conceived. The problem then is that either this is a trivial enterprise done by fa, (as by LFH), or an attempt is made to predict accurately the functions of sentencesln context. But if the latter is attempted, it soon becomesclear that the contextual sources that give rise to the assignment of function or purposeare of such complexity and ofsuch interest in their own right, that little will be left to the theory of speechacts. In the next Chapter we shall review extensive work in conversation analysis that shows 5.7
full char.de.iarions ofspcech:cts in tcrms of d@ntic, cpisremic and orhcr compl€x p.oposirions witl ohty shifr the probtems ofanatysis ro anoth* tev.,. Finally, the difrcutties assciit.d with the attemp. ro providc neccssarvrnq r u m ci.n r co n d ir io n sfo i parri cutrr i ocuri on.ry.crs w i recor herc. rtberr in a diffcr.nr fo'm. '278
part due to the how the functions that utterances perform are in large (or interactional) place they occupy within specific conversational sequences. in this way, speech act theory is being currently undermined from the outside by the g.owth ofdisciplines concernedwith the empirical study of natural language use (as Austin indeed foresaw)' Apart from the important work in conversation analysis dealt with in Chapter 6, there are two major traditions that concern themselves with the d€tails of actual language use in a way pertineot to theories of speech acts.One is the ethnography ofspealing, which has been concerned r.r,iththe cross-cultural study oflanguage usage(seethe replesentative collectionin Bauman & Sherzer, r974). Acentral conceptin this work is the notion of a speech event, or culturally recognized social activity in which language plays a specific, and often rather specialized, role (like teachingin the classroom,participating in a church service, etc.; seeHymes, t 972). Now given that such cultural eventsconstrain the useof language,there seemto be (ascorollariesofsuch constraints) corresponding inference rules that operate to assign functions to utterances partly on the basis of the social situation that the talk ts conducted within (Levinson, rg79a). Thus, in a classroom, the following exchange may have a natural interpretation significantly divergent from the content of what is said : (r rl)
Teacher:What are you laughingat? Child: Nothing
- roughly, as a command to stop laughing issued by the teacher, and an acceptanceof that command, this by virtue of the assumptionthat laughing (unlessinvoked by the teacher)is a restrictedactivity in the classroom(Sinclair& Coulthard, r 975 : 3off).Orconsidet the following said towards the end of a job interview: ( r r +)
Interviewer: \ly'ouldyou like to tell us, Mr Khan, why you have appliedto Middleton Collegein particularI
where such a leading question does not anticipatereplieslike "There werenrt any other jobs going ", but iathet, by referenceto interview conventions, fishes for compliments on the institution's behalf (see Cumperz, Jupp & Roberts, t979 for the cross-cultural misunderstandings that can result from not knowing such conventions). Some further examples should serve to indicate just how general such activity-specific inferences seem to be. Thus, the following sentence, 279
I
5.7 Beyond theories of speechqcts
SPeech actt delivered in a grocer's shop, and accompanied by a gesture at 3 lettuce, (r 15)
That's a nice one
may count as a request to supply the selected vegetable, and an undertaking to purchase it in due course (Levinson, r979a). Similarly, utterances that iniriate certain kinds of proceedings achieve therr effectiveness through assumptions about the nature of thc,se proceedings:hence (r t 6) may serve to constitute the beginning of a committee meeting, of the sort that awaits the arrival of a full complement of personnel : (rt6)
Well, we seemro all be here
while some scheduled activity, like a lecture, may be begun by reference to the appropriate schedule: (t rZ)
It's 6ve pasttwelve
(see Turner, r97z). All these utterances seem to owe their decisive function in large part to the framework of expectations about the nature of the speech event to which they are contributions. Not only are expectations about the purpose and conduct of the proceedings relevant to this attribution of function, but also, it can be argued, knowledge of social roles. Thus, the following utterance said by one of a pair of students to their landlady may serve as a request for permission,but said by the landlady to the studentsmay be a request for action (Ervin-Tripp, r98r; see also Goody, r978):zl (r 18)
Can we move the fridge?
Such examples point to the efficacy of Wittgenstein's notion of language-game.zrHe denied that there is any small set of functions or speech acts that language may perform; rather, there are as many such acts as there are roles in the indefinite variety of language_games (or speech events) that humans can invent (Wittgenstein, rg5g: te-t r). Some support for such a view is offered by the failure of attempts to match up the actual usage of utterances with the felicity conditions proposed by Searle, i.e. with the sets of necessary and sufficient conditions constitutive ofspecific speechacts. For example, o This particulet exempte retics, of course, on rh€ .bs.nc. of an inctusive/ cxclusiv. disrinction in thc Enstish first p.rson pturat pronoun. g Or thc Firthi.n notion of.esrrictcd tansurac!: s.. ..s. Mitche , r97s. 280
questions in actual usagearejust too variable and situation-dependent in nature to be captured by any set (or indeed many difrerent sets) of felicity conditions (see Levinson, I979a), and the same can be shown even for such apparently 'ritualized' speech acts as apologies (seeOwen, I98o). The interpretive corollary of the notion of language-game is the notion of inferential schema, or frame, now widely current ln artificial intelligence and cognitive psychology (Minsky' t977; Tannen, 1979)- A frame, in this sense, is a body of knowledge that is evoked in order to provide an inferential basf for the understanding of an utterance (see e,g. Charniak , ry72r, and, we may suggest that in the comprehension and the attribution of force or function to utterances like (l I3t(r r8) abovc, reference is made, as relevant, to the frames for teaching, shopping, participating in committee meetings, lecturing, and other speech events (see e.g. Gumperz, ry77).25 The second major empirical tradition that takes us well beyond speech acts narrowly conceived, is the study of language acquisition. Significant advanceswere achieved here recently when, instead ofthe emphasis on the grammatical systcms lying behind the child's early utterances, attention was shifted to the functions that those utterances perform, and the interactional context they contribute to' It was th€n seen that, in a sense, the acquisition of speech acts precedes, and systematically pre-figures, the acquisition of speech (Bruner, r975; Bates, t976); that is to say that children's gestures and prc-verbal vocalizations play a role in interaction with their caretakers closely similar to the requests and calls for attention that manif€st themselves verbally later in development, Thus, with the onset of the child's first use ofpre-syntactic utterances (trad i tionally called holophzascr),these initial speech functions are already well developed - it seems indeed as if holophrases simply replace gestural indicators of force (Dore, r975; Griffiths, t9?9: I Io).:t An important suggestionthat emerges
'
t! How€v.r, lhet. i3 . lignificant dangcr in thir linc of rhoriting' n.mclv .h.t rppcat will bc m.de to implicit asp€clsof cont€x. b€fot. th. flll si8ni6c.ncc of.rplicit .spccts ofcont.rt - nor.blv prosodv rnd dilcou.s€ location - hav! b€.n tak.n propcrly into eccount ! lt i! inicr.stinS .h.t in thc holophr|sc Friod - from 9- r 8 mon.h5 or so - ttrcb forccs s€€m v€ry rc.trictcd, nrmcly to r€qucsts, 3ummonsca, gtcding! rnd .cts of rcfcrcnce. Ut...rhcc! rntlFsbl€ as uncquivocel s..tcrncnB ind qu€stions do not ..cm to tpp€ar un.il thc child is ncarct z (GrifFths, rgzg)-
zBr
Sqeech acls is that the acquisition of illocutionary concepts is a precondition ;q1 the acquisition of languageitself. However, despite much useofthe term s tlrecchac, andperfotmat&e. this recent work on language acquisition does not really support th; importance of the concept of speech act at all; rather it emphasizes the essential rol€s that communicative intention, utterance function and the interactive context play in the acquisition of language. Indeed the Gricean intentional view of speech acts (as in Strawson, 1964; Schiffer, r97z) seems much more relevant to the description of language acquisition than the convention-based accounts that we have reviewed in such detail in this Chapter. Further, recent work (in part reviewed in Snow, r979) has stressed the interaction between mother and child that jointly produces discourse. The role of adult interpretations of child utterances, whether those adults are parti_ cipants or analysts, is thus acknowledged I it is through the r€sponses that adults make on the basis of such interpretations that childrcn " learn how to mean" (Halliday, r 9?5). Here the other two traditious we have mentioned seem to have promising application. Firsr, conversation analysis is likely to tell us a great deal more than theories of speech acts about the ways in which language is acquired and used by children (see Drew, r 98 r ; Wootton, in press). Secondly, the idea of the speech event and its associated interpretive frame seems very relevant: child-minding is seen as a specific kind of activity in most cultures, associated with a special style of talk by adults ('baby talk'or 'motherese'; see Snow, rgTg for a review of recent work). In such a language-game, expressions of want by the child are not interpreted as requests by virtue of any conversational postulates or th€ like, but simply because minders tend to see themselvesas generalwant satisfiers(Griffiths, r979: ro9). Further, progress in acquisition can be seen as the acquisition of additional language-gamesand interpretive frames, extending in a sequencewell into adulthood (Keenan, !976a). Again, then, the study of language acquisition, where the sttribution of intent and purpose is often so problematic for both adult participants and analysts, while addressing the issues that lie at the heart of speech act theory, takes us well beyond it. In conclusion, the future of speech act theory probably rests on the tenability of the LFH. If some version of a strict form:force correlation can be maintained in such a way that the predicted forces z8z
S-Z Beyond theorics of speechacts match actual usages,then a theory of speech acts is likely to continue to play a role (though not necessarily a central one) in Seneral theories of language usage. lf, on the other hand, no such version of LFH can be found (and certainly none now exists), then there is little reason to isolate out a level of illocutionary force that is distinct from all the other facets of an utrerance's function, purpose or intent. In that case, we can expect speech act theory to give way to more empirical lines of investigation ofthe sort briefly reviewed here, and dealt with more extensively in the next ChaPter.
283
6-o Introduction
6 Conversational structurer
6.o
Iniroduction In this Chapter we shall be centrally concerned with the organization of conversation.Definitions will emerge below, but for the present conversation may be taken to be that familiar predominant kind of talk in rvhich two or more participants freely alternate in speaking, which generally occurs outside specific institutional settingslike religiousservices,larvcourts, classroomsand the like. It is not hard to seewhy one should look to conversationfor insight into pragmatic phenomena,for conversationis clearly the prototypical kind of languageusage,the form in which we are all 6rst exposedto language-the matrix for language acquisition. Various aspectsof pragmaticorganizationcan be shown to be centrally organizedaround usage in conversation, including the aspectsof deixis explored in Chapter z where it was shown that unmarked usagesof grammatical encodings of temporal, spatial, social and discourse parametersare organized around an assumption of co-present conversational participants. Presuppositionmay also be seen as in some basic ways I lllusrrative data in this Chapter are drasn $-her€ possible from published sourccs so that r€ad€rs can refer to them fo..dditionel .onrext or further discussn'n: io thosc cases (he source h€ad! crch cxtract. lvhcr€ this has nor hten possible d.tr hale been drann from trrnscripts ci.cul.ted by workrrs in
con$rs.tion
identifring
anal'rsis, such source6 beins indicated by customary initials (c.g. US, DCD), a laree proportion of Ihich have b€€n (c.,.. br (;.il Jcff$son: orhersis€, data headcd by a numbd
transcribcd !768) a.c drasn from the aurhois collecrion, some ofwhich sere ranscribed by Merion ()wen. Data without r heldi.a arc consrru$ed for illustrarivc purposcs unlcss othersise indicrr€d in (hc text. lt has not bcen possittle ro chKk tr.nscripts against thc original rccordings, so there m.y onl! be a modicumofconsist€nct in thr usc oftrrnscriprion con!entions (sft ADpendix b this Chrrxer).
284
org^rrized around a conversational setting: the phenomena involve constraintson the way in which information has to be presented if it is to be introduced to particular participants with specificshared assumptions and knowledge about the world. The issues touch closelyon the distinction between given and new (seee.g. Clark & of concern constraints on the forrnulation Haviland, 1977), ^nd information (that is, the choiceofjust one out ofthe inde6nitely many possibledescriptionsof some entity - seeScheglofi, 1972b),both of which are important issuesin conversationalorganization.Similarly, implicatures derive from speci6c assumptionsabout conversational context: they do not always arise in the same way in all kinds of discourse- rather they are t1'picalof conversation(yet' as we have seen,they havegeneralgrammaticalreflexes,asin the constraintsthey imposeon lexicalization).In the sameway it may be arguedthat many kinds of speechact are built on the assumption of a conversational matrix - belting, for example,requiresuptaAeto be effective,so that the utterance of I bet you six pencedoes not succeed without the interactionalratificationtypical of conversation.lndeed the conversational dependcnceof illocutionary force is such that the concept itself can be claimed to be substantially replaced by concepts of conversationalfunction, as we shall see. Nearly all the pragmatic conceptswe have reviewedso far can thus be claimed to tie in closely with conversationas the central or most basic kind of languageusage.Now if, as we shall argue, the proper way to study conversational organization is through empirical techniques,this suggeststhat the largely philosophicaltraditions that have given rise to pragmatics may have to yield in the future to more empirical kinds of investigation of language usage. Conceptual analysisusing introspectivedata would then be replaced by careful inductive work basedon observation.The issueraisedhere is whether pragmatics is in the long term an essentiallyempirical discipline or an essentially philosophical one, and whether the present lack of integration in the subject is due primarily to the absenceof adequate theory and conceptualanalysisor to the lack ofadequateobservational data, and indeed an empirical tradition. So far, in this book, we have reviervedthe philosophicallyrooted traditions, but in this Chapter tve turn to the outstanding empirical tradition in pragmatics. First, however, we should make clear the reasons for preferring this tradition t<.rother aDoroachesto the studv of conversation. 285
Co4ge/sational slructure Discourse analysis versus convetsation analysis In this section some different approachesto the study r)f At the risk of oversimplification,therc can conversationare assessed. major approaches to the analysis of to be tt'o be considered we shall designate discourse analysis and conversation, which conversation analysis (other distinctive approachesexist, of u'hictr the most important is probably the modelling of conversationusing computer programs instead of human participants, as yet in its infancy -but see e.g. Power, r979). Both approachesare centrally concerned with giving an account of how coherenceand sequential organization in discourse is produced and understood. But the two approacheshavedistinctiveand largelyincompatiblestylesofanalysis, which we may characterizeas follows. Discourseanalysis (or DA) employs both the methodology and the kinds of theoretical principles and primitive concepts (e.g. rzle, well-Jormed fotmula) typical of linguistics. It is essentiallya seriesof attempts to extend the techniquesso successfulin linguistics,beyond the unit of the sentence.The proceduresemployed (often implicitly) are essentially the following: (a) the isolation of a set of basie categories or units of discourse, (b) the formulation of a set of concatenation rules stated over those categories,delimiring wellformed sequencesof categories(coherentdiscourses)from ill-formed sequences(incoherent discourses).There are a numbcr of other features that tend to go with these. There is typically an appeal to intuitions, about, for example, what is and what is not a coherent or well-formed discourse (see e.g. Van Dijk, r97z; Labor, & Fanshel, rg77].72). There is also a tendency to take one (or a feu') texts (often constructedby the analyst)and to attempt to give an analysisin depth of all the interesting featuresof this limited domain (to 6nd out, as some have put it, "what is really going on"- Labor' & Fanshel, 1977| 59, r r 7). Into this broad avenueof work fall not only (and most obviously) the text grammarians (like Petiifi and Van Dijk - seede Beaugrande& Dressler, r98r : z4fI for review), but also the rather different work basedon speechacts(or relatednotions) of researchers such as Sinclair & Coulthard (r975), Longacre (r976b), l,abov & Fanshel (r977) and Coulthard & Brazil (ry7g). In contrast, cor,lelsation analysis (or CA), as practised by Sacks, Schegloff,Jefferson,Pomerantz and others, is a rigorously empirical approach which avoids premature theory construction (see the 6.r
i86
6.t Discoutsea"alysis tersus contelsalronanalysrs r979; Atkinson & Heritage' collectionsin Schenkein, I978; Psathas, search is made for inductivei ln'p.."O. The methods are essentially occurring naturally of recurring patterns acloss many records (usually) of categorization ir,.ontrast to the immediate SecondlY' work DA in step "lnu.r""iior,r, ,.r,.i"a.a data which is the typical 6rst /!l"s as used in syntactlc of ontology a theoretical of place in and inferential i"""ript;on, we have an emphasison the interactional of the choice between alternative utterances Again in "or,""q,l".,""" ,o DA, there is as little appeal as possible to intuitive "on,.u", but tbey are not iudn"-"n,. - they may, willy-nitty, guide research' the data; the .*pirnu,ion" and they certainly do not circumscribe not on what one emphasisis on what can actually be found to occur' to do so lntuition' were if it (or acceptable) be odd guess would would as indeed it area' this guide in an unreliable it is claimed, is simply I972a) 'fhere may be in other ateas of linguistics (see e'g l-abov' Instead' as is also a tendency to avoid analysesbasedon single texts' are examined phenomena particular many instancesaspossibleof some going on" really is "what acrosstexts, not primarily to illuminate illuminations judged such impossible, in some interaction (a goal rather evadingparticipantsasrvell asanalystson many occasions)'but organization to discover the systematic properties of the sequential such oftalk. and the ways in which utterancesare designedto manage sequences. Which is the correct manner in which to proceed? The issue is a live one: DA theoristscan accuseCA practitionersof being inexplicit' or worse,plain muddled, about the theoriesand conceptualcategories they are actually employing in analysis(sec e g' Labov & Fanshel' rg77 | 25i Couhhard & Brazil, r 979); CA practitionerscan retort that DA theoristsare so busy with premature formalization that they pay scant attention to the nature of the data The main strength of the DA approachis that it promisesto integratelinguistic findings about intra-sentential organization with discourse structure; while the strength of the CA position is that the procedures employed have already proved themselves capable of yielding by far the most substantialinsights that have yet been gained into the organization of conversation. There mal' well seem to be room for some kind of accommodation or even synthesisbetweenthe two positions; however there are some reasonsto think that the DA approach as outlincd is fundamentally 287
6.t Discoutse anallsis aenus conoe/tation afldlysis
ConL,ersational st/ucture misconceived. We may start by noting
that DA analysts can 6" divided into two basic categories - the text grammarians and the speech act (or interactional) theorists. The text grammarians believc. at least in the simplest formulations, that discourses can be views4 simply as sentences strung together in much the same way thar clauses *'ithin sentences can be conjoined with connectives of various
kinds. lt follorls that there are no problems for discourse analysis that ..discourse are not problems for sentential analysis can be treated as a single sentence in isolation by regarding sentence boundaries as sentential connectives" (Katz & Fodor, 1964 4go; see critique in Edmondson, t978, 1979). However adequate such a view may be for written non-dialogic text, it is simply not feasible as a model for conversation where the links between speakers cannot be paraphrased as sentential connectives - for example ( r ) does not paraphrase as (z):
(r, \2 )
(:)
A: Hor-r'are vou ? B: To hell with you Ho*- are you and to hell with you Anne said " How are .you ?" and Barry replied ,.To hell with you
Even if (r) can be reported as (3), this shows nothing about the reducibility of ( r ) to (3 ), but merely that like all othet kinds of evenrs conversatrons are reportable (contra Katz & Fodor, 1964: 49t). The DA theorists that are therefore of interest to us are those who have been speci6cally concerned with conversation as a particular type of discourse, and rve shall devote the rest of this section to a critique of their basic methods and assumptions. Here there is a remarkable underlying uniformity of views, a basic assumotion (probably right as far as it goes) that rhe level at which coherence <;r order in conversation is to be found is not at the level of linguistic expressions, but at the level of the speech acts or the interactional moves that are made by the utterance of those expressions. Or, as Labov & Fans hel ( t g77: 7o) p u t i t : , . o b l i g a t o r y s e q u e n c i n g i s n o t to be found between utterances but between the actions that are being performed ". It is thus possible to formulate the general properties of the whole class of models to which, in one guise or another, most DA theorists ofconversation would subscribe (see e.g. La6ov, r97zll; Sinc lair & Coult har d, r 975; L o n g a c r e , r 9 7 6 b ; t , a b o v & F a n s h e l , r 977; Coult har d
288
& Br az il, r g 7 9 ; E d m o n d s o n ,
rggr):
Id
'fhere are unit acts-speechacts or motes - that are performed in speaking,which belong to a specifiable, delimiteds€t (ii) Urterancesl are segmentableinto unit parts - utteronceanils eachof rvhich correspondsto (at least)one unit act (iii) There is a specifablefunctioz, and hopefully Procedure, ^ thar will map utterance units into speechacts and vice versa (iv) Conversational are primarily regulatedby a set sequences /!.r&Jstated over speechact (or move) types of sequencing (i)
The kernel idea here is both simple and highly plausible: since sequentialconstraints are clearly not easily stated on the form or peaning of what is said, utteranceshave to be 'translated' into the underlying actions they perform, becauseon this deeper (or more abstract) level rules of sequencing will be sttaightforwardly describable.Such a model seemsto capture the obvious regularities of the sort that answersgenerallyfollow questions,actionsor excuses follow requests, acceptances or rejections follow offers, greetings follow greetings, and so on. The difficulties are thus generally considered to lie at the level of (iii) above, the translation from utterancesinto acts - "the rules of production and interpretation ... are quite complex; the sequencing rules are relatively simple" (Labov & Fanshel, I977: I lo) - and the various theories of indirect speech acts are therefore a focus of interest. lf the view is right then we can build up a model of conversation from a linguistic baseby utilizing (while improving) the basicnotions of speechact theory, merely adding a syzrar for the concatenationof speechact categoriesthat will capture the simple regularitiesnoted above. However there are some strong reasonsto believe that such modcls are fundamentally inappropriate to the subject matter, and thus irremediably inadequate.Some of these have to do with the general problems that beset speech act theory, which we have already reviewedin Chapter 5. But in fact there are severeproblems for each ! As noted in Chaptcr r, considerlble ambiguitics attend rhc use ofthis tc.m. Wc h.re senerall].. uscd the term in prior Chaptersto denote a senrence-contcxt p o i . ; h o $ e re r h e re , a n d , . e n e ra l l l e l s e q h e r€ i n t h i s C h a p t e r, i r i s b e i n s u * d in the scnse of a product of an acr of ltterance, belo$) at talk. On th€ (; o o d $ i n , r9 8 r: rs f f .
norion
utterchc.adit
occurrins
a rzra (sce r977a: 6331{;
within
see Llons,
289
Conuelsational stluc t ure of the basicassumptionsin (4), which should be briefly indicated(see a l s o I-e v i n s o n , r9 8 ra , r9 8 rb). First, there are a number of problems with assumption(a)(i). One of theseis that some single-sentenceutterancesclearly perform more than one speechact at a time (if the notion ofa speechacr is to capture at least what utterances conventionally achieve)_ consider, f61 example, the first utterance in the following exchange: (5)
A: Would you like anotherdrink I B: Yes I would, thank you, but make it a small one
The first utterance seems to be both a qu€stion and an ofler, as indicated by the response.Now such multiple function" in "...ro, principle problematic for assumptions(a)(i) and (4)(iii), but as thcy accumulate they do render the whole model considerably lesg attractive. How, for example, are the sequencing rules in (iv) ro operate if more acts are being done than can feasibly be responded to directlyl Moreover, as we shall see, the sources for multiple functions often lie outside the utterancein question, in the sequeniial envlronment in which it occurs; but such environments are nor obviously restricted in kind, so that the existenceof a well_defined and delimited set of speech act types, as requireci by the model. rs q u i te d u b i o u s . However, more problematic for the assumption in (4)(i) is the facr that conversationalresponsescan be directed notjust to the illocutions performed by utterances, but to their perloc ulions too. Suppose, for example,that A and his companion B are at a party, and A being bored says to B: (6)
A: It's gerting late, Mildred B: a. But I'm having such a good trme b. Do you want to gol c. A.en't you enjoying yourself, dear?
Then B might reply in any of the ways indicated, but none of these addressesthe illocutionary force of A's utterance; rathei they respond to a number ofpossible perlocutionary intents that A might have had. But this is highly problematic for the speciesof model"in question: for perlocutionsare unlimited in kind and numb", a.,d u.,y .."p.rn"." basedon them will necessarilyfall outside the scopeof such a model. There are serious problems too with (4)(ii), the requirement that there be identifiableutterance-unitsupon which speech actsor moves 29 0
6,t Discoutse analysis oersusconaersatiot qnalysis can be mapped, Single sentencescan be used to perform two or more (as we have seen) may speechacts in different clauses,and each clause there are many subFurther, act. speech perform more than one and it is-possible for utterances' as that occur sentential units actions (like non-vocal (e.g. laughter), non-linguistic vocalizations (e.9. after silence and sheer requested), fianding someone something to utterances' responses perform appropriate a loaded question) to The problem is that in order for the function in property (+Xiii) to be well-formed, there must be an independently speciFable set of utterance-units onto which actions can be mapped. But in fact ir is impossible to specify in advance what kinds of behavioural units will carry major interactional acts; rather the units in question seem to be functionally defined by the actions they can be seen to perform in context. The requirement (4)(iii), therefore, inherits two problems: for a function to map actions onto utterance-units, there must be welldefined sets of (a) relevant actions and (b) relevant utte.ance-units. But we have seen that there are not. In addition, for this kind ofmodel to have any real interest, we require not merely an abstract function, but an actual procedure or algorithm that will implement the function. But here we shall be even more disappointed, for as our discussion of speech act theory in Chapter 5 showed, there simply is no simple form-to-force correlation, and the attempts to bridge the gap (b€tween what utterancea'literally' mean and 'actually' do in the way ofactions) with theories of indirect speechacts have provided at best only partial solutions. For questions of context, both sequential (or discourse) context and extra-linguistic context, can play a crucial role in the assignment ofutterance function. We can €xpect, therefore, no simple ' force conversion' rules to supply a general solution here, but rather some immensely complex inferential process that utilizes information ofmany different kinds. In the present state ofknowledge, proponents of the kind ofmodel outlined in (4) cannot expect to have even ihe geneial outlines of such an algorithm. But this has an unfoatunate consequence for such models, namely that they are unfalsifiable, and therefore essentially vacuous. The reasoning is this: suppose I claim (in accordance with the final assumption in (+)) that, given some set of speech act types or moves (let us call them X, Y and Z), only some sequencesof these are tr)ell-Jormedor coherent sequences (say, XYZ, XZ, YXX) while all 29r
Conoersalional
struc ture
iXYX, *ZX, etc.) are ill-formed sequences. others (like *ZXY, Then in order to be able to disprove this hypothesis it must be possible to test independently whether some sequence of utterances in fact corresponds to, say, the string XYZ. But such a test is only procedure for assigning utterances to categories like X, Y and Z. And as there is no such procedure, there is no empirical content to the claim that strings of tbe form XYX do possible if there is an explicit
not or should not occur in discourse. Finally we come to (4)(iv), the assumption that there is a set of sequencing rules, stated ovet speech act (or related) categories, which govern the sequential organization of conversation. This assumption is the motivating property of all such models, for the point of 'translating' utterances into the actions they perform is to reduce the problems of sequencing in conversation to a set of rules governing u'ell-formed action sequences. The assumption embodies a strong about the 'syntactic' nature of sequential constraints in conversation, and essential to such a claim is that there should be clear cases of ill-formed sequences (like *XYX above) just as there are in sentence grammars (like *oz cal the sat tuat the). yet cases of such iupossible discourses are hard if not impossible to find (see e.g. the
6.t
landlord B - it will seem natural and indeed quite unremarkable. So the fundamental basis fo. the postulation ofgeneral sequencing rules, namely the existence and predictability of ill-formed sequences, ls seriousll' called into question. Ir is an initial consideration of paired utterances like questions and answers, otTersand acceptances (or rejections), greetings and greetings in response, and so on, thal motivates the sequcncing iules approach. But not only is conversation not basically constituted by such pairs (cf. Coulthard, 1977:. 7o) but the rules that bind them are not of a quasi-syntactic nature. For example, questions can be happily followed by partial answers, rejections of the presuppositions of the question, statements of ignorance, denials of the relevance of the question, and so on, as illustrated below: (8)
claim
successfuI contextualization by Edmondson, r 98 r : r zffof the allegedly ill-formed discourses in Van Dijk, rgTz). One reason for this is predicted by Grice's theory of implicature: any apparent conversational violation (e.g. a flouting of Relevance) is likely to be treated on the assumption that the utterances involved are in fact interpretablc, if additional inferences are made (see Chapter 3 above). Another rs that, as mentioned above, responses can be made to perlocutions, and perlocutions are not limited in kind and number and are not solely predictable from the utterances involved. A third is that our intuitions do not seem to be reliable guides in this area - sequences that we might judge 'ill-formed' in isolation do in fact frequently occur. Consider the following example (from Sacks, r968, April r7): O)
A: B: A: B:
I have a fourteen year old son Well that's all right I also have a dos O h I ' m s or r y
rvhich can seem in isolation quite bizarre, but when re-embedded ln the actual conversation from which it is taken in which A is raising a series of possible disqualifications for apartment rental with the
Discourse analysis oetsus conT)elsation analysts
A: What does John do for a living? B: a. Oh this and that b. He doesn't c. I've no idea d. What's that got to do with it ?
Rather we want to say that given a question an answer is relevant, and responses can be expected to deal with this relevance (see the explication ofthe notion ofcondiaional relevance in 6.z.l.z below). Such expectations are more like the maxims proposed by Grice, with their associated defeasible inferences, than like the rule-bound expectancy ofan object after a transitive verb in English. This is made clear by, for example, the fact that in conversation inventive cooperative responses following questions may be preferable to ans\!ers: (9)
A: Is Jo h n th e r e l B: You can reach him at extcnsion thirty-four sixty-two
Finalll ue should note that sequencing consrraints in conversation could in any case never be captured fully in speech act terms. What makes some utterance after a question constitute an answer is not only the nature of the utterance itself but also the fact that it occurs after a question with a particular content - ' ansrverhood ' is a complex propcrtl composed of sequential location and topical cohercnce across two utterances, amongst other things; significantly, there is no pr<-rposedillocutionary force of answering. But the model in question skirts the puzzling issue of constraints on topical coherence, despite 291
Conoelsalional structure the fact that th€ir relevanceto issuesof conversationalsequencingls made clear b1'examples like (7). It seems,then, that it is doubtful that there are rules of a syntactic sort governing conversational sequencing,and that even if such rules could be found they would not give anything but a partial accountofconstraintson conversational sequences. The conclusion that can be drawn is that all of the models that fall within the classhaving the generalpropertiesoutlined in (4) are beset q'ith fundamental difficulties. In addition, the actual analysesoftered within theories of this kind are often quite super6cial and disappointing, involving an intuitive mapping of unmotivated categories onto a restricted range of data. Even where this is not so (as in the major work by Labov & Fanshel, t977), the analysescan often be shown to have obscuredbasic featuresof conversationalorganization (seee-g. the re-analysisof their data in ( I o4) below). It seems reasonable,then, to turn to CA as the approach that, at leastat present,has most to offer in the way of substantialinsight into the nature of conversation. lt is important to see, though, that the basisfor the rejectionof DA is that the methods and theoreticaltools advocated, namcly those imported from mainstream theoretical linguistics, seem quite inappropriate to the domain of conversation. Conversation is not a structural product in the same rlay that a sentenceis - it is rather the outcome of the interactionof nvo or more independent,goal-directedindividuals, u'ith often divergentinterests. Moving from the study of sentencesto the study of conversationsrs like moving from physics to biologyi quite different analytical procedurcsand methods arc appropriate even though conversations are (in part) composedof units that have some direct correspondence to sentences. Conversation analysis3 Conversationanalysisof the sort that will be describedin the rest of this Chapter has been pioneered by a break-away group 6.2
' ' I- hisChaptr ,thoushr clatir el y l ongbc c aus c ofi hr nr edr {,c i r c ac ons i detabl t r m ounl of dit., is onh a pr el i m i na.r ' i ntr oduc ti on. l t m t) ' be s uppl em c ntd the inlr oductor y Chapter s of Atk ;ns on & D r er , !979i the ex em pl ar r papers bl Schegloli & Sacks ( r97t), S.h€sloff ( Ie76); and the collections in Schenkein. r qz8: Psath as . r 979r Atk i ns on & H er i ugr , ;n pr Ls s - s er r l R , the
6.2 Conz.tetsationanalYns The relevance ofsociologists,often known asethnomethodologists is the methodoof the sociological background to the pragmaticist 'l'he arose In movement from it' derive that logical preferences imposition arbitrary and the techniques, quantitative reiction to the (upon which such on the data of supposedly objective categories American of mainstream typical were that techniquesgenerallyrely), proper object of the cogently, was argued sociology. In contrast, it of a members the that of techniques sociologicalstudy is the set own social within their act and societythemselvesutilize io interpret worlds-the sociologist's 'objective' methods perhaps not really being different in kind at all. Hence the use of the term ethnomeihodology, the study of 'ethnic' (i.e. participants' own) methods of production and interpretation of social interaction (seeGarfinkel' r97z; Tutner, r974a). Out of this background comes a healthy suspicion of premature theorizing and ad hoc analytical categories: as far as possible the categoriesof analysis should be those that participants themselvescan be shown to utilize in making senseof interaction; unmotivated theoreticalconstructs and unsubstantiated intuitions are all to be avoided. In practice this results in a strict and parsimonious structuralism and a theoretical asceticism- the emphasis is on the data and the patterns recurtcntly displayed therein. The data consist of tape-recordingsand transcripts of naturally occurring conversation,with little attention paid to the nature of the contextasthat might be theoreticallyconceivedwithin sociolinguistics or social psychology (e.g. whether the participants are friends or distant acquaintances,or belong to a certain socialgroup' or whether the context is formal or informal' etc.)'r As anyone who works on conversationaldata knows, heavy reliance inevitably comes to be placedon transcriptionsand, as in phonetics,issuesimmediately arise here as to how broad or narrow such transcriptionsshould be, what notational systemsshould be used, and to what extent the exetcise of transcription itself embodies theoretical decisions (see Ochs, r979d). Excerpts from transcripts will here be given in the notation generallyutilized in conversationanalysisand listed in the Appendix
$ith
introduction bl Coulthard ( | 927). lr sho',ld slso bc notcd rhar for rxpositional purposcs I have pr€senred in a bold .nd simpli6ed wa! a numbtr of findines that ar e $till tr eated as $or k i ns h,y pothes c s i n c onl r r s ati on anahs i s .
294
I Ir is not that the retevance of thcs€ f.ctors is denied a p'ro'i, but simPl) thrt themseh'es .an tte risorouslt_ shorvn to if D.rlicipants it is not lssum.d rh€n lh'v *ould eDplot such categori$ in th. Ptoduction of cont€ts.rion. bc of inrerest io CA. See e.,!. Jeff€rson, 1974: r9E
295
Co|velsational struc ture to this Chapter: standard orthography will be used in some places where linguists might prefer phonetic transcription, and there is nor, unfortunately, an adequate treatment of prosodic, and especially intonational, cues.5 In section 6.e.r we shall present some of the most basic findings that have resulted from this kind of work. These findings are not rn themselves,perhaps, of a very surprising sort, but we will then go on ro show in lat€r sections (especially,6-z.z and 6.2.3) that these apparently disparate little facts about conversation all fit together rn a systematic way, and it is only then that one can begin to see thar conversation has in fact an elaborate and detailed architecture. One important raoeal should be made immediately. The work here reviewedis basedalmostentirely on English data,especiallytelephone conversationsand group talk, and we simply do not know at the paesentto what extent these 6ndings extend to other languagesand cultures. But although the findings here may be in part culturally speci6c, the methods employed should be of quite general application. 6.2,r 6 .z .r.r
Some basicfindings T u rn -ta k i n g We may startwith theobviousobservationthat conversation is characterized by turn-tating: one participant, A, talks, stops; another, B, starts, talks) stops; and so we obtain an A-B-A-B-A-B distribution of talk across two participants. But as soon as close attention is paid to this phenomenon, how such a distribution is actually achievedbecomesanything but obvious. First there are the surprising facts that less (and often considerably less) than 5 per cent of the speech stream is delivered in overlap (two speakers speaking simultaneously), yet gaps between one person speaking and another l Work.rs in CA hr\e somclimes used aA hot orrhosraphy ro ,epresenr r.gmental features.rothci..it.tion oftinguists.ahhouch noseriousth.orerical issuesse€m to b€ ;nvolved (s€ec@dwin, 1977: r 20. r98r : 47). I have rakc. ih€ considcr.bl€ liberty of lr.ndsrdizina rh€ orthoar.phy oftransc.ipts, but onlt q-her€non-n.ri\'€ spcakersmight oth.rwis h.vc difficulty inrerpr€t;,$ thc t€xr. Punctuation marks erc also $ed by qork.re in CA ro siv€ sohe indicstioh of inron,rion (s€€ Appendix) and rhc orieinat puncruation hrs rh€refo.. hccn r.produccd in €x.mpt€s bken f.om rh€s€prin red sources.One hopcs rh.l in futur. wo.l a bcrt.r sylt€m of prosodic r.anscription will be .dopted (as used in e.g. rhe British tradirion by Crystat (rC6c); O'Connor & Ar n o ld ( r e 7 j) : Bn zit, Coukhard & John3(ro8o)). 296
6.2 Conoersation atalyus starting are frequently measurable in just a few micro-seconds and rhey average amounts measured in a few tenths of a second (see Ervin-Tripp, r97g 3gz and references therein). How is this orderly transition from one speaker to another achieved with such precise timing and so little overlap ? A second puzzle is that, whatever the mechanism responsible, it must be capable of operating in quite different circumstances: the number ofparties may vary from two to twenty or more; persons may €nter and exit the Pool of participants; turns at speaking can vary from minimal utteranc€s to many minutes of continous talk; and if there are more than two parties then provision.is made for all parties to speak without there being any specifiedorder or 'queue' of speakers.In addition the same system seems to operate equally well both in face-to-face interaction and in the absence of visual monitoring, as on the telephone. Sacks, Schegloff & Jefferson (ry2+, rqZS) suggest that the mechanism that governs turn-taking, and accounts for the properties noted, is a set of rules with ordered options which operates on a turn-by-turn basis,and can thus be termed a local rnanagement system. One way of looking at the rules is as a sharing device, an 'economy' operating over a scarceresource, namely control of the 'floor'. Such an allocational system will require minimal units (or 'shares') over which it will operate, such units being the units from which aurns at talk are constructed, These units are, in this model, determined by various featuresof linguistic surface structure: they are syntactic units (sentences,clauses,noun phrases, and so on) identifiedasturn-units in part by prosodic,and especiallyintonational, means, A speakerwill be assignedinitially just one of these turnconstructional units (although the extent of the unit is largely within the speaker's control due to the Rexibility of natural language syntax).The end of such a unit constitutesa point at which speakers may change - it is a transition relevance place, or TRP. At a TRP the rules that govern the transition of speakers then come into play, which does not mean that speakers will change at that point but simply that they may do so, as we shall see.The exact characterization of such units still requires a considerableamount of linguistic u'ork (si:eGoodwin, r 98 r : r 5ff), but whateverits final shapethe characterization must allou' for the projectability or predictability of each unit's end - for it is this alone that can account for the recurrenr marvels of split-secondspeakertransition.
6.2 Conversation analYsts
C onselsational st/ucture There is one other feature of turn-units that has to be mentioned before the rules can be presented,namely the possibility of speci6cally indicating within such a unit that at its end some particular other party is invited to speaknext. Techniques for selectingnext speakers in this way can be quite elaborate,but include such straightforward devices as the following: a question (oller, or request, etc.) plus an address term; a tagged assertion plus an address feature; and the various hearing and understanding checks (Who?, You did what?, Pardon?, You mean tomortow?, etc.) which select prior speaker as next. Operating on the turn-units are the following rules (slightly simplified from Sacks, Schegloff & Jefferson, I978), where C is current speaker,N is n€xt speaker,and TRP is the recognizableend of a turn-constructional unit: ( ro )
Rule r - applies init i a l l y a r t h c f i r s t T R P o f a n y t u r n (a) If C selects N in current turn, then C must stop speaking, and N must speak next, transition occurring at the first'fRP after N-selection (b) lf C does not select N, then any (other) party may self-select,6rst speaker gaining rights to the n€xt iurn (c) If C has not sclected N, and no other partv sclf-selccts und€r option (b), then C may (but need not) continue (i.e. claim rights to a further turn-constructional un;t) Rule z - applies at all subsequent TRPs When Rule r(c) has been applied by C, then at the next TRP Rules r (a) (c) apply, and recursively at thc next TRP, until speaker change is effected
It may be asked whether Rule I(c) is not just a special case of Rule r (b), and therefore tedundant. However there is some evidence that the self-selecting parties in Rule r(b) should not properly include current speaker (C): for example, the delays between two turns by different speakers are statistically shorter than between two turnconstructional units produced by a single speaker, suggesting that opportunity for others to speak is specifically provided by Rule r(b) (see Sacks, Schegloff & Jefferson, I978 : 54 n.30). Careful consideration will show that the rules provide for the basic observations already noted. On the one hand they predict the following specihc details. First, only one speaker will generally be speaking at any one time in a single conversation (although four or more 2S8
speakers may
often
conduct
more
than
one conversation
can be simultaneously). However where overlaps do occur, they placed: precisely of cases, great majority the in be, at least predictedto by Rule ove.lapswill either occur as competing first starts,as allowed have been TRPs where will occur (r they I), or in r(b) and illustrated term address a tag or where e.g. reasons' misprojecred for systematic will ( which case overlap in I z), has been appended as illustrated in for the provide a basis thus be predictably brief. The rules overlap as inadvertent discrimination (which we all employ) between ( I 3) : i n (r r) a nd ( I z) and violat ive int er r upt ion as in (rr)
(r2)
(r3)
-
Sacks, Schegloff [9 Jefetson, rg78: r6 J: Trvelve pounds I think wasn't it.= D. : / /Can you belraveit I l.: T*elve pounds on the Weight Watchers' scale. Sachs, Scheglofr 6 Jeflerson, t97ll: r7 A: Uh 1'oa been down here before // havenche Yeah. B:
DCD:zz C: We:ll I wrote what I thought was a a-a rea:s'n//ble explanalio:n F: I : think it was a uet' rude Je.tter
It is also predicted that when silence- the absenceof vocalizationoccurs, it will be differentially assigned,on the basisof the rules, as either (i) a gap before a subsequentapplication of Rules l(b) or I(cr, or (ii) a lapse on the non-applicatiotrof Rules I(a)' (b) and (c), or (iii) a selected next speaker's significant (or attributable) silencet after the application of Rule r(a). Thus in (I4) we have first a gap by delay of the Rule r (b) option for just one sccond' then a lapseof sixteen seconds: t r4,
s
Sachs,Schegloflfl Jeflersot, t978: z5 C: Well no I'll drive (l don't mi//nd) hhh J: ( t.o ) I meant to o.7fler. ( t6 .o ) J: Those shoes look nice ...
J: -
While in ( r 5) we have two clear c^ses of attributable sj/ezce,by virtue is sometim€s used in this tcchnic.l sense. while ' Ilenceforth the tcrm '2x.. thc te.m pa,r. is used es a s€netal cove. tcrm for th.se various kind6 of periods of non-specch. Othcr usages $ill be clear from the context.
299
Conoersatioxal stluctu/e
6.2 Conoersation aaalYns
of the fact that A's utteranccsselect B as next speaker,and by Rule r(a) B should then speak: ( ts )
Athiuson€9 Dreu, tgzs: A: ls therc somcthinghoiher -: ing you or nor ? ( r.o )
basis, whereby s),stem\,r'hich$'orks roughly on a syllable-by-syllable consisting the speakerwho 'upgrades' most wins the floor, upgrading other of increasedamplitude, slowing tempo' lengthenedvowels and features,as illustrated in (r7): (r?)
(r.5 , A: E h ? B: N o .
lf I see the person
J: .hh takencareof
While making such specific predictions, the rules also allolv for the observable\.ariationsin conversation: lapses ma1,o. rnu, no, .l"rr., t h e re i s n o s tri c t l i mi t to tu rn si ze gi ven the svntactic rurn-constructional units and " * ," " a" i l ," ,r* of the continuations allo*eJf
Atkinson.{9 Drezo, r97
Secondll, as soon as one speaker thus cmerges into .the clear,, he prccisety thc part ot rhc turn obscured by tl,s ::.T:lt,..:*,:1 overlap, as in G's turn in (16). Finally, if or,. ,r.r, rmmediately drop out, there "p""t".-io""l is available u ; Akhoush "o..p"tit;u" "ll;";,;;,, such fa.to.s do inn for I.r next-sptakcr setccri
US: 43 J: But dis / / per son t het D/ D lT* I S G O TTO BE: :
examptc rhe detaits of rechniqu€s
There is, then, quite an claborateback-up rnachinery for resolving overlapif, despitethe rules,it should occur (seeJefferson& Schegloff, t975 ). It is important to seethat, although the phenomenonofturn-taking is obvious, the suggestedmechanismorganizing it is not.3 For a start, things could be quite otherwise: for example, it is report€d of the African people,the Buruhdi (seeAlbert, rg?z',81ff),that turn-taking (presumablyin rather specialsettings)is pre-allocatedby the rank of the participants,so that if A is of higher social status than B, and B than C. then the order in which the parties will talk is A-B-C. Of course in English-speaking cultures too there are special nonconversational turn-taking systems operative in, for example, classrooms,courtrooms, chaired meetings and othet 'institutional' settings, where turns are (at least in part) Pre-allocatedrathe. than determined on a turn-by-turn basis,and thesetoo emphasizethat the rules in (ro) are not the only possible or rational solution to the organization of the 'economy' of turns at talk. Nevertheless,there is good reason to think that like many aspects of conversational organization,the rules are valid for the most informal, ordinary kinds of talk acrossall the cultures of the world. There is even evidenceof ethologicalroots for turn-taking and other relatedmechanisms,both from work on human neonates (see e.g. lfrevarthen, r9?+, tg79) ^1d primate research(see e.g. Haimoff, in press) Another indication that the suggested mechanism is far from obvious is that psychologistsworking on conversationhave suggested a quite different solution to how turn-taking works. According to this I lt is also $orih poin(ing out rh.t the motiration is not for turn_taline 's o b rb u s a s i t ma r s e e n r: a s ] l i l l e . h a s n o re d (! e 6 3 : 4 r8 ) t u rn -t a k i n s " i s n o ' to phvsioloSic.l inabilitv sPe'* a nLc€ssart conscqucnct of anv auditorr or (cired in one voice iE p@r maskins fo' rnother" and hea. simuhaneouslti CoodN in, | 97? : 5 ). The possibi lii) of simultaneous translation bears s'itness ro t h i s (s e e G o l d m, n -D i s l e r,
300
' e 8 o ).
301
Conoetsatioftal sttuctu/e other view, turn-raking is regulated primarily by signals,and nor Dy opportunity assignment rules at all (seee.g. Kendon, r967; Jalie & F e l d s te i n ,rg T o ; D u n c a n , rg 74; D uncan & Fi ske, r977). On such a view a current speakerwill signal when he intends to hand oo.r the floor, and other participants may bid by recognizedsignalsfor rights to speak- a practice similar to the ,over' announcement on a field radio transmitter. One of the most plausible canclidatesfor such signafs is gaze | ft seems roughly true, for exampie, that a speakct will break mutual gazeu,hile speaking,returning gazero the adjressee upon turn complerion (Kendon, r967; Argyle, t973: r09, ?oz; but s e ec o n tra ry fi n d i n g s i n Be a tti e,r9Z8a;and seeGoodw i n, r972, rggr for a CA approach to gaze).The problem here is thar if such signats -ciear formed the basis of our turn-taking abiliry, there would be a prediction that in the absenceof visual cues there should either be much more gap and overlap or that the absence rvould require compensation by special audible cues. But rvork .rn t"l"rrh.rrr" conversationshows that neithe. seemsto be rrue for example, there is actually less gap and shorter overlap on the telephone (see Bu tte rw o rth , H i n e & B ra d y , r977; E rvi n-Tri pp, r979, 392y, una there is no evidence of special prosodic or intonational pu,,"rrr. u, turn-boundaries on the telephone (although there is eviience rhat such cues are utilized both in the absenceand presence of visual contact to indicate the boundariesof turn_constructional units _ see e.g. Duncan & Fiske, rglT). ln an;. case it is nor clear how a signal-basedsystem could provide for the observed properties of turn-taking anyway: for example,a systemof intonational cueswould not easill' accomplish the observable lapsesin conversation, or correctly predict the principled basis of overlaps where they occur, or accountfor hoi! particular next speakersare selected(see Goodwin, I979b, r98r: 23ff), Therefore the signalling view, plausible as it rs, viewed as a complete account of turn-taking seems to be wrong: signals indicating the completion of turn_constructional units uo indeed occur, but they are not the essentialorganizational basis {or turn-taking in conversation, That organization seems rather to be basedon an opportunity assignmentof the sort specified by the rules in (ro ). Another possibleview that also seemsto be incorrecr is that, while tu.n-taking is indeed an option_based system, the options are organizednot around surface-structuralunits, as suggest"j by Suck", 302
6.2 Comtersation analysts functional units Schegloff & Jefferson (Ig78), but rather around (as in Butterworth, units perhaps ideational ot moves, soeechacts, participant one a plausibility; as an initial view has rqzS). Such a the other contribution what interactional one sees should wait until such however, Again, perform one's own. Darty is making, and then greetings, since predictions for example, a view makes the wrong predictable, expressionslike I/ ow arc you? tetc.,^re generallyprecisely the case' is not they ought to get regularly overlapped, but this Similarly, where a speakerfails to make himself audible or comprehensibleto a recipient,requestsfor repair ought to occut immediately after the ' repairable', whereasin fact the initiation of repair generally awaitsthe next 'IRP (seeSacks,Schegloff& Jefferson,I978: 39, and section6.3.2 below). And in general,given the apparentprojectability of other persons' utterances,we should expect the majority of turns to be completed in overlap - and of course such is not the case.So despiteits plausibility, this view too seemsto be wrong: turn-taking is 6rmly anchored around the surface-structuralde6nition of turnunits, over which rules of the sort in (to) operate to org nize a systematicdistribution of turns to participants. Adjacencypair s 'We now turn to another local managementorganizationin conversation,namelyadjacency pairs - the kind ofpai red utterances of which question-answet, greeting-greeting, offer-acceptance, apology-minimization, etc., are prototypical. We have already noted that these are deeply inter-related with the turn-taking system as techniques for selecting a next speaker (especially where an address term is included or the content ofthe first utteranceofthe pair clearly isolatesa relevant next speaker).Once again, the existenceof such paired utterances is obvious, but a precise specification of th€ underlying expectationsupon which the regularitiesare based is not so easy. Schegloff & Sacks ( r 973) offer us a characterization along the 6.2.t.2
following lines: (r8)
adja.enct,pairs (i) (ii) (iii) (iv)
sequencesof two utterancesthat are:
adjacent ^re produced by different speakers ordered as a first pari and a second Part typed, so that a particular first part requires a particular second (or range of second parts) - e.g. offers require
b, 2 Conoersation analysis
Convel sqlional stluc lule
B: :thanks ( r o. o) A: Three poundsnineteena tube sir
acceptances or rejections, greetings rcquire greetings, and so on and there is a rule governing the use of adjacency pairs, namely:
(r9 )
Having produced a lirst part of some pair, current sp€akermust stop speaking, and next speaker must produce at thai poirit a second part to the same pair
Adjacency pairs seem to be a fundamental unit of conversational organization - indeed it has been suggested that they are the fundamental unit (see e.g. Goffman, t976; Coulthard, r977: 7o). Such a view seems to underlie the speech act models of conversation reviewed in section 6.r above. However there are many other kinds of more complex sequentialorganizations,eperatingin conversation, as we shall see, nor indeed can the constraints acrosssuch pairs be properly modelled by formation rules analogousto syntactic rules. It is therefore important to see that the characterizationof adjacency pairs in (18) and (19) is only a first approximation, and is in fact inadequatein a number of important respects. There are problems with eachof the conditions in ( r 8), but we shall foct-rson (i), adjacency,and (iv), the kinds of expectablesecondparts. First, strict adjacency is actually too strong a requirement: there frequenrly occur insertion sequences (Schegloff, r972a) like the following in which one question-answer pair is embedded within another (where Qr labelsthe first question,Ar its answer,and so on): (2o)
Metriu, t976: jjj A: M ay I hav e a bo t t l e o f M i c h ? B: Are you twenry one ? A: No B: No
((er)) ((ez)) ((A?)) ((Ar))
or like the following where a notification of temporary interactional exit and its acceptance are embedded within a question-answer pair:e
(ACCEPT) ( ( Ar ) )
with Indeed numerous levelsof embedding are not at all infrequent, many may be question its answer and th€ consequence that, say, a utterances apart; nevertheless the relevance of the answer is merely held in abeyancewhile preliminaries ar€ sorted out, and insertion sequencesare thus restricted in content to the sorting out of such preliminaries. In fact (zr) is extracted from the larger sequenceof nested adjacency pairs in (22) (here R labels a request first part, Q and A questionand answer,respectively,and turns are numbered Tt, Tz, etc., for reference): (22) II
Tz T3 r4 T6
T8 T9 Tro
r 11/6 B: ... t ordeted some paint ftom you uh a cotrple of weeks ago some vermilion A: Yu h B: And I wanted to order some more the name's Boyd A: Yes / / how many tubes would you like sir B: An B: U:hm (.) what's th€ price now eh with V.A.T do you know eh A: Er I'll just work that out for you: B: :Thanks ( ro.o) A: Three pounds nineteen a tube sir B: Three nineteen is it :
Tr3 Tr+
( z r) B: U:hm ( . ) what's the price now eh with V.A..l-. do you know eh ((Q,)) A: Dr I'll just work that out for you: ((HOLD))
((Qz)) ( HoLD) ) ((ACCEPT)) ((Az))
((ar)) ((A3))
T II
Trz
((Rr )) ((Qr))
B: E::h (r.o) yes u:hm ((denral click)) ((in parenthetical tone)) e:h jus-justa think, that's what three nineteen That's for the large tube isn't it A: Well yeah it's the thirty seven c.c.s B: Er, hh I'll tell you what I'lljust eh eh ring you back I have to work out how many I'll need. Sorry I did- wasn't sure of the price you see
((44))
((Ar)) ((ACCOUNT FOR N O At) )
A: Okay for the par ts of theadj ac c nc y pai r thar ' Hold and a.ccpt( on..\ar €a dl .o.r er m s are used to initiate an interactional intcrlude or .time our'. lnteracrion mav then, but necd not, be re-iniriated bv another adjacency eait (Hetto?: H. o)
304
of points may be parenthetically made here. First, insertion sequences, which are of great intcrest in their own right, can
A number
305
Conoelsational sttuclure
6.2 Conuersation analysis
effectively structure considerablestretchesof conversation.So whar is strictly a local system, operating over just rwo turns - namely adjacencypair organization- can by means of the accumulation 6J first pair parts project a large sequenceof expectableseconds,as In th e s tru c tu re s c h e m a ti z e di n (zj ): ( 23)
( Q t ( Q 2( Q 3( Q a- Aa) A 3 ) A 2 ) A
'
)
Secondly,we should note that in (22) neither the initial request(Rr) nor the 6rst question (Q r ) ever receivesits secondpart (an acceptance or rejection, and an answer, respectively).Neverthelesswhat takcs placeafter thesetwo turns, T3 and T4, takesplaceunder the umbrella of the expectationthat the relevant secondparts will be forthcoming. Finally in Tr 4 an explanationor account is provided for the failure to provide an Ar for Qr, showing that there is an orientation to the expected appropriate second part even though it never occurs.' Further, note that the acknowledged failure to produce an Ar is sufficient to explain the absenceofany responseto Rr: failure to resolve an insertion sequenceregularly aborts the entire umbrella sequencetoo. But the main point is that we need to replace the strict criterion of adjacencywith the notion of conditional relevance, namely the criterion for adjacencypairs that, given a 6rst part of a pair, a second part is immediately relevantand expectable(Schegloff,r97za: 363ff1. If such a second fails to occur, it is noticeably absent; and if some other 6rst part occurs in its place then that will be heard where possible as some preliminary to the doing of the second part, the relevanceof which is not lifted until it is either directly attended to or aborted by the announced failure to provide some preliminary action. What the notion of conditional relevanc€makes clear is that what binds the parts of adjacencypairs together is not a formation rule of the sort that would specify that a question must receive an answer if it is to count as a well-formed discourse,but the setting up of specific expectationswhich have to be attended to. Hence the non-occurrencesof an Rr and an Ar in (zz) do not result in an incoherent discourse because their absences are systematically provided for. A second kind of problem that arises with the notion of an adjacencypair concernsthe range of potential secondsto a 6rst part. Unless for any given first parr there is a small or at leasr delimired 306
to describethe tight set of seconds,the concept will cease'it seems, But in fact principal attraction its that is organizationin conversation questions other than to great many responses rhereare, fo. example,a than, seconddrather as acceptable answerswhich neverthelesscount say,beginningsof insertion sequencesprior to answers)- including orotestationsof ignorance,' re-routes' (l;ke Betler ashJoiz), refusals io prouide an answer, and challenges to the presuppositions or sincerityof the question (and see(8) above). For example, we noted in (zz) that in 1'r 4, the slot for an answerto Q t , we have not an answer but a promise to provide an answer at a later date, together with an accountexplaining the deferral So while responsesto, for example, questionsmay be restricted, they certainly do not constitute a small set,and this doesseemto undermine the structural signi6canceofthe concePt of an adjacencY Pair. However the importance of the notion is revived by the concept of preference organization. The central insight here is that not all the potential second patts to a first Part of an adjacencypair are of equal standing: there is a ranking oPerating over the alternatives such that there is at least one preferred and one dispreferred categoryof response.It must be pointed out immediately that the r,otion of pteJetencehere introduced is not a psychological one, in the sense that it does not refer to speakers' or hearers' individual preferences.Rather it is a structural notion that correspondsclosely to the linguistic concept of markedness. In essence,preferred secondsare unmarked - they occur as structurally simpler turns; tn contrast dispreferred seconds are marked by various kinds of structural complexity. Thus dispreferred seconds are typically delivered: (a) after some significant delay; (b) with some preface marking their dispreferred status, often the particle a'el/; (c) with some account of why the preferred second cannot be performed. For the present(but see6.3) a contrastivepair of exampleswill sumce to illustrate the notion: \24)
Woottott, in Prett Could you .hh could you put on the light for my .hh room Father: Y"p
child :
rhc rolcs of caller and raeiver '0 In cx.mples from tclephone calls. $here caller is labclled C, r€ceivet R br .elc\.nr to the inte'prctarion.
mav
307
Convelsa tiona I stluc lute ( 29
6.2 Conaersation analysis
I 76Bt o C: Um I wondcred ifthere's any chanceofseeing you tomorrow sometime (o.5) morning or before the seminar
J
{ r .o)
R : Ah u m (.) I d o ubt i t C: Uhm huh R: The reasonis I'm seeingElizabeth ln (24) a granting of a request is done without significant delay and with a minimal granting component Yep, In contrasr in (25), a rejection of a request for an appointment is done after a one secono delay, and then, after further delay components (al rz, the micropause (.)), by a non-minimal turn (compare I doubt it with No), followed by an account or.eason for the difficulty. In fact, rejections of requestsare normally done in this marked way. Thus we can say grantings are preferred seconds (or prefereds for short) to requesrs, rejections are dispreferred seconds (or dispreferreds). This is a general pattern: in contrast to the simple and immediate nature of preferreds,dispreferredsare delayedand contain additional complex components; and certain kinds of seconds like request rejectiorrs, refusalsofoffers, disagreementsafter evaluativeassessments, etc.. irre systematicallymarked as dispreferreds. Preferenceorga4ization is described in detail in section 6.3 below, but the relevancehere is that by ordering secondsas preferredsand dispreferreds,the organizationallows the notion of an adjacencyparr to continue to describe a set of strict expectatioDsdespite the existenceof many alternative secondsto most kinds of first parts.rr 6 .2 .r.3
Ov e ra l l o rg a n i z a t i on We have now described two kinds of local organization operating in conversation- local in the sense that turn_taking and adjacencypait organizationoperatein the 6rst instanceacrossjusttwo turns! current and next. But there are quite different orders of organizationin conversation:for example, there are certain recurrenr kinds of sequencedefinable only over three or four or more turns, like those treated in following sectionsthst deal with repair (6.3) or begin with pre-sequences (6.4). Further, there are some that can be called overall organizations in that they organize the totaliry trl'he
esceprions her€ in.lud. gr€erings, $b.re kind of second.
less the onlr
1o8
rerurn gr.dings
are more o.
and it ts sf the exchangeswithin some specifickind of conversation' here illustrate we shall thesethat Onc kind of conversationwith a recognizableoverall organization that hasbeen much studied is the telephonecall. But it is not by virtue of'being on the telephone' that such conversationshave most of the featuresof overall organizationthat they display: rather they belong fairly clearly to a class of verbal interchanges that share many features, namely those that are social activities effectively constituted by talk itself, like a chat on a chance meeting in the street, or a talk over the garden fence. These tend to have clear beginnings and carefullyorganizedclosings.Thus in telephonecalls we can recognize the following typical components of an openiog section: the telephonerings and, upon picking up the receiver,the person at the receiving end almost invariably speaks 6rst, either with a slarrbz identification (name of a firm, h t€lephone number, etc.) or a plain Hel/o, whereupon the caller produces a Hello, often with a selfidenti6cation. lf the call is between two friends or acquaintanceswe may expect an exch angeof How are yors. Then at that point we expect some announcement from the caller of the reason for the call, and we thereby 6nd ourselvesprojected into the substanceof the call, and thus (as we shall see) into matters of topical organization. To say this is to say little more than that telephone conversations have recognizableopenings. But there is much elaborate structurc here. For a statt we may note that such openings are constructed largefy from adjacencypairs: thus we typically get paired Hellos as an exchangeof grcetings,we may get self-identi6cationswith paired recognitions, and an exchange of llonr are yous each with their paired responses(seeScheglofr,t97za,I979a; Sacks, r9?5, respectively,for each of these).There is, moreover, a puzzle about why the receiver, the person with the leastinformation about the identity and purposes of the other, almost invariably talks first. The puzzle dissolveswhen we assimilatethe openingsof telephoneconversationsto surnmonsanswer sequences.Such sequencesin face-to-faceinteraction run typically in any of the following ways: {26)
t27 )
Te/asaki, Ig76 : I2,I.j (a) A: Jim? (b) A: Mo:m B: Ye a h ? B: Wh a t? Athiuon tl Drew, t97g: q6 Ch: Mummy
(c) A: ((knock knock knock)) B: C o m c i n ::
309
6.2 Comtersation analysts
C onveqotional str uctur e N{: Ch:
Yes dear l 2 ,tl I want d cloth to clean(the) windo\,ls
where the first utterance (or action) is a summons, the secondan answer to the summons, the exchangeestablishingan open channel for talk. Schegloff(r97za) suggeststhat the ringing ofthe telephone is the summons component in such an adjacencypair, so that the fimt turn at talk (the receiver'sFlel/o)is actually the second interactional move. This explains a number of features of telephone openings, including the strong compulsion to respond, and the reportable inferencewhich motivatesit - namely that (by conditional relevance; no response'means' that 'no one is at home'. lt even explains ths mechanicalring-pause-ring, which imitates the recursiverepetition ofa verbal summons that is not attendedto. That repetition is in turn the basisof the rare exceptionsto the generalizationthat the receiver speaks6rst, for these occur where the receiver upon picking up the telephoneafter the first (mechanical)summons, fails to respond- we then get a repeatedsummons (now verbal) from the caller. A moment's consideration will show too that summons-answcr sequencesare a little different from other adjacency pairs (like greetings-greetings, offers-acceptances/refusals) in that they are always a prelude to something. Moreover the something in question can be expectedto be produced by the summoner as the reasonfor the summons. So summons-answersequencesare actually elements of (minimally) rhree-turn sequences,as illustrated below (and in (27) above): (2 8 ) 'I'r Tz T3
A : J o h n? B: Yeah? A: Passthe water wouldja?
((S U MMON S ) (ANSWER)) (REASON FOR SUMMONS))
The three-part structure is evidencedby the common use of question components in Tz (like What?, What is it?, Yeah?), which, by simultaneouslybeing the secondpart to the summons and a frrst part requestingieasonsfor the sumrnons,provide for a three-turn structure constructed out of two adjacency pairs. One may also note the obligation that the summoner often feels, for example, in calling a store to find if it is open, to produce a T3 (e.g. Oh I was just calling to seeiJ youuere opea)even though the presenceofa Tz was sufficient 3 to
It is the three-turn structureofsuch to makethe third turn redundant. the obligation for the summoner ,"q.r"r,"." th"t establishes not only a recipient who has produced for obligation an but a T3, ,o proa""" serves to establish the thereby sequence The a T3. to d i" to ",,"t " co-participation necessary to conversatlon' One important feature of opening sections in telephone converpotential problems' of sations is the immediate relevance' and the Many telephone (Schegloff, r979a) lecogniaiott ide ifcqtior. ^nd orsomething the following, turns thre€ h"rre astheir first "onr.rs"tions closely similar: (29)
'Tr
C: R: C: R:
((causestelcphonc to ring at R's location)) Hello Hi Oh h i : :
Such openings illustrate a basic finding of CA, namely that a single minimal utterance or turn can be the locus of a number of quite different overlapping constraints - it can thus perform' and can be carefully designed to perform, a number of quite different functions at once. Here for example, Tr, despite being thc first turn in the conversation,is not (aswe haveseen)the first move in the interaction: the ring is the summons, and TI its answer, But TI is also simultaneously a display for recognitional purposes of recipient's identity (in caseswhere recognition is relevant, as not always,e.g' in businesscalls),and it is notablethat speakerstend to usea'signatured' prosody or voice-quality in this turn (Schegloff, r979a; 67). Despite the apparent greeting token in TI, greeting is not what the turn appearsto do, as the discussionof T3 will make clear.T2 on the other hand is indeed a greeting token that does greetings, and greetings being adjacency-paired,T2 getsa return greetingin T3 (this showing that Tr is hardly a greeting after all, greetings being in general not reiterablekinds ofthings). But that is not all, indeed the least,ofwhat isgoing on in T2 and T3.ti Tz, by virtue of its minimal greetingform, actually claims recognition of the recipient on the sole basis of the voice-qualitysample offered in Tr; and moreover T2 claims that the recipient should likewise be able to recognizethe caller on the basis of the minimal voice-quality sample it provides T3 then' in r: Note that the O, in TJ, normallr- a mirkcr of receipt of nt* info.matn,n' onll m{kc. stnse if more th,n sreetinss are soins on in T2 Nnd Ti (sc Herita,tc, in press).
3rt
Conoersational s\uc tut e performing re.turngreetings,arso claims to have recognizedthe calrer. r ne overrapprngorganizationshere are thus: (a) terephone(and other related) conversations begin with summons_a""*", o"lr", tof iecrprocalgreetingsare relevantat the very beginning of""lf",i"ia". at the very beginning ofcalls, recognition (or identification)is a prrrne concern. Note that Tz is the slot for recognitions ,; ;; il;r", recipient clearly not being able to do this in Tr in tf," uUr"r,".-oirny eridence of who the caller might be. And despite ,h. ;;;;l;;"". In (29) any ovelt recognitional delrices .of le.g. a;,- S"--1,',fr" expectation, based on overall
rerevance orrz isstronsei;;"r",'."iljfJiii; *Jj": ;:?1H;: greering
componentsin Tz, a claim th", .*"r.i,i". j;.ther.minimal 1; the recipient ot by the caller has beenachieved(see discu".io., if f, ., (46),
and(8r )-{85)below,andSchegl"n,, n;SJ ;;;l;
this as follows: j:t) Ir t2 _ r3
;ffi:;:
(j: (Ginsg) (suM M.NS)) R: HeIo ((ANSWER)) + (DISpt,Ay l-oR RECOcNt l'loN)) c: Hi (GREET|NGS 16rpanrrr (cLAtM THAT C HAS RECOCNTZED R) ((CLA|M_THAT R cAN REcocNrta c) R: oh hi:: ((6REETINGS 2ND pARi;"""'""' (CLAIM THAT R HAS REEOGNIZED C))
We are introducedhere to the richness of the communicatiorrar content that is mapped onto minimal utterancesb, ;i;;;; sequential location _ here a location whosespecifici,yi ar. a" ,t."f structure of openingsectionsof the ou"."tt o.g",.,ir"iio., ;;;;;il"" Tl. of a telephonecall is usuallyfollowed _ in what may be"n..1i1e^".ction ca'ed firsa topic sroaby an announcement by the carer of the reasonfor the call: ( 3r )
Scheglofl,r97ga: q7 R: Hello. C: Hello Rob. This is Lar.rrie. How,s everything. }(: ((sniff)) Pre-rrygood. How ,beu1 you. L: Jus' 6ne. 'l'he reason I called was ta ask ...
6-2 Conoeoqtion analysis The first topic slot immediately after the opening section is a privileged one: it is the only one that is likely to be almost entirely free from topical constraints arising from prior turns. The main body of a call is thus structured by topical constraints; the content of the first slot is likely to be understood as the main reason for the call (whether or not, of course, from the point of view of the caller, rt 'really'is),r3 and after that topics should by preferencebe'6tted' to prior ones - topics therefore often being withheld until such a 'natural' location for their mention turns up (Schegloff & Sacks, r973: 3ooff). Evidence for this preference for linked transitions from topic to topic can be found in the common experience ofhaving things to say that one never managesto get in, and more demonstrably in the marhed nature of the other main kind of transition, unlinked topic 'jumps'. Thus, for example, in the arrowed utterance in (32), a topic jump is signalled in a typical way by the features of increased amplitude, raised pitch, markers of self-editing and hesitancy (see Schegloff, r979b) and a marker of discontinuity, I/ey. \32t
ro3 R: lt's o - it's okay we'll pop down tomorrow Gertrude C: You sure you don't, it is an awful lot of it, you want to quickly nip down now for it R: Okay I will. Er HEY you hmm that is have you been lighting a 6re down there i
Sacksremarks (r 97 r, April 5) that the relative frequency of marked topic shifts of this sort is a measureof a ' lousy' conversation.I nstead, what seems to be preferred is that, if A has been talking about X, B should find a way to talk about Z (if Z is the subject he wants to introduce) such that X and Z can be found to be 'natural ' fellow members of some category Y. However it should not b€ thought from this that such co-classmembership is somehow antecedentlygiven; rather it is something that is actually achieved in conversation. This last point needs a little elaboration. It has been suggested,very plausibly, that topic can be characterized in terms of reference: A and B are talking about the same topic if they are talking about the same things or sets of referents(see Putnam, r958; but see Keenan D In some culturcc ther. !.€m. to be . p..fer€nce for disptaeing the busincss of a conv€.stion .o larer on - hoscver, onc nceds to distinSubh h€.c an elaboration ofogeninss to includeconvenrionrl inquiries abour herlrh, family snd so on, from ! truc difi.r€nc. in th. use of the firsr frec toDic stor.
3r 3
Conaersational structule
6.2 Conttetsation analYsis
& Schieffelin, r976). Alternarively, *e say rhat A and B are ""n talking about the same topic if they are talking iil'J",i."", linked concepts (de Beaugrande& "U"r, Dressler, ,-nAr, ,o*1.-H.*"r.. it is easy ro show that co-referentiality, ". " "", "f "h".li;;;., is neither sumcient nor necessa Lry to establish topical coherence consider, for examole: (3 1 )
Sachs,t968, Afiil
q"f"Tr#::.
rra)
r7: 16
hair on muh chestan, r,d be a fuzz boy
f; C: A // fuzzboy.
-
prior preserved.For example,C's utterancebelow is topically tied to utterances:
A: Fuzz bov. B: What's that. A: Fuzz mop. C: Then you'd have r,startshaving. (r.o ) B: Hey I shavedthis morni_ I mean last night for you.
Here the last two utterancesboth mention shaving, and share that concept, and also on the logical analysis of pred;caiest""" aiiro"o, Andersson& Dahl, r g77: Zzff) would sharesorn. ,f,ai.-*f"..r r..,. But, as Sacks( r 968, April r points "f 7) out, B,s utteranc-e'fu;;;;*O in such a way as to indicate that it is nor topically ,i"J ,.lri", n^ gone before. Rather the I1e, marks (as it can be sho*" a a" *."J.",,rt the introduction of a new tooic .touched ofi, t, ,n. O;". 3,,"r"r,.., which is just evoked from memory by some chanceassociationto the content of the prior turn. But if shared reference,or a set of shared concepts,across turns . is not sufficientto ensureshared topic, neither is i,;;;;;; l;-.*" turns to share some referents,or concepts, in order for topi" to b" '|r rt ma\ be objected rhar the exampreindh.I€s onrv that use of rhe sameroros, e.s. rld.i,s. does nor €ntait idenrir'' of ref€rence:n";:;;l;l;;;";";,,," thar identic,t referentsmsvbe pickcdout by te.m,;nn..;;;;;;,. ;.,, her€ harkcd by Bl, ,t. na.y and incrcasej amp,,,,;;;;;;,;;;;:;.: Ou.n 8b B: probabt! ir becauscof rhat I should rhink. ves, mm
Ar ]rm
( r ,2 , A: ( ( to u d e r ) ,8 1 r h c *.ar. uo 1.ouw anr .ny t(||u.rs ,, n e r e o r co u r s. / a n d !o | , b orh r.f.r ro rhe samc.nti rv, nah€l y B , bur nei rh6r ropi. is in !nl.ordinarr sense.abour 8,. so thec.""-:;;;;;;;J;"", n€nher identicat .efe,e.c€, nor rh. usc of idenr,.", *,-" sam€ or diff.rent r.f.rcnce) is.uflicient - ""i".o"-f** ro.he.....,.;; ;;;;;:"
Sachs,t968, APril t7 A: If yer gonnabe a politician,you betterlearnhow to smoke cigars B: Yeah that's an idea Rog C: I heard a very astounding thing about piPes last night
but pipes and cigarc are distinct concepts, and are terms with no overlapping sets of referents. Of course we can retreat and say: two utterances share the same topic o. are at least topically tied only if there is some superordinate set which includes referents or concepts from both utterances(here, say, the set of 'smokables'). But then any two utterances share a topic (or at least are topically tied) because for a ]/ two sets of referents or concepts one can invent a superordinate set that includes them both - nor is this conversationally absurd (see e.g. (7) above where tbe shated class was 'apartment rental disqualifiers', hardly some ' natural' class). The point is simply that topical coherence cannot be thought of as residing in some independently calculable procedure for ascertaining (for example) shared reference acrossutterances. Rather, topical coherence is something corrttrucled across turns by the collaboraiion of participants, What needs then to be studied is how potential topics are introduced and collaboratively rati6ed, how they are marked as 'new', ' touched off', 'misplaced' and so on, how they are avoided or competed over and how they are collaboratively closed dow n.l 5
Now such collaborative procedures for opening, changing and closing down topics are not strictly part of the overall organization of telephone calls: they are local procedures that can operate throughout a call. But they interact in complex ways with matters of overall organization,hence their treatment here' For example, as we noted, later topical constraints give the first topic slot after the opening section a special importance, reinforced by the expectation that, after a summons and its answer, a reasonfor the summons will be presented, Further, the elaboration of How are yous provides a route into topical talk that can displacethe reasonfor the call and its 'r Relativrlr lntk *ork has b€en donc h€r€, but seeSacks, ,96?-72 prssim.nd .ummary in Coulth.rd, rg77: 7afri Button & C$ey, in press; Jcff€rson, in p.es s ;Os c n, r982.
3r 4 3r 5
Conve/sational strtature first topic slor to later in the call, thereby providing a powerful motive for escapingfrom such elaborations(seeSacks,r 975). And techniques for topic closing are intimately connectedto the introduction of the closing section shutting down the conversation: the closure of any topic after the privileged first one makes the introduction of the dosing section potentially imminent, marters dealt with below. Finally, some kinds of telephone calls have an expectable overall organization that admits just one topic _ such monotopical calls being typical of routine business calls or service inquirres. Interestingly,such calls are monotopical not in the sensethat no more than one iopic is ever addressedwithin them, but in the sensethat the caller orients to the expectation of a single topic in the very rntroduction of further topics. Thus on. fi.rd", not only init,al announcementsin first topic slot that the caller has in fact more than one thing to say, but also careful tracking of the progressthrough the list of topics: (3s) Birminglnm Discoursepyoject TD.C t .z (AJter initial inquiryl B: yeah er r\^,oother things firstly a",1"'f.r"* iii.r'*a"r streetnumber of plot 36 ((severalturns later)) Erm the-other thing is erm ((ahem))presumably be okav tor somebodyto have accessto it before we rno". ;. i" p"il"ip.t" down and that So m€tters of overall organization and of topical organizationcan be closely interlinked. O."llt to the closing secrions of the overall organization ":-" ^. Y: oI relephone calls or similar kinds of conversation, Closings are a delicate,maner both technically, in the sense,h* ,h; ;;:;;;'"" praceo that no party is forced to exit while still having compelling things.to say, and socially in the sense thar both oulr_hu"ty.r,d over-slow terminations can carry unwelcome inferencesabout th. betweenrhe participants.The devic"",nr, ::^"]l] :":.'..:n'ls crosrngs are closelyattuned ro rheseproblems. We ".g""ir" 6nd typicaliy that conversatronsclose in the following sort of manner: (3{,) t72B(7) R: Why don't we all havelunch C: Okay so that would be in St Jude,sw.ouldit? R: yes (o.z) C : Ok a y s o ::: 3r6
6.2 Comtetsation aaalysis R: C: R: C: R: C: R: C: R:
R:
One o'clock in the bar Okay Oka y? ()kay then thanks very much indeed George= : All right //See you there See you th€re Oka y Okay // bye
By.
The typical features here are the atrangements for a next meeting, a sequenceof OAats closing down the arrangements (or other topic), a Thanh tot produced by the caller, and a further sequencc of OAdys just prior to a final exchange of Good'byes. One very general schema for closing sections,of which (36) is merely one instantiation, might be reptesentedthus: (rZ)
(a) a closing down of some topic, typically a closing implicativ€topicsinclude implicativetoPic ; whereclosing the making of atrangements,the 6rst topic in monotopical calls, the giving of regardsto the other's family members, erc, (b) one or more pairs of passing turns with pre-closing irems, Iike Ohor, All right, So.'., etc. (c) ifappropriate,a typing ofthe callase.g.a favourrequested and done (hence Thanh tour, ot as a checking up on recipient's state of health (Well I just uanted to hnou how youn,ere),etc.,followedby a furtherexchangeofpre-closing rtems (d) a 6nal exchangeof terminal elements:Bye, Righteo,Cheets, etc.
The crucial elements here (afte. (a) has been achieved)are (b) and (d). F)ssentiallywhat the two components jointly achieve is a coordinated exit from the conversation: they do this by providing, rn the form of the topic-less passing turns in (b), a mutual agreement to talk no more, this being a prelude to the exchangeof the terminal adjacencypair in (d) that closesdown the conversation.The mutual agreementis securedby one party producing a topic-lesspassingturn, indicating that he has no more to say, u'hereuponthe other party - if he too has no mo.e to say may produce another such turn. The technicaland socialproblems that closingsraiseare thus initially dealt with by providing that the closing section as a whole is placed in a
Com)ersational sttuc tute Iocation that is interactively achieved: a pre-closing olTerto close rs issued in the form of Ohay, Right, etc., and only if taken up do closings proceed. Further motivation for rhis pattern in closing sectionswill be provided below (but see Schegloff & Sacks, r973). A final point about closing sectionsthat is of interest here is that components of the sorr in (37)(c) indicate that the placement and content of closing sections is attuned to other aspects of overall organization.Thus, for example,the l&azAs in (36) is oriented to the specific content of the first topic slot of that call, namely a requesr for a favour. Similarly one finds in closings referenceto aspectsof opening sections, as in Sorry to haae wohen ltou ap referring back ro I hope I'm not calling too earl!, or Well I hope you leel better soon referring back to responsesto Hou ate yous, and so on. Each aspect of overall organization, then, can be oriented to other aspects,as rs exemplifiedin the attention paid in the opening sectionsofexpectably monotopical calls to the imminence of closing immediately after the first topic is closed down (the attention revealed in the Jusr two thinps kind of bid for more than one topic). We are now in a position to give a more technical characterization of what a conversation is. We must fitst distinguish the unit a conversation fromconversationat activity. The Iatteris something characterizablein terms of local organizations, and especially the operation of the turn-taking system in (lo); there are many kinds of talk - e.g. sermons,lectures,etc. - that do not have theseproperties and which we would not want to consider conversational,yet there are also many kinds of talk-e.g. courtroom or classroom interrogation - which exhibit featuresof conversationalactivity like turn-taking, but which are clearly not conversations.Conversationas a unit, on the other hand, is characterizablein terms of overall organizations of the sort sketched here in addition to the use of conversationalactivities like turn-taking (Schegloff & Sacks, r973: 325; Sacks, Schegloff & Jefferson, ry7+t 73o-?). 6.2.2 Some remarks on methodology The basic findings in the prior section have been presented (for the sake of brevity) in a way that CA workers would in fact be careful to avoid. The reasonis that, for each substantialclaim, the method_ ology employed in CA requires evidence not only that some asDecr of conversation caz be viewed in the way suggested,but that it 3 r8
6.2 Co vefiqtion analys,s producing it Thatis,what actuallyis so conceivedby the participants ar€ the procedures and model to trying are analysts conversation in producing and participants by employed actually expectations conversational for each In addition, conversation. understanding to elucidate the explanation, way of by device we should like, to resolve - that designed specifically it is interactional problems that of rational or expositions is, to provide Junctional explanations, There are, then, question' in design,for the existenceof the device investigation: in CA-style two basic methods to be employed (a) We should attemPtto locatesomeparticular conversational organization, and isolate its systematic features' by demonstratingparticipants'orientationto it (b) We should ask,(i) what problemsdoesthis organization solve,and(ii) what problemsdoesthisorganizationraiseand therefore what implications does it have for the existenceof further solutionsto furth€r problems? These methods are important becausethey offer us ' way of avoiding the indefinitely extendable and unverifiable categorization and speculationabout actors' intents so typical of DA-style analysis Let us therefore look at some illustrations of how the methods may be applied to yield and then confirm results of the kind we have reviewed. We may start with the problem of demonstrating that some conversationalorganization is actually oriented to (i.e. implicitly recognized)by participants, rather than being an artefactof analysts. One key source of verification here is what happens when some 'hitch' occurs-i.e. when the hypothesized otganization does not operate in the ptedicted way - since then participants (like the analyst) should address themselvesto the problcm thus produced' Specifically,we may expect them either to try to repair the hitch, or alternatively,to draw strong inferencesof a quite specifickind from the absence of the expected behaviour, and to act accordingly' Where hitches of these sorts are a recurrent possibility, there is likely to be a regularized repair procedure. Such occurs, we noted' in associationwith the turn-taking system, where a special set of probeduresoperatesto reduce and resolveoverlap, should this arise despitethe rules assigningturns. But there are overlapsallowed (and thus their location and nature predicted) by the rules, and overlaps that contravene the rules (interruptioas). When the latter occur, they 3r 9
Coflae/sational
struc ture
are subject not only to the standard resolution procedures, but also to overt reprimands and sanctions - and such overt attention to Interruptlons again indicates participants' orientation to the basic expectations provided by the rules:
(3 8 )
DCD : z8 Collins: Nou // the be:lt is meh. Fagan: i s t h e s a : m e m a t e r *i a l a s / / t h i : s Sm y t he: Wait a moment Miss Fagan
Similarly, the conditional relevanceof a secondpart of an adjacency pair given a first part is easilyshown to be more than ju", ,n"tyr,,. fancy. Consider for example what happens *n"n, "n R;.rt" r(a) of the turn-taking system, a speakeraddresses"-pt.rying a ,eciiien"t with the 6rst part of a pair and ,eceivesno immediate .""porr"". St.ong inferencesare immediately drawn, either of the sort ,no responss meansno channel contact,,or, if that is clearly not the case,then .no responsemeans there's a problem'. So, in the case of a failure ro respond to a summons, the absenceof a secondpart in tha of the telephone, be understood as ,recipient ""r, "u"a is not .t hom.,, o, in f1e-1g-fici interaction as ,recipient is sulking or giving the coi
(3e) ll t2 -l--
T4 .i. -
T6 T7
I? r B(7) C: Sol was uondering r.r,ouldyou be in your office on Monday (.) by any chanceI ( u. o) C: Probably not R: Hm m y es : C: : You would ? R: Ya
C: Soif we cameby cor,rld you giveusten minutesof your time i Here a two-second pause after the question in Tr is actually taken by C to indicate a (negative) answer to the question. How can this come about ? Note first that (by Rule r (a) of the turn_taking system) C has selectedR to speak (a feature of address not being i.""r*., as there are only two participants here). Therefore the iwo-second pause ls not .;ust anyone's pause or nobody,s pause (i.e. a lapse): ratherit is assignedb1,the system to R as R,s silence.Th.n .""on"", that adjacencypairs can have dispreferred seconds,these i" g.""Lf being marked by delay (amongstother features). Therefor. thl pa,r"" can be heard as a preface to a dispreferred response.Now in iull 320
6.2 Conoeralion
analYsis
i
question is a prelude to a request ssquentialcontext it is clear that C's that negative foran appointment, and for such questionsit turns out (see6.3 and are dispreferred (ans*ers the request) that block ,t ans*ers that he R's silence from the inference Hence C draws belowl. i' 6.4 R in T4, indicated by (That got wrong, as he it in T3. explicit makes made, often correctly' inferences are point such affect the not does rhough sometimes not.) Note here the remarkable power of the turn-taking systemto assignthe absenceofany verbal activity to some particular participant as his turn: such a mechanism can then quite literally make something out of nothing, assigning to a silence or pause,itself devoid of interesting properties, the property of being A's, or B's, or neither A's nor B's, and further, through additional mechanisms,the kind of specific significanceillustrated in (lq) (a 16 Doint taken up below). A fundamental methodologicalpoint can be made with respectto (39), and indeed most examples of conversation. Conversation, as opposed to monologue, offets the analyst an invaluable analytical resource:as each turn is respondedto by a second,we 6nd displayed in that secondan aralyr,'rof the first by its recipient. Such an analysis is thus provided by participants not only for each other but for analyststoo. Thus in (39) the turn in T3 displays how the pause in Tz was interpreted. Hence "the turn-taking system has, as a by-product of its design,a proof procedure for the analysisof turns " (Sacks, Schegloff & Jefferson, $78:. 44). A good case can therefore be made for the methodologicalpriority of the study of conversation over the study of other kinds of talk or other kinds of text. Havingshown that participantsthemselvesorient to theconditional relevanceof, for example, an answer after a question, let us now briefly consider the kind of evidencethat could be used to show that r' Examples
of
this
provide
sort
constraints- Participants not(or not onlv)b€.ause
a clu€
to the nature of conversational to uiilize the expected proccdures ro doso would yield 'ihcoher€nt d;scourses',
are consuained f.ilure
bur because if thr]- don't, tbry 6nd themselves accountable for specific inferen.es that thcir behaviour will have ecncrated. Thus def€ndants in poliric.l tri.ls mar" hope that silence willcount as rej€ction ofthe proceedinss, only to find it rcad as admission of 8uilr. Or, in (Jo), R's disresard of the expectation that pref€rred rcspon*s wiU tc immediarc not onl)' produces an but, ifsustained, may produce unint.nd€d inferenc€ tbat has robccorrc.ted, an infercncc ofSenerll not so much
reluct.nce
constrrined
to co-operate. Conversationalists are thus by rules or sanctions, as calght in a web of
Conaersalional struchare
6.2 Convetsation analYsis
the overall organizations we have claimed to be operative in conversatron are actually oriented to by participants. 4s already noted, closing sectionsmay refer back to opening sectionsa.r;;.e v e rs a , i n d i c a ti n g th a t,,th e uni t.a si ngl e conversati on,i s one to which participantsorient throughout its course,, (Schegfon t S""lr, t973: 3 ro). Further, if closing sectionshave the characiersuggesls6 above,then a co-ordinateddeterminationto close is mutuully by an exchangeof pre-closingslike OAay, and "Jc-"lteO we expect in"."-r'*n the immediate exchange of terminal elements like gye . B", and then closingsare in fact re-opened,and if these ";;-.;* re_op"nirrg".r""u. after the exchangeof pre-closings,then they are typically grossly misplaced,as in the extract below: ^1rn"i ^" (40,
Schegloff U Sachs,teT t: tzo C: O k al' , r hank y ou . R: O k ay dear . C: OH IIY 'l'HE WAy. I'd just like ro say ...
Such misplacementmarkersdemonstratean orientation to the closrng sectton as a unit not properly taking such interpolations, and thus once embarked on, properly final. Let now consider the other basic methodological procedure, namely the search for the taison d,Ate of particular conversational organizations,and then the implications ,frut ,h. of on. d.evicehas for the necessityfor others. "*ir,"rr." W" muy in J;, ;;;"* all the structural facts we have r "ho*
inract croser yi","r,*.a, La i,i:ffit"f }i ,lf l,:::.n T*",7 discovetingone such organization for prying up further lcvels of
the analystis provided with a lever
runctionar i.',".-.o,, n* ron;:,::iil;:i::
"Tl,: nTTi":if.."J
technique. Supposewe take the turn-taking system as the fundamentaldevi.. our initial discovery. What we then have l" designed to (a) organize the change of " "y","rn f.i-";ly .r" una iU; t;;;;;;;"" speakerspeakingat a time. But then we"p.ut may ask: how is such a device 'cranked up', how is the machinery to be got rolling ? Cl;; ;;;;;d some device that will establish (for the case oi,*o pur,l."i-in" pattern of turns, while launching l",o ,n. U""i"*" 1-1-O-U on adjacency "f pair,it *o,lli "" jll,T rneJobrserrrng "::::": up an initialA_B sequence.However, "..-,'*o,iJ "r."iy a. asth" t.r.n-tuking rules permit a conversation to lapse, that is all such u pui, -inir, 322
section that has at least achieve:A-B, finish. So we need an opening attendancefrom the a three-turn structure, wherein the first requests party to commit other for that provides a slot the second party, other third turn-is the slot and the of interaction, to an initiation himself for the business initial provide some party to initiating for the summons-answerstructure, the familiar We then have interaction. 6rst topic, which establishesa co-ordinated co-participation, assigns 5peakingand receiving rolesto the two partiesfor the 6rst three turns, and thus cranks up the turn-taking machinery as minimally requiredSmall details of the design of such sequencesreflect their adaptation to this task - e.g. the tendency (in face-to-faceinteraction) for th€ secondturn to be an open question requiring by adjacency pair format the third turn necessaryfor the proper initiation of talk (as already noted). There is thus nothing ad hocor arbitrary about the design of conversationalsequenceslike summons sequences:they are rational solutions to particular organizationalproblems. We now have the turn-taking machinery started up. But then the questionarises:how do we suspendit ? Consider: A and B are talking and A now wants, in responseto B's remark, to tell an appositestory. But how is A to get such a substantial section of talk, when by the rules of the turn-taking system B is allowed at the very first TRP to compete by 6rst start for the floor? Clearly obtaining such an extended turn at talk (by other than sheer listener apathy) requires specialtechniques.One such specialdevice is a story announcement sequenceof the stereotypicalsort illustrated below: (4! )
A: Have you heard the one about the pink Martian?
B: No A: ((Story)) where a bid is specificallymade for an extended spacefor the telling of a story, the telling being conditional on the acceptanceof the bid. Or, from a recording: \42)
Sachs,r971: 3.i8
T r Tz
K : You wanna hear muh- eh my sister told me a story last night. R: I don't wanna hear it. But if you must, ( r .o ) A: What's purple an' an island. (irape-Britain That's what iz sis/ /ter K: No. To stun me she says uh there was these three girls ...((Story follows))
'l'3
T4
Conxersotioftalstructule Here, in Tz, R gives a reluctant go-ahead, while in T3 the other inrended recipient produces a 'guess' at what kind of a story it is as a potential dismissal(T3), itself dismissedby the story teller in T4. Such sequencescontain (minimally) in TI an ofler to tell, in Tz a 'go-ahead'or rejection, and then contingent on the ' go-ahead' the telling of the story in'f3 (see 6.4 below). What such a structure achievcsis the collaborativesuspensionofthe turn-taking machinery, b)'joint agreement,for the duration of the story (there are of course other techniquesfor doing this - see'Lerasaki,r 976; Jefferson,r 978; R y a v e , r9 7 8 ). But if we have achieveda suspensionof speakertransition relevance over an extended period of talk, we now have yet another problem, namely how to start up the turn-taking machineryonce again(or more strictly, sinceco-participation is still assured,re-invoke the relevance of 'l'RPs). A solution here had better provide for the recognizability of storyendinEt for if they are recognizablethen on such a completion the normal turn-taking machinery can once again automatically resume.So stories must be recognizableunits if turn-taking is to be adjusted around them; and of course they are: stories, if of the 'funny' variety, typically have punchlines, whereupon laughter by listenersis immediately relevant (Sacks, ry741 347ft); or if they are topically tied to the sequentiallocus in which they occur then endings are recognizable in part because they return participants to that particular topic (Jefferson, r978); or other recognizable ending formats are used (Labov & Waletsky, r966; Sacks, r97z). Once again, then, we have the turn-taking machinery operating normally. But now lct us supposewe want not merely to suspendir, but to closeit down, i.e. to finish the conversation.Again some special device is needed rvhich will provide a solution to the following problem: "how to organize the simultan€ous arrival of cr,conversationalists at a point where one speaker'scompletion will not occasionanother speaker'stalk and that will not be heard as some speaker'ssilence" (Schegloff& Sacks, r 973 : 294-5). Again one basrc ingredient suggestsitself: an adjacencypair such that the first part announcesimminent closure and the secondpart securesit. And we do indeed have the terminal exchangegenerally realizedas A: Bye; B: Bye. However there would be substantial problems for the use of the terminal exchangealone as a solution to the closing problem. For A 324
6. z Cotuersation analyxs might have said all he wants to say, and therefore have issueda Bye, whereupon B, despite perhapshaving important things to say (things perhaps that rzas, be said in this conversation- see Sacks, rg75), would be constrained by the adjacency pair format to produce a secondBye that terminated the interaction. Therefore there needsto be some pre-terminal sectionwhere undeliverednews and the like can be fitted in. This needis strongly reinforcedby the topicalorganization we reviewed,since(a) one is constrainednot to mention in first topic slot anything that one doesn't want to be taken as the main reason for engagingin interaction,and is thereforeforced to hang on to these other 'mentionables', and (b) after first topic slot, mentionables should by preferencebe fitted to prior topics, requiring that one waits for a suitable slot for such deferred mentionables.However, such a slot may never come up, and there is therefore a need for some slot towards the end of a conversationspccifically set aside as the place whete such deferred mentionablescan be unburdened. What is needed for effective closings is therefore a device which (a) offcrs eachparty a turn for such deferred mentionablcs,(b) if such a turn is taken up, recyclesthe opportunity in (a), and (c), consequent upon no part) taking up the opportunity in (a), makes the terminal exchange immediately relevant. And it is this that motivates the familiar four-turn closing section: (43)
A: B: A: B:
O kay O kay Bye Bye
where the lirst OAal' yields the floor t<.rthe other party for any deferred mcntionables that he may have, the second indicatcs that no such items have beenwithheld, and thus the exchangeof topic-lesspassing turns may be taken as a mutual agreementthat termination should now commence. The exchange of Ohays can thus bc called prer/osings- producing the forewarning and collaborativeco-ordination of closure, which the tuln-taking system and topical organization i ndcpen dent h but joint lv r equir c. So in the way thus informally sketched, from one kind of conversationalorganizationone can foresecthe need for other kinds of organizationswith specific properties, providing simultaneously both a searchprocedurefor conversationalorganizationsand explandtions for their existenceand design.
Contersational structur e
6.2 Comtersation analYsis
One further methodological preference is a growing tendency in CA to work with increasing numbers of instances of s
Rules r(b) or discriminatebetweengaps (delaysin the application of silence speaker the rules) and next /c)), lapses(non-application of (r5) (r4) above' and (after application of Rule r(a)), as illustrated in as a silence' some speaker pause to a assign rules these Where For additional facto.s systematically play a role in its interpretation' question of a a after (39) silence how a in we have seen example, specialsort (a prelude to a request- a pre-requesl - seesection 6'4 below) can be read,by virtue ofpreferenceorganization,as indicating a negative answer. Or, consider the three-secondsilence in (44):
6...3
-
Someapplications In this section we illustrate how the observations abc,ve may be applied to yield insight into particular i.,"ru.,""" oi,"fil W" will start by considering what is apparently just one phenomenon_ silence,or a period of non_speech- and ho* be discriminated into many dilTerent "no* kinds *ith ";.;;;;";::., qrir;;i;;*", significanceson the basisof their structural locations.Then we will lumlarlze 1 lnalysis by Schegloffof an opaque f;nf" ,,.n rn structural detail, showing that detailed un"ly"i" ""fu.n"J of i'J;uiiuur segmenrsof talk is made possibleby the use of the ,.n".ul n.,ain"" and techniquesalready reviewed. These examplesj"rfJ"rml",. indicate how much organization there is,o L" a;".ou.rJ-ir,--,n. smallestextract of talk, and how powerful sequentiallocationcanoe in the assignmentof multiple functions to iniividual There havebeenmany theoriesabout the signi6cance ".,".;;;;". ;;;;;;;;"" . hesitationsin conversation: some analysts, io. pausesasevidenceof verbal planning, i.e. , "*"_p1.,'hulr" "..r, time out , for psychological processingeither in che rourine preparation of the R.,.rrt ph"""r'ih"t orren toltow (Butterworrh. r975) or in the production of complex syntax (Goldman-Eister, r96g; Bernstein, rf73). But th. foll;;;,g observations show that any unitary account of pauses, and any accountthat does not take into consideration their * ioi.*i"ify symbolic devices,will be fundamentalty -f" misguided. The turn-taking system itself assigns different values to pauses within conversation.We have already describedhow the."f.1i" ir"f 326
Drew, t<1llt: 219 M: What's the time- bY thc clock ?
(qq)
R: Uh M: What's the time I ( 3. o) M: (Now) what number'sthat ? R: Number two M : No it 's not What is it I R: It's a one and a nought
Here, in the turn prior to the pause,a mother asks her child to try and tell the time. So, by Rule r(a) in (ro), the pause is a silence, attributable to the child R. But just becausethe question is an 'exam question' (and not, say, a pte-request), the silence here can be understood as'answer unknown'. Such an analysisis made clear by rhe mother's next turn, where an easier question is asked that, if answered,might provide a partial solution to the frrst question' Now in (45) we have a small pause after the second turn in the opening of a telephone call: (45) II
Tz -
Scheglofl,r979a : j7 C: ((rings)) R: Hello ? C: Hcllo Charles. ( o. 2) C: 'l'his is Yolk.
As noted earlier,for a caller to provide a greeting in'f2 (his first verbal tuin) is to claim that the recipient should be able to recognizethe caller on the basisof this sample of voice-quality alon€. The second turn, we noted, is in fact the fitst part of an adjacencygreeting pair; a secondis thercfore due, Once again, then, the delay (short though
Conteltationa! st/uctute
6.2 Conoercation analYsts
it is) is R's delay and can be taken by C to indicate a problem lor R. That.the problem is here a ptoblem in ia.r,Un""tio" i" ty the repair ofrers, after a significant pause has developed, "no*n namety -C an overt self-identification ( I&s rr yolA). .I,hat the pr.Uf._ ;"Ji"",.0 to C by this small delay is not imaginary is shown by examplesIike the following, where in T3 R has to invite C to."p"i, *i"i C n"o taken to be an adequateself-identification(the Helio in Tz), (a6) Sthegloff, tgTga : C: ( ( r ings ) ) R: Hello ? C: llello.
'l'r -t--
T3
-
.1g
( r.s) R: W ho' s t his .
Here a momentary pauseis heard immediately asa problem with what is always underway in the first few turns of telephoneconversations, namely the businessof mutual identiFcation. Therefore ir,"lir.,ficance of a pause herc is determined Uv ,tu, oi-or;;;";;** orgamzatronsthat convergeon the nrst few turns"., of t"l.phon.'"'ult", as indicated in (3o) above; that set determin"", org a n i z a ti o na n d th e s tru c tu re o f ooeni no ";u "aju."n"y-pul. secttons'jtrst how a padse In this rocation will be interpretelpentng " " " r;^-" ,,.-.' r_..:' _1. In (47) a pause,which can be analysed as somewhatsimilar to thar in (45), occurs after an invitation. Once again, i"ri,",i"" i"-" i*, part ofan adjacencypair, and this "" assignsnext turn to th;;;;*;;;r, \47) Davidson, in press A: C' m on down t ler r e , =i t 's o k a : y . ( o. z ) A: I got lotta stuff, = I got 6e:er en stull
And, as in (45), a short pause occurs, hearableas the other party,s silence,and clearly analysedin this (and ,,'"ny ;";;;;;;;il"r some problem with A's invitation, which A consequ.",ly ;;;;;;;" ""_ I.e. an attempt is made to make the invitation rrro." .a.uiriuf"". Davidson, in press on the systematicity of this patrcrn). r rnalty, the following examplefeaturcs the punchlinc ofa dirtyjoke and the ensuing laughter. As we pointed out, after ; . appreciation is immediately relevant, ",;;;'"" and the temporary suspensiurr of the turn-transition relevanceis liftca. n", f,"." *"i""-";,;;|".J:';.0 delay, and then insteadof recipie *e have-teller'slaughter (with a further four-second o"rr;lJi:9n*t / rnterspersed).Only then does one 328
of of the recipients (A) laugh, and then it has the careful syllabicity as recipients story to assignable pauses here are mock laughter. The 'failed signals of appreciation /reir silences,and the withholding ioke' (see Sacks, I974). (48)
Sa ch s,1 9 7 4 : j j 9 Kr ((tells dirty joke, ending thus:)) Third girl' walks up t'her - Why didn' ya ray anything last night; W' you told me it was always impolite t'talk wilh my mouth full,
+
( 2, o) K: hh hyok hyok, ( t . o) K: hYok, ( 3. o) A: HA-HA-HA-HA
-
Many further kindsofsignificant absencesofspeechcan be found - see e.e.,(6), (61),lZ6) and (77) below - and eachkind draws the analvsi's attention to the strong kinds of expectations that diffetent conversational organizations,whether local, overall or intermediate in scope, impose on particular sequentialslots.The demonstrationis the more remarkablein that silencehas no featuresof its own: all the different signi6cancesattributed to it must have their sourcesin the structural expectations engendered by the surrounding talk. So sequential expectations are not only capable of making something out of nothing, but also of constructing many different kinds of significance out of the sheer absenceof tatk. If conversationalorganization can map 'meaning' onto silence,it can alsomap situatedsigni6canceonto utterances - and in fact can be shown to regularly do so. Let us now turn to one short extract ofconversation and show how the various 6ndings and techniques we have reviewed can be applied to good effect. The argument is a brief rdsum6 of Schegloff, r 976' The extract comes from a radio call-in programme broadcast in the United States,and in it B, who is a High School pupil' is reporting to the compbre of the show, A, an argument that he has been having with his history teacherabout American foreign policy. The teacher (T) holds that foreign policy should be based on morality, but B thioks it should be based on expediency- 'what is good for America'. It rins as follows: t49) 'l- r
Scheglofl, t976 : Dg B: An's- an'( ) we *'ere discussing, it tur- , it comes down, he ((T)) s- he says, I-I-you've talked with thi- si- i- about
Conoersational
T3 T4 T6 1.7
A: B:
A: B: A: B:
sttuctule
this many times. 1 ((B)) said, it came down t, this: = = our main difference: l feel that government, a i_ the main thing, is- th-the purpose of the goverment rs, what is best for the country. Mmhrnm He. ((TD savs, go\,ernments, an' you know he keeps_ he talks about golernmenrs. ihey sh- the rhine that rhe;sh,; oo ts $nat s ttght or wrons, For uhom. Well he says-//heBv what rtardard. That's what- that's exactly what I mean. He sbtrt he savs
The particular interestof this extract is a crucial ambiguity associated with the utterance Fot uhom.lt is not, horvever, lies in the linguistic structure of the utterance, "n'",ni;r"iir-if,", nor has it ao *raf, any fexical ambiguities of the words and whom; and for unlike Iinguisticambiguities,which scarcelyever cause difficultiesin contexr, this one demonstrablyis (or becomes)ambiguous for the p"rti";p".,t". The ambiguity is this: on one reading (R r A, in utt"r;rg Fo, L;o^, ) asks.a question that we might paraphraseas , What aiJ yo,.l. teacher say - governments should do *,hat,s right "rujy for whom? Wh,orn d i d h e h a v e i n m i n d ? ' O n th e other readi ng (i z), a, i ., u" ki .,g' t,o, a,llora,is actually trying to show that he agrees with B rga;ni B,s teacher(T), and he is rrying to show this by offering a pot"nUui fi.." of B's argument against T. To see this consider that B i".";;;;i"* T as saying that foreign policy should be based on *nu, ;r rno.lffy right - to which B might have retorted b1, saying yes, but right-Jor whom?,pointing out that ethical judgements of good or bua a.p"no upon difrerent parties' points of view. So on this reading, or interpretation, A in saying For whom is providing an utterance;har B might have used against his teacher,thus showi-r,g agre.-""i *i,f, B. That both readingsof the utteiance bccome availableto B is clear. First,. in T5, he starts off responding to Rr, the straightforward questron lnterpretation, by beginning on a further specificationof what the teacher says. But then A interrupts *lth u aor.."t;orr; *. know this in part becauseonly corrections of such sorts are prioriry items licensing violations of the turn-taking rules. But *" al* kno* that T6 is a correction because it utilizes a a"u;". iu. "o.,a"ra 330
6.2 Conoersation analysis correcting misunderstandings, namely reformulaiion that makes the same point in different words. In the following turn, B then displaysunderstandingof the alternativereading, by acknowledging A's agreement with him, that's e..actly uthat I meaa' We can thus show that the ambiguity is a participant's (and not merely an analyst's)ambiguity: each party dealswith each reading once - A by correctingB's interpretation,and then reformulating his own intended reading, and B by 6rst beginning to respond to th€ non-intended reading, and then showing understanding of the second reading as an agreement with him against his teacher, by acknowledging A's agreement. But how does the ambiguity arise? Since it is clearly not a matter of the grammatical or lexical ambiguity of For tohom,the source of the ambiguity must lie outside the utterance itself in its sequential location in the conversation.We need now to show that the structural location itself predisposesus to both of the relevant interpretations. Stories,we noted, require the suspensionofthe normal turn-taking system,which then requires resumption. This could be provided for, it wasargued,ifstory endingsareeasilyrecognizable.One recognizable and recurrent story ending format is a summing up of the story, and that is what we 6nd occurring in our extract - B says1t camedowrr to this : our main diflerente is .,, and the summary follows. So the slot in which A saysFor whom is the first slot after a story ending. Such a slot is one where story recipientscan be expectedto do one of two things: they may ask for further details or clarifications of the srory - and this is the sequ€ntial basis for the simple question interpretation, R r ; or they may show understandingand appreciation of the story (as e.g. in the expectable laughter after a joke: see discussionof (48) above),and it is this possibility that forms the basis of the second, more complex, interPretation, Rz. For one way of showing understanding is to expressagreement in such a way that prior understanding must have taken place, and For whom does just this, by sho$'ing agreementthrough displaying understandingof the argument that B $'as having with his teacher. But there's another element here: this agreement reading is reinforced by consideration of the kind of story that B's story is, namely an 'opposition story' or a reported argument. Such stories have as featuresnot only an alternation of reported speakers'or an A-B-A-B structure of reported turns, but also, mapped onto the 33r
C onaetsa,ional stt uctut e alternation of turns, the alternation of positions, or sides in the argument, So when reported speakerschange, the positions betng argued for change.Such structural expectationslie behind our ability to understand some minimal story like pay the rent- I can,tpa, the rent a$ being a reported argument where one party said foy'th" ,"nt and the other I can't pay the lent. No\x it is just because'B,sstory here is an opposition sto.],that we can hear A,s Fot whom as taking up B's position against the teacher. For B is reporting u."u-.n, in which the teacher(T) and he alternated i., t,r.r," u,id"., po"iiior,";r, a T-B-T-ts ... sequence.Further, we can see that it isjust because in addition to being an oppositron story, it is one which ends wrth u:ytn T, rhat A can jump in and show story understanding !y by taking B's turn after T's. And for A to do this is an optimal *a'y of displaying understanding,one of the expectable things to be going on in the 6rst slot after a story. Analysesof this sort, which show how surrounding conversational structure can imposr rich int,
important lessons ro.,,,;,,",;;
";I;"t;:i,T:"::,H"jil::?*:;:: understanding. First, they indicate that semrntic interpretatln is only a small and not perhaps the most ,"i""t of th" "o-p|.,, communicational significanceof an utterance. Se"ondty, th"y that speechact rheory and allied theories "ho* of utteran".;;n;;i,r;'.rn only be considered crude and (at best) pu.tiul a"cou.t" of situated significance(consider, fo, e*u-ple, "uch what little of in,"*", speechacr theory could say about Fot whom). 1.ni.aty, su"i, unuly""s suggest that while it is correcl to look for the sources of such significanceoutside the utterance itself, it may be a mistake to look too far afield, and specificallythat it can be premature to i.,uok" tn" application of large quantities of background knowledge, i" ,n" frames approach now popular in cognitive psychologylnd ""artificial tntelligenceapproachesto languageu.d.."t"r,di.rg 1".i.. g. Cfrur";uf., | 9 7z ).
6..1 PleIelence otganizatiott about speaker's or hearer's desires, but as a label for 3 structural phenomenon very close to the linguistic concept of markedness, especiallyas used in morphology:r? The intuition behind the notion of markednessin linguistics is that, where we have an opposition between two or more members...,it is often the casethat one memberis felt to be more usual, more normal, less specific than the other (rn markednessterminology it is unmarked, the others marked). ( Com r ie,r 9?6a: I r r ) Further, in morphology, "unmarked categories tend to have less morphological material than marked categories" and there is a "greater likelihood of morphological irregularity in unmarked forms" (Comrie, r976at rr4). The parallel is therefore quite apt, because in a similar way preferred (and thus unmarked) seconds to different and unrelated adjacency pair first parts have less material than dispreferreds (marked seconds), but beyond that have little in common (cf. " irregular"). In contrast, dispreferred secondsof quite different and unrelated first parts (e.g. questions, offers, requests,summonses,etc.) have much in common, notably components of delay and parallel kinds of complexity. Some further examples will make this clear, but before proceeding we should point out that, in addition to the structural aspectofpreference organization, we will need a rule for speech production, which can be stated roughly as follows: 'try to avoid the dispreferred action-the action that generally occurs in dispreferred or marked format', (The two essential features of dispreferred actions are thus (a) they tend to occur in a marked format, and (b) they tend to be avoided.) Such a rule is non-circular if we alreadyhavean independentcharacterization of preferred or dispreferred alternativeson structural grounds. So let us return to a characterization of dispreferred seconds consider the following pair of invitations and their reaponses; (5o)
Athinson €l Dtew, t97g: 58 A: Why don't you come up and seeme some//times lwouldlike to B:
(5 r,
Athinson €d Dreto, t979: 5{l A: Uh if you'd carc to come and visit a little while this mo.ning I'll give you a cup of coffee
6.3
Preference organization Pteferted secondtutns As we have seen(6.2.r .z), alternative secondparts to 6rst parts ofadjacency pairs are not generally ofequal .uii". second turns are preferred and others ","tu", "o-" dispreferred. ir,. ., preference, it was noted, is "",,"". not intended u" u p"y"t ologi"ut "iri_ 6,3.I
t t ' l ' h e c o n c . p t o f n a rh . d ' r. rr$ a s o ri s i n a l l ! d e v e l o p e d b y l i n s u i s t 3 o f t h e P ra s u e School;
thc
cl,ssic
rcfeftnces
C h a p r. r J : s e e a l s o L l o n s ,
are JaLobson, rq 6 8 : 7 9 f f .
r9l2;
Trub€tzloy.
r9l9:
333
Conoe/salional sttuctute
6, j
B: hehh Well that's awfully sweetof you, ((DELAYXMARKER)X(APPRECIA.I.I ON)) I don't think I can make it this morninq. (R E l ' U S A L o r D E C LIN A ' f tON )) .hh uhm I'm runningan ad in rhe paperand_anduh I have to stay near the phone. (ACCOUNT))
-
Here (as Atkinson & Drew ( r 979: 5gff) point out) rhe invitation in thefrst example has an acceptanceas a secondpart: the acceptance is of simple designand is deliverednot only without delay U,rtu.turffy in partial overlap. In contrast, the invitation in th.."*na receivesa refusalor declination as a seconcl,and "_ipr" here we have all the typical featuresof dispreferreds,namely (as indicated Uy th" glo""", in capitals) delay, the particle Well which standardly i..fu.-""..,o marks dispreferreds(and here we have a rival analysis to that oflered in Chapter 3 in terms of implicature _ seeOwen, rggo: 6gff, rggr), an appreciation (notably absent from the acceptance in ttre irior example),l3a qualiFed or mitigated refusal (I doi,r thinh I can), and an accountor explanationfor the dispreferredsecond. (Compare also the request examples in (24) and (25) above.) The-_characteristics of dispreferred seconds can be further generalized(see Pomerantz, rg75: 42ft, r97g, in press; Atkinson & D re w , r9 7 9 : C h a p te r z ; W o otton, rn press)_such turns typi cal -- l y exhibit at least a substantial number of the following f"",.,..", (^) delays:(i) by pausebefore delivery,(ii) by the use of a preface(see(b), (iii) by displacementolr.. a nu_be, of turns via use of tepair initiatorstoor insertion sequerrc.s _.. (b) preJaces:(i) the use of markers o, u.,.ro,rn".."o-i'iopreferreds like U} and Welt, (ii) the p.od.r.rio., oiiok.., agrcements beforedisagreemenrs. (iii) the useof aporecia_ tions if relevant (for offers, inviiations, ,rg;;;;", advice),(iv) the useof apologie.;f ."t.""nt (io.-i.q.r.",", invitations,etc),(v) the useof qualifiers(e.g. t a.^i-i""* Jor sure,but...), (vi) hesitationi" ;"i"Ji," "".ior"i"i-", self-editing \c) accounts:carefully formulatedexplanationsfor whv the (dispreferred)act is beinp done
(d)
detlination
component:
of a form
suited
to the natr.rre
of tne
rr Of cou.sr, appreciations can occur with inviration acc.pranc€s, bur tltr) -' -' typica y occu. a/r?, acceprances q.hilc thcy occut 64orc rc.jcct;ons. t' Th;s r .r m is.r ptajned bclo u
33 4
Preference organizalion
first part of th€ pair' but characteristically indirect or mitigated of each of these (the headings indicate There follow some examples in each extract): which features are especially notable Wootton, ii prest (Illustrating (a)(U) G2) Ch: Can I go down an see'im (2.o)
() (r.8) C 'm o ::n
(t.s)
(53)
(s+)
(s5)
(56)
(s7)
Come'n te see 'im ( '.6 ) C 'm o ::n M : N o ::: JJA (Illustlatins (aXrr), (r)(trr), (c), (d)) B: She saysyou might want that dress I bought, I don't know whether you do A: Oh thanks (well), let me see I really have lots of dresses Wootton, in Ptcss(IUutt/ating (o\(ii;l) Ch: I wan my ow:n tea .hh mysef M: (You) want what?: Ch: : My tea myse :f M: No:w? \[e are all having tea together t768 {Illustrating (b){), {c\\ R: What about coming here on the way (.) or doesn't that give you enough time ? C; Well no I'm supervising here r768 (Illustrating (b)(o), @)) C: Um I wondered if there's any chance of seeing you tomorrow sometime (o.5) morning or before the seminar ( r .o ) R: Ahum (.) I doubt it 163 glluttrot;ng (b\(oil\ lR hos becn complainilg that C's fre in th. apaltm.nt beloto has flled R's apartrnent uith smohel C: ...is it-it's all right now- you don't want me to put it out? R: E::r ( r.5) well on the whole I wouldn't bother becauseet huhuh (z.o) well I mean what- what (o.5) would it involve puttrng rt out
(o.s) C: Hahaha( )hahah t 6 S g I lustratins (b)(iu\) ((to operator)) Could I have Andrew Roper's extension A: pl€ase ? (9.o)
6.j Prefercnce organization
C onv el sat;onal t tr uc tul e
B: B:
the one R rhat there may b€ a problem with R's suggestion, namely suggests.Or again:
Robin Hardwick's telephone ( r.o) hello Andrew? No I'm awfully sorry Andrew's away all week
Given a structural chatacterization of preferred and dispreferred turns we can then correlate the content and the sequential position of such turns with the tendency to ptoduce them in a preferred or dispreferred format. And here we find recurrent and reliable patterns, e.g.refusalsof requestsor invitations are nearly alwaysin dispreferre4 format, acceptancesin preferred format. Table 6. r indicatesthe son of consistent match between format and content found across a number of adjacencypair seconds. Table 6,r Cotrelations oJ content and format in adjacency pair seco4ds FIRST PAR'I'S: Re q u cst Offct/l nvi teA ssessmenr SECOND PART S: P,el.t,.d: acc.pt.nc.scccpranc€ agr€€m€nt Dkpr.Jtr.d:
r€fusal
refusal
disagr€eh€nt
Quesri on
B tame
expected
denialt.
unexp€cted
admission
Given such a correlation between the kind of action performed and the way in which it is done, we can then talk not only of preferred turns but alsoofpreferred actions(namely, thosenormally performed in the preferred format). Now given these patterns we can see that the analysiscan in fact be pushedmuch furtherback into the structure, notonlyofthe second part of a pair, but of the first part as well. Take again example (47), in which we noted that the delay of two-tenths of a second seemsto be taken as evidenceof a dispreferred action - namely an invitation rejection- coming up, so that A then adds further inducements(/otra stufl being intended ro indicate that plenty of food and drink is available, including the specified beer). Similarly, reconsider (55), where again a small delay (marked (.)) is sufficient to indicate to R ro Not.thar blaminas r€c.iv.de.iats in simpt€ prcferr€d format. thus ind;cariDs ssalo that pr€fercnc€cannor b€ idenrified with, forcxample, btamer,s desi.r, se eAtkin so n & Dr € w, r 9?9:80. 330
(ss)
t 44 C: ...1wonderedif you could phonethe vicarso that we could ((in-breath))do the 6nal on Saturday(o'8) motning o:r (') afternoon or ( 3. o) R: Yeah you seeI'll I'll phone him uP and aeeif there'sany time free (2.o) C: Yeah R: Uh they're normally booked Saturdays but I don't- it might not be
Here over the course of C's first turn there are a number of slots provided where R could have perform€d the preferred compliance with C's request (these include the prolonged in-breath, the eighttenths of a second pause, the lengthened o and its following short "r pause, and of course the long three-secondsilence after the turn)' Given that preferred actions are properly done without delay, the fact that R's complianceis systematicallydelayedindicatesthat signi6cant problems are coming uP. What such examples illustrate is that over the cou.se of a single turn's construction, interactional feedback is being systematically taken into consideration(se€Davidson, in press).In this sensea single turn at talk by one speakercan itself be seento be ajoint production, here by virtue of the strong expectations for no gap between th€ transition of speakers provided by prefetence organization There ls also further evidence ofquite different kinds which shows that a single speaker'sturn is often ajoint production, in that recipients' non-verbal responsesare utilized to guide the turn's construction throughout the course of its production (seeGoodwin, rg79 , rgSr). Here, though, preference organization, in constraining the consttuction of second parts of adjacency pairs, can systematically affect the design of first parts - and as we shall see this can happen in more ways than one' Preference organization, however, extends far beyond the confines of adjacency pairs. There are, for a start, kinds of turns paired less tightly than adjacency pairs, where a fitst part does not seem to require but rather makes apt some response or second - action' chains in Pomerantz's (1978) terminology. For example, after an
Conoetsational sttucture
6.j Preferenceotganizatiort
assessrn€nt (or assertion expressing a judgement) a second assessmentis often due, as in:
sfter an ordinary assessment like (66) and after a self-deprecating assessmentlike (67):
(6o)
(66)
(6 ' )
Pomerantz, r97 5: r it's a beautiful day out isn'r itl J: T's L: Yeah it's jus' gorgeous ... Pometantz, rgZ5: r A: (It) was too depre//ssing
B: Given a 6rst assessmentthere is a clear preferencefor agreementover disagreement.Disagreementshere, and after assertionsin general, typically have a 1es,but kind of format (i.e. disagreement,prefaced with token agreement),or they are delayed,or prefacedwith rael/like other dispreferreds: (62)
(63) r
preference for agreement after assessments, if A self-denigrates, an agreement from B is preferred. But by an independent principle of a different order, namely a norm enjoining the avoidance of criticism, B should avoid such an agreement. The latter principle in fact generally takes precedence (if agreements occur at all after selfdeprecations they are preceded by disagreements - see pomerantz, r 975 i r or ) :
:.
( o5)
Pomerantz, r975: gJ L: .., I'm so dumb I don't even know it. hhh! h€h W: Y-to, y-you're not du:mb... Pomerantz, t975: g4
L: You're not bored (huh)l S: Bored? No. \{e're fascinated.
It follows from this, and the natureofpausesasmarkersofdispreferred responses,that there is an asymmetry in the significanceof a pause 3J8
God isn't it dreary! ((SILENCE : DISAGREEMENT) I'm gettin fat hh ((SILENCE : AGREEMENT)
Further complexities arise in another special kind of assessment' principles namely compliments. Once again there are cross-cutting and a norm compliment, with the agreement preference for a at work: solutions Compromise of self-praise. the avoidance specifying employed here include down-graded agreements' shifts of praise to third parties, and plain disagreements(Pomerantz, I978)' PteJenedseqteaces So far we have been concerned with how Preference operates over a range of alternative seconds to some priot turn' We have,though, indicated that it can operateto structure that prior turn during the courseofits production; we have alsobriefly indicatedthat the delay component ofa dispreferredsecondcan be realizedby what may be called a next turn repair initiator, or NTRI' which invites repair of the p.ior turn in the next turn, as in (54) above, where M asks Yoarttanl @hat?,or as in the arrowed turn below: 63.2
Pometantz, rgTS: 66 R: ... Well never mind. lt's not imponanr. D: l.Vell,it is important. Pomerantz, r975: 68 R: ...You'vereallybothbasicallyhonestlygoneyourownway5. D: Essentially, except we've hadda good relationship ar / lhome R: .hhh Ye:s, but I mean it's a relationship lv.here...
We are now in a position to appreciare one kind of complexity that arises, where two different kinds of conversational expc-tations work in opposing directions. One such area is self-denig rtion: by the
(64)
(67)
A: B: A: B:
(68)
-
Pomerarrtz,r975:71 A: Why a,lat'sa zratter with y-you sou//nd If,4:PPY' Nothing B:
hh
B: I soundha: p/ / py? Ye: uh A: (o.3.t B: No: ,
A disprcferred 'second' turn can thereby become displaced into fourth turn, by the sequence:A:((ASSESSMENT))' B: ((NTRI))' A: ((RE-ASSESSMENT)), B: ((DISPREFERRED SECOND))' One motive here is that B thereby provides A with an opportunity to re-formulate the 6rst turn in a more acceptable way. So preference organization can and often does spill over into a number of turns subsequentto a first turn. One area where preference o rganization routinely operates withrn and across turns is a central conversational device, the organization of repair (Schegloff, Jeflerson & Sacks, I977). As was pointed out above, the tendency for an utterance to attend to those immediately 319
Coneersdtional sl/ucture prlor to rt provides, for both analysts and participants, .proof a procedure' for checking how those turns were understood.;fhis would be of little use if there was no device for the correction of misunderstandings,mishearingsor indeed non_hearings. There is of course such a device and it has the following properties. Firsr, 11 provides a number of systematic slots across 1., tau"g three-turn " sequence in which repair, or at least its prompting, can be done, ag follows: (69)
(includesrepairableitem) = 6rst opportunity: here for self-initiated self_reoarr Transilion space rr tretween Tr-and,Tz= secondopportunity: here again for self_initiatedself-repair Tz : third opportunity: either for other-repair or for otherinitiation of self-repair in T3 T3 = fourth oppo.t.,rrity, givei other-initiation in Tz, for other-initiatedself-repair There are two important distinctions here: first, self-initiated contrastedto oiher-initiated repair _ i.e_repair by a speakerwithout promptrng vs. repair after prompting; secondly,self_repair, repair dorre by the-speaker of the problem or repairable item, contrasted to other-repair, done by another party. An example of.epui, i. opportunity should help to make the distinctions "a"t clear: (?o) Scheglofl,Jefferon 6 Sachs,t977: j64 (I_llustratingself-initiatedsetf_ripair in ippotturit1, t) N: She was givin ' me a:ll rhe ieople th.r *.r. Jo,r,. this yea:r I mean this quarier V,//tno* J: yeah \7r) S9.hegloff, Jeffersontl Sacks,tg77 : j66 (Illustrcting repai it opportunity 2, again self_iaitiated selJ-repai\ L: Ao, 'eo but all of the doors ,n things were taped up = : I mean y'know they pur up y,know that kinda p.aper,r stuff, the brown paoer. (?2) fc!1slofr, Jefetson id-SacAr, rgZT: 328 (Iltustrating other_ initiated other+epair in oppo/runity J) A: Lissenaprgeons. (o.?)
6-j
O3)
\74)
Tr
,t T.anr;tion rpa." t.b.ts ,.the bea! rhat por.nri.tty folows rhe Dossib,. compre,ion point of ! ru.,., (schc8tofi, J"ffcr_n i s..k", ,;;;,;;;;. mor. d..ait€d .n,tysis hc.. mishr be: 6rsr opporrunity is rmm.ii",..i"lr,.. " thc..ro,, secondi!.t.nd ofturn, rhird is rftcr rc.,"r.,i l j", ,i,,lt,,, fou.rh .t T2, fir.b n Tr, andsixrhrt *il furirre ",."1 . ,".*";:is"il,#:;;;:".
Pteference otganization
B: Quail, I think. Scheglofl, Jefletson Cd SacAr, tg77: 362 Ulluttrating otherinitiation oJ sel!-tepoil in oOportunitt 3) A: Have you ever tried a clinic? B: Wh a t? A: Have you ever tried a clinicl Sehegloff, Jefrerson (l Sachs, tgTZ: 368 (Illustroting self-tepait in opportunity q,lolknting other-ititia,iot by NTRI') B: .hhh Well I'm working through the Amfat Corporation. A: The aio?
B: Amfah Corporation.T's a holding company. The range of phenomena collected here under the coocept of repat is wide, including word recovery problems, self-editings where no discernible 'error' occurred, corrections proper (i.e. error replacements) and much else besides. The claim (Schegloff, Jefferson & Sacks, r977) is that the same system handles the repair of all these problems. The examples above are only illustrative: there are many ways, for example, in which self-repair within the turn is signalled (e.g. by glottal stops, lengthened vowels, long schwa, etc.), or other-initiation of self-repair is achieved(e.g, by What?,'Scuseme?, etc., or by echo-questions, or repetitions of problematic items with stresson problem syllablesas in (24, QZ) and (78)). Now the second major component of the repair apparatus is a set of preferences setting up a rank ordering across the opportunity set above. Briefly, the preference ranking is as follows: (75)
PreJeretcer is for self-initiated self-repair in opportunity r (own turn) Prcfetence2 is for self-initiated self-repair in opportunity z (transition space) Preferencej is for other-initiation, by NTRI in opportunity 3 (next turn), of self-repair (in the turn after that) Prdeteace4 is for other-initiated other-repair in opportunity 3 (next turn)
The evidence for such a ranking is, first, that this corresponds to the ranking from the most frequently used to the least used resouacc, (other-repair, for example, being really quite rare in conversation). Secdndly, the system is actually set up so that there will be a tendency for self-initiated self-repair, this being the type of repair relevant in the 6rst two opportunities traverced. Thirdly, we have the typical delay by recipient following these two opportunities if they're not
340
34r
6.j Preferenceolglrrization
Conoersational stlut ture immediatelyutilized, indicating a' problem' and inviting self-initiatco self-repair. Sometimes the invitation by the non-responder is successfulas in (76), sometimes not, as in (77):
o6)
+
07)
+
Schegloff,Jefletson €l Sachs,t977 : j64 K: Didja know the guy up thereat-oh.What the hell is'zname useto work up't (Steeldinn€r)garagedid their body work f or ' em . ( r . 5) K: Uh: : ah, ( o. 5) O h : : h e m e h - u h , ( o . 5 ) H i s w i f e r a n o f f w i t h Jim McCa:nn. Schegloff, Jefletson (d Sachs, t977 : j7o A: Hey the 6rst time they stopped me from sellin'cigarettes was this morning. ( r . o) B: From selling cigarertes ? A: From buying cigarettes_
Fourthly, there is clear evidence that even where other parties can do the required repair, they produce an NTRI (i.e. other-initiation of a self-repair) instead of doing other-repair on many and probably most occasions. B's turn in (77) is a case in point, and the fotrrth tutrr in the following make s this explicit:
(?8 )
+
Scheglof, Jeffenon I Sachs, r977 : j77 K: 'E likes that waiter over there-
A: Wait-er? K: Waitress,sorry, A: 'Ats better,
Finally in the rare event of other-repair occurring, it is followed by 'modulators' like the 1 think in (72) above, or prefacedby y'mean, or otherwise marked:
Gs)
Scheglofr, Jeferson (g Sachs, rg77 : 378 LBut y'know single 6edr'r aofully thin to sleep on. S: W hat ? L: Single beds. // They'reE: Y'mean narrow ? L: They're awfully zarrow yeah.
So the repair apparatus as a whole is strongly biased both by a preference for self-initiation of repair and by a pr.f".en.e io, self-repair over repair by others. As a consequence preference organization governs the unfolding of sequences concerned with reparr.
We have now widened the scope ofpreference organization to cover solutions to not only rankings of alternative turns, but alternative Droblems (like the handling of repair), the solutions being either iandled within a single turn or across a sequence of turns However' - for example' preference also seems to operate actoss sequence 'rpes preferable action is an an offer prompting possible, that, if it seems we shall see as Hence, I979a: (Schegloff, request 49)' performing a to prehgure or to a turn designed in utility special is a there in 6.4.3, possibility the provides for it for (. pr€-request), preface a request of recipient performing an offer instead, as below: (8o)
r 76 i: Hullo I was just ringing up to ask if you were going to Bertrand's party R: Yes I thought You might be C: Heh heh R: Yes would You like a lift? C: Oh I'd love one In a similar way, in the initial three turns of telephone calls recognition is done by, and totally submerged within, greetings (where this is possible) in preference to being achieved by a sequ€nce involving overt self-identifications. Thus (8I) is the preferred sequence,(82) the disPreferred:" Schegloff,t979a: j5 C: ((rings)) R: Hello C: Hello R: Hi
(8r) Tr T3
Scheglofr,rg79a : 59 C: ((rings)) R: Hello, Cr Hi. Susan? R: Ye: s, C: This's Judith (.) Rossman R: Jldith l
(82) Tr Tz T4
The evidence that self-identification is in general dispreferred is this' Despite the fact that R can be assumedto have a strong interest in learning who is calling, in the first turn by callers (Tz) selfidentification is often absent; if, given this turn, identification is not "
This .o.t of preference mav b. quit. F..n.h conv.ntions-
cultutc-spccific;
*G God'rd'
1977 on
Conoetsational sttuctur e
6.4 Pre-sequences
immediately achieved by R, then C generally leaves a gap or pause for recognition to occur-hence, as we saw i.,6.".3, J"l"y uit", minimal Tz is understoodas evidenceof a problem in R," .a-g.ri,i,rn" of C. Only after such a delay does C ofier an idcntificati"" i;":; inr) above) or does R request one (as in (46)). given this dispreference for self-identifications, .Now if a caller wishesto avoid overt self_identificationbut is uncertain that recipient can do identification on a minimal Tz (e.gHello), th.,, h; .r,., produce a T2 that prefigures or prefaces s"lf-id..,iifi"atior, *hite withholding it, thus giving the recipient " an opportuni,y,o r".ogni"" the. caller without actually claiming (as a plain Hello *o,rta)-Jut recipient can do so. The caller can achieve this Uv ,t ,"" ffri, plus the name of the recipient, with " "i the characte.i"ii. f"*-ri. rntonation contour of a , try, on the name. as in : (8 3 ) Scheglofl, tgTga: R: Hello: , C: Hello //se I R: Yes. Ba..tty.
as i n (85) : ( i) (ii) (iii) (iv) (v)
(8s)
5z
(Note that a high-rise contour would seem to signal genuine uncertainty about the recipient's identity, whereas fl*-.i1" p.i-""ifv conveys uncertainty about whether the " recipient can recognize the 'irrir"" c.aller-.see ScheglofT.rgTga: 5o.) No* just as o*-."or"i rne reclprent to provide an offer, " thus avoiding the Jispreferred requestsequence,so llel/o plus name (with low_risecontour) invires recognition (as in (83)) in preference to the self-iaentinl,i"" ,, -1Aa;. prefigures, namely the dispreferred sequence i.r",urr""a Uy Hence such a dispreferred with overt self-identihcation, will generally only occur if".qr,l"."", in T3 recipient recognition, like an addressterm "" tttht"i"stic "ir"*" response"r;J""1"'"r (e g o'tr 4i / How are you?). And that i, i, diot
theabsence ...;i,l',:'jl:o+:jH:y;lTL:;j:: lacr1lat,onmore ", identificatory
"o fll"t:"t ot vorce-quality:
(8+)
Finally, the dispreferred nature of self-identification is confirmed by the fact that, if it is after all required' it is often received with 'the (82), big hello'- the upgraded recognition component in e.g TS in earlier was not achieved regularly with an account ofwhy recognition (e.g. You souad diflercnt -see Schegloff, tg79a:. 48). So fortelephone recognitions between known parties the preference is for caller to provide the minimal cues he judges sufficient for recipient to recognize caller (note here the pause before the provision ofthe surnamein (82)). And such a preferencenot only ranks Tz cues
Schegloff,t g79a: 55 R: H'llo: I C: Harriet? R; YeahI C: Hi! R: Ili...
material in T4 than a further sample
Hi Hello Hello lt's me Hello. It's Penny Hello. It's Penny Rankin
but it also ranks the two sequence types, (i) greetings alone' (ii) greetings followed by overt self-identifications and recognitions. Preference organization thus extends not only across alternative seconds to first parts of adjacency pairs, but backwards into the construction of fi rst parts, forwards intotheorganization of subsequent turns, and also acrossentire alternative sequences,ranking sets of sequencetypes. Pre-sequences Generaltemarhs The term pre-sequence is used, with a systematic ambiguity, to refer both to a certain kind of turn and a certain kind of sequence containing that typ€ of turn. We will, however, use the abbreviation pre-s for the turn-type, reserving pte'sequencefor the sequence type. Some examples of pre-sequences end pre-s have already been introduced in passing. We have noted for example that a summons prefigures a turn which contains a reason for the summons, as in: 6.4
6.4.t
(E6)
Athittsox €l Dteu,, tg79: 46 Ch: M um m y M: Yes dear ( ?. r ) Ch: I want a cloth to clean(th€) windows
344
345
6-4 Pre-sequeaces
Conl,ersational sbuctul e Since such reasons can be various, summonses are 'generalized pre-s'; most pre-s, however, are built to prefigure the specific kind of action that they potentially precede. For example, pre-closings, often realized as tokens of Okay, are recognizable as potential initiations of closings,otherwise closingscould not be co-ordinated. Pre-closings illustrate one major motivation for pre-s in general, namely that by prefiguring an upcoming action they invite collaboration in that action (asin pre-closings)or collaborationin avoiding that action (as in pre-self-identifrcations). Some of the clearestkinds of pre-s are pre-invitations, like the following: (87)
(88)
Athinson (9 Drew, r979: z5j A: Whatcha doin' ? B: Nothin'
Notice that in both casesthe pre-invitations are tr€ated as transparent by the recipienrs- so that their responsesare clearly attuned to the fact that an invitation (or related act) is potentially forthcoming in the next turn. Thus Norlirg in (82) can be read as 'nothing that would make the ofrer of an evening's entertainment itrelevant' or the like, while the formulation of what R is doing in (88) is clearly attuned to the possibility of an upcoming invitation, which the t/ry ? requests details of. A pre-s is not just some turn that comes before some other kind of turn - most turns have that property; it is a turn that occupiesa specific slot in a specific kind of sequence with distinctive properties. On the basisofexamples like the pre-invitation ones above,we might attempt the following characterization of the structure of such sequences(although such a characterizationrequires generalization to other kinds of pre-sequence):
346
Of course, a crucial patt of the motivation for such a sequence is the conditional or contingent nature of T3 on the nature of T2; so, in the absence ofan encouragement in T2, the sequence can be expected to abort along the following lines: (9o)
A: Wanna drink i Athinson(d Dre.t, rg79: r43 R: Hi John C: How ya doin: = say whdt'r you doing? R: Well we're going out. Why I C: Oh, I wasjust gonna say come out and come over here an' talk this evening, but ifyou're going out you can't very well do that
(8s)
Tz (Position z): an answer indicating that the precondition obtains, often with a question or request to proceed to T3 T3 (Position 3): the preGgured action' conditional on the 'go ahead' in Tz T4 (Position 4): response to the action in T3 (b\ di;tribution flir?: one party, A, addresses Tr and- T3 to another party, B, and B addresses Tz and T+ to A
(a) Tr (Position r): a question checking whether some precondition obtains for the action to be performed in T3
as in (89) answer indicates that precondition on action does not obtain - often so formulated as to specifically discourage the foreseeable action T3 : withhotding of the prefigured action, usually with a report ofwhat would havebeen done in T3, byway ofexplanation for Tl
Tr: Tz:
Such a sequence occurs in (88). Given such a characterization, we then have no difficulty finding like the following: further kindi of pre-sequence, e'g. pre'r€quests
(9r)
' \92 )
(sr)
Meftitt, r9Z6 : 337 C: Do you have hot chocolate? S: mmhmm C: Can I have hot chocolate with whipped cream? S: Surc ((leaves to get)) Merlitt, t976: 324 C: Do you have the blackberry jam ? S: Ye s C: Okay. Can I have half a Pint then ? S: Sure ((turns to get)) rZ2B(7) C: So um I was wondering would you be in your office on Monday (.) by any chance (2.o) probably not R : H m m ye s: C: :You would R: Yes yes ( t.o ) C: So if we came by could you give us ten mioutes or so?
Similarly one can recognize pre-arrangemenls
for future contact,
as in:
347
6.4 Pre-sequences
C onvelsation al stru ch0 e
(e4)
! 768 R: Erm (2.8) what what are you doing today? C: Er well I'm supervising at quarter past
(r.6 ) R : E ry u h w h y (d o n' t)er(r.5)w oul dyoul i ketocomebyafter th a t? C: I c.n't I'm afraid no
-
Now there is a problem raised for our characterization of such sequencesby examples like (93),13where the distribution of the characteristicactions is not exactly over the paradigmatic four-turn sequenceproposedin (89). Such problems are more acutein examples like the following, where we have two insertion sequences, one in Tz and T3 concernedwith repair, one in T4 and T5 concernedwith establishinga temporary 'hold ' in the turn-taking system,both these sequencesbeing inserted between a pre-requeston the one hand (in Tr ), and its response(in T6) with the follorv-up requesr(in T7) on the other.
holds across a sequence of positions rather than ,lr/w, and that the utteranceT6 in (qS) is in secoadpositiondespite being sixth in turn, and likewise T7 is in third positioa though seventh in turn. But if this distinction between ,/tn and position is not to render vacuous the claim that pre-sequencesordinarily have the structure in (8q), then we must have an independent characterizationof each position,so that it can be recognized wherever in a sequence ofturns it actually shows up. This is not easy to do in a general way for all pre-sequences, but it can c€rtainly be done for sub-classes of prelike that including pre-requests,pre-invitations,pre-ofrers sequences, and the like. Indeed the glosses on the content of each turn (or, preferably now, position) in (89) indicate some typical recognizable featuresof each. l-et us take up this problem of characterizingturns in particular positions with respect to one particular type of pre-sequence. Pre-announcemenls One class of pre-s of special interest are preannouncements (see Terasaki, r9?6, on whose work the following is based).We have already met the sub-classof these which are bids for story space(seeexamples(+r) and (+z) above), noting that they operate to gain ratified accessto an extended turn at talk. But there are many other kinds of pre-announcements,Iike the following: 6.4.2
(95,, 'I'r
141\J) C: ... Do you havein stockpleaseany L-'I. oneeighteightl ((P O S IT IO N r )) R : On e e i g h t e i g h t ( (H E A R IN C C H E C K )) C: Yeah= ((CHECK OKAYED) R: =Can you hold on please((HOLD)) C: Thank you ((ACCEPT))
'lz T4
-
( r . 5) R: Yes I have got the orre ((POSITION z)) C: Yes. Could I- you hold that for H.H.Q.G ( ( PO SI TI O N s ) )
(e6) please
Intuitively, then, we have two insertion sequencesbetween what would be the paradigmatic turns Tr and Tz in (89). But if we have dehned tbe notion of a pre-sequencein terms ofjust the sequenceof turns in (89), how is this caseto be assimilated? Whar we need herc is the distinction introduced recently by Schegloff in the discussion of repair, betweenturn location - i.e. sheersequentiallocusof a turn in a sequenceby a count after some initial turn - and position, the responseto some prior but not necessarilyadjacent turn. Thus a second part of an adjacency pair separated from its first part by a two-turn insertion sequence will be in Joutth turn ltut secondposition. What we wanr to claim, therefore,is that the structure in (g9) actually r! And compare the diffcrenr
348
transcriprion
of rhe same dara in (J9).
197,
(e8)
Tetasahi, t976: j6 D: .hh Oh guess what. R: What. D: Professor Deelies came in, 'n he_ put anothet book on 'is order. Tercsahi, t976: 5j D: I forgot to tell you the two best things that happen' to me today. R: Oh super:what were they. D: I got a B* on my math test ,.. aod I got an athletic award. Tercsahi, t976: 5j D: Hey you'll never guess what your dad is lookih-is lookin' at. R: What're you looking at. D: A radar range.
l,et us now attempt to characterizesuch sequences.One way of thinking about them (and perhaps pr€-sequencesin general) is that 349
Cont elsationa| structure
6.4 Pte-sequences
they are made up of two superimposed adjacencypairs: a pre-parr (e.g- A: Haoe you heatd the news?,8: No) and a secondpair (e.g. B: Tell me, A: John won the lottely\ - superimposed in rhat thc second ofthe first pair and the first of the seco-ndpair occur in the same rurn or position - namely position z. Hence we often find in the turn occupying position z dual components of the kind in the sccondtur n in (97), where Oh supet looks backward to the prior ttrn, and uhat &ere they is a first part requiring the announcementas a second.We thus have the following structure for pre-announcements: (99)
Potit;onr: pre-sequence6rst part, genetally checking on newsworthinessof potential announcementIn position 3 position z: pre-sequencesecond, generally validating news_ worthiness, and first part of second pair, namely a request to tell Potition 3t second part to second pair
the
delivered Position4: news receipt
As required by the distinction between ,zrz and position,we should attempt to characterizethe format of each position independentlyof its sheer sequentiallocation (though the order of the positions musr of course be maintained, so seqlrentialconsiderationscan still play an important part in the recognition of specificpositions). Thus we can say of position r turns that, although they may be in any of the th reemain sentence-types (e.g. interrogativein (4 r ) above,imperative in (96), declarativein (97) and (q8)), t}ey typically have at leastone of the following elements: they rarfle the kind of announcement(e.g. @hat toul dad is loohing at in (93), the news in the examples immediately below); and/or they evaluateit e.g. asgoodnewsin (roo), and tertible zerar in ( ror ): ( r oo)
( r ot )
Tcratah;, 1976: 33 D: Hey we got good news. R: What's the good news. Tetasahi, t976 : e82. D: Didju hear the terrible news? R: No. What. D: Y'know your Grandpa Bilt's brother Dan ? R: He died. D: Yeah. t' This c)(ahpl€ is i principlcd bclow in tcrhs of . prcf.rence
3 50
cxception ro the schcmr in (99), ss explain€d for &.€'Ji's over l.//iry in thc cas€ ofbad ne*s.
Further they often date the news (e.g. the speci6cation,oday in (97)); and finally, and most importantly, such position r turns generally have some uarlaDle, a WH-word (as in What? in (96) and (98)) or an indefinite phrase ( a good thing happer€d) or a definite but non-speci6c phrase(the neas).It is of course this variable that these first turns in the sequenceoffer to instantiate in position 3. Position z turns are generally characterized by (a), optionally, a responseto position r taken as a question (e.g. No in (ror)), and (b) almost invariably a question-like component' These question components are one-word questions like What (as in (96)) or echoquestions or questions like What were they? in (97), which copy parts of position r 's material. That is, they are built like NTRIs (next turn repair initiators), which include of courseecho-questions.What they share with NTRIs is that they have the same double-directedness rhey look back to prior turn (making possible the truncated format) and they look forward to next turn (hence the question format). ln this way the format of position 2 turns is designed both as a second to position I turns and asfirst parts taking position 3 turns asseconds. Turning to position 3 turns, the announcementsthemselves,we 6nd a seriesof tight constraints on their format. For example, they sometimesretain the syntactic or case frame of their corresponding pre-announcementsin position I (Terasaki, r976): (r02)
Terasahi, t976: z6 D: Oh. You know, Yuri
did
R: hhh! I knop. D: You know ? committed She
szicide
(suBJ)
-
(SUBJ)
(VERB))
a terrible thing
((VERB))(DTRECT OBJECT))
((DIRECT OBJECT))
Alternatively, position 3 turns provide just the items that would fill the iariable slot (here in bold face fot recognitional purposes) typical in position r turns: (ro:) *
Terctahi,1976: 53 D: Y'wanna know who I got stonedwith a few w(hh)eeksago? hh! R: Who. D: Mary Carter 'n her boy(hh) frie(hhh)nd.hh.
Note here too the tie back of position 3 to position z, since position 3 providesjust the information solicited in position z (and offered in 35 r
Conoersational sttucture position r ), There are othe. variations,but the point here is that each position is indeed characterizable,independently of absolutelocation in a sequenceofturns, as having certain kinds of(alternative) format. Clearly, the design of the turn in position I is crucial: fo. it i" on the basis of this that the recipient musr decide whether or not he already knows the content of the announcement, and thus should abort the sequence. Hence the prefiguring of the syntactic frame of the announcement,as in (roz), is a very useful clue to the recipienr, as is the characterizationofthe announcementas ,news,or as a joke, or 'story', the dating of reportable events, and the evaluation of 'news' as 'good', ,terrible', etc. So we can appreciate tfrut phrase-like the two best things that happened "o_a ro ne today (i; (9;;) carefully formulated to prefigure what is coming _-.r"_"f, ,*o" rtems, good things, and things that happened "O today, lt is instructive in this regard to reconsider an analysis by Labov - Fanshel Q977) of the very & beginning of a psychiatric i.,t..ui.*, (ro+) Labon(i Fanshel,tgZZ : 363 eranscriptionconvent;ons con?)elted to CA stlle) R: I_don't(r.o) know, whether(r.5) I- I think I didthe right thing, jistalittlesituationcameup (4.5)an, I tried to uhm (3.o)-well,try to (4.o) usewhat i, *ti.t I,.," t."rn.J i"* seeif it worked (o.3) T: Mhm R: Now, I don't know if I did the right thing. Sunday(r.o) um_ my mother went ro my sister,salain if.*r, continues)) In seventeenpages of painstaking analysis in DA style, Labov & Fanshel (r977: rr3ff) analyse the patrent,s (R,s) first turn here as containing various speech acts including questions, assertions;nd challenges.To achieve an understanding in such depth they look forward in the interaction to see what jii"ii,rr" tie right th;ng situation tefer to: they th€n pack back ^na ,,..;";J;;,, into the glossor turn rhese detaits gleaned from later on. Despite the :: :1. ".:: oovrous dlscrepancy between the information thus available to participants(who cannot look ahead in a transcript) and ,h: authors feel this procedure is justin'ed """fr"," i*n. "1")l b; ;;;;;;:;", relative lack of the knowledge available to participants other(ibid.: r2o). They further argue "U""i "".n that the various features here including the glottalizationsand hesitancy, _""i"ti;;;;:;;r"; ""d
6.4 Pre-sequences to aspects of reference" in rhing and tituation, can be attributed ,' i ntervi rw st yle" ( ibid. : t 29) . Now contrast an analysis in CA style' R's first turn is a prcannouncement,formulated to prefigure (a) the telling of something she did (/ thinh I did the ieht thirrg), and (b) the describing of the situation that led to the ^ction (iistalittle siluation came,rp)' We are therefore warned to expect a story with two such components; moreover the point ofthe story and its relevanc€ to the here and now is also prefigured (use zohat I'oe learned here, seeif it vtorhed)' The afleged vaguenessof ,he ight thine and,ihtalittle situation is in fact the provision of just those variables typical of position I turns in pre-announcementsequences.That a pre_sequenceanalysisseems correct is reinforced by the fact that the recipient' the therapist, does indeed wait for each prefigured segment of the story, receiving the frrst with Oh (a typical news receipt item - see Heritage, in press), and the second *ith an agreement ( Yer I think you did (the ight thiag) too),abstainingfrom any other substantialturns throughout the story. The point to be made here is that the original DA-style analysis, proceeding in an act-by-act fashion, is not attuned to the larger sequential structures that organize conversation; nor are such structureseasilyrecognizablewithout a lot of comparativematerial.'s The recognition of pre-announcementscan be problematic not only for analysts,but for participants too' Consider, for example, (to5r: (r os) Tr Tz 't'3 T+ + 'f6
+
Terasaki,1976: 45 I know where you're going. Kid: Mom: Whete. 'I'o: that (meeting...) Kid: Mom: Right. Yah! Do you know who's going to that meeting? Ki d : Mom: Kid:
Wh o . I don't knort ! Ou::h prob'ly: Mr Murphy an' Dad said prob'ly Mrs Timpte an'some o'the teschers.
Here in T4 we have a turn in question format: Kid takes it to be a I ' l nc i dentaur,C A c l nal s oprov i deri l s l ans l y s es ofothetfeatur€s ofthi s fi rs t turn fo. example, the hcsitation and glotial stops artribur€d in the or;sinal analysis ro "stt'le ' !.r ako the typical harkinss of self-initiated self-tepair, *h ich is charact€risric of rhe p.oduct ion of first topics (seeSchesloff, r 979b), and i s al s o us ed to reques tl i s tene.attc nti on ((;oodw ;n, t98,: C hapter 2).
C onv erc.tti oxaI str uct ut e pre-announcement, and for good reasons_ the sequential locus ls such that given his own usc of a guessin Tr, he may expect another ' riddle ' in rerurn, So in T5 Kid solicitsthe prefigurej anno.,n".-.n,, with lvho. But it turns out that Mom intended T4 as question, a not a pre-announcement,as her responsein T6 makes clear. Notice that Kid can then in fact produce an answerin T7, indicating that the ,r/ro in T5 was only intended as . Go ahead and tell ,, not . i don,t know, An ambiguity of this sort, which is shown here to be an ambigurty for participants like rhat in (49) above, is a good Jrf,"'t ina of phenomenon that analysts usrng intuitions "*urnpt" as data have failed to notice. Instead, such theorists might be concerned uUorr, ambiguity, namely that betweenthe ,direct , "no,fr", speechact in,;o;;;;;,". of Do 1ou hnow p? (for which yes or No *ould U" I l"-Jf*" adequateresponse)and the .indirect, speech ""o act ir,,.rp..,i ion ," u requestto tell, which is not an issuefor participants here (Schegloff, in prep. b). motivates the use of pre-s like these pre_announcements .-,Whar i r nere seem to be a number of motivations, sometimes working concurrently. We have already sketched, for pre-story turns like tnar tn \42), a motivation based on the turn_taking system: if a speaker wishesto suspend temporarily the rerevance of possibretransition at each TRP, he may make a bid for ratification .f This motivation, Sackshas pointed out, "" "l<,""i"j',",". explains the f".Or"rr-"ll pre-announcementsby those with restricted "f rights to speak_ herrce children's use of formulae like Want *""* ,r^"ni"[,-oiaiy-l' However, perhaps the most piomrnent ^ motivation for Dreannouncementsis a keen concern with not telling people things that they already know. The concern ramifies tt ro,rgn tt i" conversational organizations, motivating ""J;;;.. g".!..1 t..ra".r.y'to " "oversuppose and undertell" (Sacks & S"t,.gioff, ,979), ;;;i *. havealteadymet in the domain oftelephone identifications(Scheglofi, r979a: 5o). Grice's maxim of euantiry, and its basis i" .",To"" co-operative efficiency, seemsscant motive for the st.ong ir,ra.u"iiorruf aversionto self-repetition. In any case,the extraordinary f""t i" ii", everyone rs expected to keep an account book, as it were, of every matter.talked about with evety other co_participant. If ;;;;;,y does arise, or if there is reason to s
t"l"T,i"It#T:i::? mayhavearready imparted.n" .l",ii"i,ili
the pre-announcement, which offers to tell contingently ,.rPor,,t"
6.4 Pre-sequetces position 'news' not already being known. Thus solicitationsto tell in 2 will tend to commit the recipient to claiming that he has not previously heard the news (a commitment escapable - but not without loss of grace- by an Oh that, or the like, in position 4) A puzzle that then arises is how, from the sometimes fairly non-specific judg€ whether what turns in position I, participants can effectively do: confidently as they is prefigured is already known, (ro6)
Tetasahi,1976: z6 D: ... HeY we got good news' Rr I know.
Here, besidesthe format ofthe pre-announcementitself, participants rely on features like sequential context (stories, for example' are often topic-tied to prior turns, providing a resourcefor guessingwhat story may now be told-see Jefferson, 1978) and the dating of news provided by the occasionof last meeting (whatever was 'news' then, should have been deliveredthen, so 'news' now must be 'news' since then - see Sacks, I975). We thus see in pre-announcements a concern, reflected in a sequentialorganizatioo,with the distinction between given and new information that we have discussedelsewhereunder the rubrics of presuppositionand the maxim of Quantity' The concern runs deep in the usageof pre-announcements:the structure of position r turns is often so designed that it provides a frame that is given information, and a variable whose instantiation is thought to be new (as in (q8), where the frame is You'll neverguesswhatyout dad is loohing at, given by the situation, and what is delivered in position 3 is just what is new: A tadar range). Furthet, in cases where a pre-announcement is delivered to a set of recipients in potentially different states of knowledge, one finds position r turns like SotneoJ you may rtot haoe heard the tewsi and if one of these recipients is 'in the know' he may produce a 'collaborative' T2 like Yeah,ell'erfl aboutdt,thus carefully excluding himself from those ' in the dark' (Terasaki, t9?6: 2on But there a.e other motivations for pre-announcementsbesides these.One important one involvespreferenceorganization,which we have noted can rank order not only alternative turns but also the choicebetweenalternativeentire sequences.Offer sequencescan thus be preferred to request sequences (see example (8o) and discussion above); and implicit recognition in greetings preferred to overt
354 J5t
Conaersalional strvctule sclf-identification sequencesin the openings of telephone calls. So also there seemsto be, in the caseof the delivery of ,bad news', a preferencefor B guessingover A telling. Just as a pre-request can, in projecting an upcoming request, secure an offer, so a preannouncementcan obtain, and be specificallydesignedto obtain, 1 guess: (ro ? )
Terasahi, r976: zg D: I-l-l had something rarrible r'tell you. So // uh R: FIow terrible i it. D: Uh, th- as worse it could 6e.
R: D: R: D:
(o.8) W- y ' me a nEdna? Uh yah. W h a d s h ed o , di el Mm:h m,
Note here the delay after the third turn, that seems specificallyto invite a guess.And note that in ( I o r ) above,the first pre-announcement is followed by a second,until recipient guesses.So another motivation for pre-announcementsis that by preFguring a dispreferred action, the telling of bad news, they can prompt a guessby the other parry that obviates the need to do the dispreferred action at all. In this discussionof pre-announcementswe have shown that (a) a speci6ckind of sequencecan be properly characterizedas an ordered sequenceof not necessarilycontiguous turns of distinctive type, (b) on inception, it is recognizableto participants by virtue of character_ istic position r turns, and (c) the usageof such sequencesis strongly motivated by various principles of languageusage. 6.+.1
Pre-requests: a re-anolysis oJ indirect speech acts We now have all the ingredientsfor a powerful re-analysis of the problem of indilect speechacts.16Strictly sfeaking, p".hup", *" should say that on the CA view the alleged p.oUt"- "an"" noi anse; and in any casethe terms of the two ",r"" kinds of analysesare so starkly different that what is a problem for the philosophico-li.,gui"t," approachesis not for the CA approach, and perhaps .,i"" r".i". j'
356
A number of aurhors shoutd bt ctedired hcre: Scheatoff, in unpubtished so r k; Go fr m a n , r 9 7 6 ; Merri tr. r9?6; C oul i hard, ry77. j t.,H *i nee\ ry77. The areum€nr atso benefi.s from unpubtish€d work by paur Dre* lnd J;;n
6,4 Pre'sequences The problem, recollect,from the point of view of speechact theory' is that indirect speechacts do not have the ' literal force' (allegedly) associatedby rule with their sentence-types,but rather some other force which a theory of indirect speechacts is concerned to explain. Thus the question is how, for example, sentences like Is thete any , ore?, or Can you reach th.tt booh? or Will you comeherc please?can treeffectivelyemployed to perform requests.Let us restrict ourselves to requestsas tbe variety of indirect speechact which has received the most attentton. A CA analysismight go roughly as follows Pre-requestsequences' we noted, properly have a four-position sttucture, providing the following kind of analysis: ( ro8)
Merritt, r976: 32J Position r: A: Hi. Do you have uh size C flashlighr batteries? ((PRE.REQUES'I)) ((CO AHEAD)) Position z: B: Yes sir ((REQUES'I)) Position 3: A: I'll have four please (RESPONSE)) Position 4: B: ((turns to get))
Now, as we have argued, it is possibleto distinguish sheersequcntial locationin a sequenceofturns, from position or location in a sequence of responses.So we need an independent characterizationof, for example, position I turns in pre-request sequences,thus giving an accountof how they can be recognizedprior to position 3 turns being performed. One characteristic,we noted, for a wide range of presequences,is that position r turns chcck that conditions for successful position 3 turns obtain. Why should this be so ? In the caseof requestsit seemsclear that one prime motivation for employing pre-requestsis provided by the preferenceranking which organizes responsesto requests themselves, Request refusals are dispreferred:therefore,by the accompanyingrule for production, to be avoided if possible.One major reasonfor utilizing a pre-request is, then, that it allows the producer to check out whether a request is likely to succeed,and if not to avoid one in order to avoid its subsequentdispreferred response,namely a rejcction. Given which, in casesof doubt, pre-requestsare to be preferred to requests. One kind of evidence for this is that not just any precondition on a request is generally usable in a pre-request: rather just those that are, in the particular circumstances,the usual grounds for tefusalof that request (I-abov & Fanshel, t977: 86ff). lt is no accident, for
6.4 Pre'sequences
Conaersational slructure example, that questionsabout recipient's abilities figure so largely rn both indirect speechacts of rcquesting and pre-requests- they are also the favoured basis fot request refusals in conversation: ( r09)
(r r o,
ro l (Context: A hasasheda third party B lot change,C stondingby nout joins in :l C: How much do you want? A: Well a fiver, can you do 6ve ? C: Oh sorry, I'd be able to do a couple of quid I 7o A: Hullo I was wondering whether you were intending to go to Popper's talk this afternoon Not today I'm afraid I can't really make it to this one Ah okay You wanted me to record it didn't you heh ! Yeah heheh Heheh no ['m sorry about that, ...
Note that in (rro) B treats A's first uttetance as a transparent pre-request,hencetheapologiestypical of dispreferredsand the guess at the requestthat would havebeen relevanthad B beenableto attend. While in conversationinability seemsto b€ the preferred grounds for request refusals(in preferenceto, say, unwillingness), in service encounters (in shops, of6ces, bars, etc,) it seems that requests for goods are usually rejected by explaining that the desired goods are not in stock (see Ervin-Tripp, r976; Sinclair, 1976). Hence the symmetry across the pre-request fotmat and the refusal format below is not accidental: ( r r r) -
Me rri tt, tg 7 6 : 3 2 5 C: Do you haveMarlboros? S: Uh, no. Iffe ran out C: Okay. Thanks anyway S: Sorry
What is checked in the pre-request is what is most likely to be the grounds for refusal;and if those grounds are present,then the request sequenceis aborted. We now have at leasta partial characterizationof position I turns in pre-requests:they check(and are thereforegenerallyquestions)the most likely grounds for rejection. We also have a motivalion fot thl,. particular format - namely avoiding an action (the request) that would obtain a dispreferred second (a rejection), and hence the 3s8
position t checking of the most likely grounds for refusal in turns. But thete is a further motivation for using pre-requests, namely the possibility of avoiding requests altogether. As we noted, preference organization operates not only ov€r alternative seconds but also over alternative sequences, so that offer sequences seem to be preferied to r€quest sequences (Scheglofr, rgTgat 49r.27By producing a prerequestin turn I, one participant can make it possiblefor another to provide an offer in turn (or position) 2, an ofTer of whatev€r it was that the pre-request prefigured, as below: M elr it t , t 976: 321 C: Do You have PecanDanish todaY? S; Yes we do Would you like one of those?
(r 12) -
C: Yes Please S: Okay ((turns to get)) (as ia (8o)) C: Hullo I was just ringing r.rPto ask if you were going to Bertrand's PartY
(r r:)
R: C: R: C: R:
-
Yes I thought You might be Heh heh Yes would You like a lift? C)hI'd love one Right okay um l'll pick you up ftom th€re '
'I'here is a further possibility, beyond the preferencefor offers over overt requests.For it may be that, after a pre-request,it is preferred that neither a request nor an offer takes place at all' There are some parallels for such avoidance of overt actions altogethet' In telephone recognitions,as we noted, there seemsto be a preferencenot only for the useof minimal resourcesfor mutual recognition,but for the work of recognition to be actually submergedand hidden altogetherin the exchangeof minimal greetings- i.e. a preferencefor recognition to appearto be no issueat all. There is another,rath€r different, parallel: in repairwe noted thatthere is a preferencefor self-initiatedself-repalr over other-initiated repair either by self or other. But if self fails to initiate repair, and other is to initiate, then there is a way of doing this that avoids the use of an NTRI and the consequentthree-turn t'
In .ddition to th. orher csscs in 6 3 2, we h.v€ clso se€' thrt, ehen tellins p.cfcr€nc. for the rcqucncc (r) Tr: Ptcbad news, th.!c se€ms to bc. T2: su€ss, ov.r the equence (b) Tt: Pr.-lnnounccment' .nnounccment, T: :
g o -a h c a d , T3 : a n n o u n c € m€ n t .
359
C ono er sa ti ona I st r uet u r e reparr sequence: other can do such repair when his turn naturally comes up, simply by substituting (for example) a ,correct' term for the offending one, as in the following (the relevant terms are in bold face): (t r4)
+ -3
Jefetson, MS, A: ... had to put new gasketson the oil pan to strop-stop the leak , an' t hen I p u t _ a n t h e n R: That was a gas leak. A: lt was an oil leak buddv. B: 'T's a gas icak. A: It's an oil leak. ((dispute continues for many turns))
Jefferson (MS.) calls correction of the sort in (r r4) embedded,2s and the sort ir| ( r r s) exposed, and there is reason ro think that embedded correction is preferred to exposed, in part perhaps because issues of competence are not overtly raised. So the avoidance of a sequence altogether in favour of a covert solution can sometimes be preferred in repair work also. Returning to requests, what we may now suggest is that there may also be a preference for the avoidance of requ'e-sts ir, ff you can see that someone wanis something, urrd "fag",i... p."l."qu""t n1uy be an cffective clue to that, then it may " be most p."fe.r"d O.o"ia" it wirhout more ado, next most preferred to ofier,.nd - third in preference to simply solicit the request. If this is correct, then aft€r a pre-request, we have the following preference ranking operating !. A mbl€adinsterminotosy for tinauists_ bc.rer woltd be colt.rtor imbti.it. 360
over three kinds of sequences (ignoring preconditions are not met): (r16)
Jefferson, MS. (Itardware stole: custome/ ttl,ing to natth a p;pe_rtuing. C = tuttomer, S : saletman) C: Mm, the whales are wider apart than that. S: Okay, let me see if I can find one wirh wider rhreads. ((looks through stock)) S: How' s t his . C: Nope, the threads are even wider than that.
Here S, the expert, simply substitutes threads for whales, and C subsequently adopts the suggested usage. So here ,correction, rs being effectively achieved without ever becoming the sort of intcr_ actional issue that it can become if done through the normal three-position sequence of other-initiated self_reoair : ( I I5)
6.4 Pte-sequences those that are aborted when
most preferred: Position t: (pte-requ€st) Position 4: (response to non_overt request., (ii) ncxt prefer.ed: Position I: (pre-request) Position z': (offer) Position 3': (accePtanceof ofier) (iii) least preferred: Position r : (pre-request) Position z: (go ahead) Position 3: (request) Position 4: (comPliance)
(i)
Some examples of sequences of type (i) follow: (rrl)
(r r8)
Sinclah, tg76:6o S: Have you got Embassy Cold please? ((POSITION ((POSITION H: Yes dear ((provides)) M .n i tt, 1 9 7 6 : 3 2 5 ((POSITION t)) C: Do you have Marlboros? (INSERTION S: Yeah. Hard or sofi ? SEQUENCIT) please C: Soft ((POSITION +)) S: Okay
t)) l))
that the initial turns hete are just indirect that they are in the format of pre-requests, and but note requests for example, (ro8) and (r r?) is simply that between, the difference position z and position 3 turns are missing in the latter. Since (r r7) might very well have run off similarly to (to8), it would be a post-hoc distinction to say of the first turn in ( t08) that it is a pre-request while It
may
be objected
that it is an indirect request. to say of the first turn in (tt7) (i) in (r I6) is absolutely pattern Sometimes, though, the sequential (see (rzo) below): also clear (r rg)
t 78 (Context : R and Sheila hat;e delivend a joint lectue cowte, btt Jailed to prooide C, conpiler of the rclcoant exomination, uirh guestioasfor it\ ((immediately after greetings)) C: Um (r.5) you and Sheila have been doing some lectures for first year Microbiol//ogy R: Right and oh my God it's the third of March or whatever_ yes - fourth of March ( r .o ) er we'll get them to yor.r(r,o) toda:y ... J6 I
6.4 Pre'sequences
Conaeltqtional structut e We want to say that C's turn here is treated as a pre-request or position r turn, which receivesin responsea position 4 turn, i.e. x response (compliance) as if the request had itself been delivered. Now the great majority of sequencesof this truncated type have pre-requests that are distinctive - namely, they appear to be buih n obtain a position 4 in secondtsrz, Consider. for examole: (t2 o )
U S : z ,t. M : What're you doing wi ' that big bow_puhtank. Nothing. (o.s) V: ((cough))uh-h-h (r.o) I'm not into sellingit or giving rt. That's itM: Okay
Here a pre-request in the form of a question has tagged on to it a presumption of its answer (Nothing), But in supplying the answer to the question that checks the precondition on the request, M invites a position 4 responsedirectly and gets it (but it is the dispreferred second, a refusal). Note that M's OAal in accepting the refusal acquiescesin the request interpretation. Recollect a parallel in the caseof pre-announcements,where position r turns are often carefully formulated (a) to provide enough information about the upcoming announcement for recipients to judge whether they have already heard it, (b) sometimesso formulated as to extract guessesin position z of what would otherwise appear in position 3. Similarly, then, pre-requests can be built specifcally to invite position 4 .esponses. One technique for this formulation is to provide in the pre-request all the information that would be required for recipient to comply with the request.Thus there is a systematicdifferencein the way the following two sequences run off, given the difference between therr first turns: ( tz I)
(rzz)
302
Si n c l o i t,tg 7 6 : 6 8 S: Can I havetwo pintsofAbbot anda grapefruitand whisky? ((POSITION r )) H: Sure ((turns to get)) ((POSITION 4)) ((later))There you are... Siaclait,t976: 54 S: Do you haveany gluel ((pOSITION r)) Ht Yes. What kind do you want dear?I've got um, I got a jar or-
((another POSITION I)) S: Do you have some tubes? you tctually That's aren't H: The tubes? Ah you're lucky, 2)) ((PoSIl'IoN twenty five ((PoSlTloN r)) S: Oh I'll take that
position r is built to take In the first example the full specificationin in the second the lack of whereas turn, u po"ition 4 tur; in second goods does not make such of quantity and lp'""ifi"ution for kind and properties of other many are there l'"""orrd turn possible. Now responses'.For position get to designed 4 fosition r t,rrns that ate pessimism i*ample, the." u." the range of markers ofinteractionel I turns like position in (Brown & Levinson, r97g:32o\ which occur the following: (r23)
I1 5 8 C: You don't have his number I don't suppose
(rz4',
r 5r Cl t wonderwhetherI could possiblyhavea copyof lastyear's tax return In cataloguingsuch featuresof position r turns that obtain position in the businessof noting 4 responseswe would soon find oulselves that same troubleincluding requests' indirect atl the featuresof in theories of difficulties such please that causes some pre-verbal inrJirectspeechacts. We can now say that so-called indirect speechacts are posltlon t turns - pre-requests- formulated so asto expectposition 4 responses in second turn. Questions about whether they have 'literal' or ' indirect' (or both) forces or meanings simply do not, on this view, arise.Such position I turns mean whatever they mean; that they can is be formulated so as to project certain conversational trajectories something properly explored in the sequentialanalysisof successive turns. Let us just review the ingredientsof such an analysis;(i) we make a distinclion between posiriot and tu/n, which will allow us to claim that indirect speech acts are position I turns that g€t position 4 responsesin second turn; (ii) we note that preferenceorganization' in seeking to avoid request refusals, motivates the standard fourposition pre-tequestsequence;(iii) we show that there's a motivation provided for the precise content ofposition r turns in such sequencesnamely, in order to avoid request rejections, the material used to checkwhether a requestis likely to succeedis drawn from the grounds 363
C om.)ersationaI stl uctur e that would usually be used ro reject the request (i.e. position r material is drawn from the dispreferred position 4 material), and thereforequestionsof ability and the existenceofgoods routinely crop up in pre-requests; (iv) we can find in preference organization a systematicpreferencefor the avoidanceof somesequencesaltogether, and this provides a motivation for the collapseof the four-position scquence into the two-position sequence consisting of a position r turn follo*'ed by a position 4 turn; (v), given (iv), and the generar tendency for pre-s to be so formulated as to prefigure what is to come up next, we can expect position I turns to be expressly formulated to get position 4 turns in second turn - and hence for pre-requests of this sort to contain special markers (including would, could, not, please, etc-\. Careful comparisonof this conversationallybasedaccount with the standard accounts of indirect speech acts will show that it renders many ofthe most problematic aspectsof the indirect speechactsissue quite illusory. In actual fact the issue is not of great interest ro conversationanalysis,and we have covered it in detail only because it illustrates just one of a number of different ways in which CA insights can unravel linguistic problems. 6.5
Conclusions Coutersation analysis and linguistics In this Chapter we have argued that conversationanalysis has made important contributions to the understandingof utterance meaning, by showing how a large proportion of the situated sisnificance of utterancescan be traced to their surrounding ""qu.r,-ti"t envlronments. Just as the problems of indirect speech acts can be re-analysedin CA terms, so many of the other central concepts rn pragmatic theory may be amenableto CA (or other discourse_analytic) treatments. Grice's maxims are, of course, prime targets in this regard, but so are problems with presupposition (see Sacks, 196g, May z9; Prince, r978a, r978b), and even problems with the analysis of deixis (Watson, r975; Sacks, r976; Goodwin, r97Z). Less clearly, perhaps, CA has much to contribute too to the study oflinguistic form: to prosodics,phonology,syntaxand the descriptiorr of the lexicon, It is worth spelling out here some of the observabre relationsbetweenconversationaland Iinguistic structure. Let us take some of the conversationalorganizationswe have reviewed and ask 6.5.r
364
6.5 Conclusions how each may be a functional source of, or explanation for, certain linguistic structures and expressions. The turn-taking system, for example, directly motivates the prosodicand syntacticsignallingof turn completion and incompletion. The signalling of incompletion then provides a motivation for syntactic subordination, and predicts a preference for left-branching structures, or traces to the left of right-branching structures that may be forthcoming. Thus the English relative cl auaein I am read;ng the booh which I gaoe you is more vulnerable to overlap than the equivalent clause in the comparable Dravidian or Japanesesentence' glossable as 'The I to-you given book I am reading'; but the vtrlnerability is reduced by the location of the WH-word at the head of the clause.On the other hand, the possibility that after completion the speaker may be able to continue, so that a turn may extend over more than one turn-constructional unit, makes it desirable that syntacticstructuresallow open-endedconjunction or addition to the right. In addition to such very general functional pressures, the turn-taking system provides more specific demands on linguistic structure: for example, the provision in the rules for the selection of next speaker directly motivates tag-formation. There are also many particles in languages that seem to have a function only explicable in relation to the turn-taking system, whether they are floor-holders (like zlr in English), floor-returners (like irz in English), or turnenders (like tag-particles in many Ianguages). The repair system also motivates many aspects of linguistic or utterance structure (Schegloff, I9?9b). Apart from the markers of self-repair (glottal stops, I mean, etc., and simple understanding ot hearing checks (Patdon?, etc.r, there are special syntactic features of NTRIs or echo-questions (cf. toir rrent to the uhat?\- There are also some interesting interactions between segmental phonology and repair (Jefferson,t 974). Adjacencypair organizationlikewisemotivatesaspectsof linguistic structure, Indeed a general explanation for the cross-linguistic prevalenceof the three basic sentence-types (declatative, interrogative and imperative)may Iie in the basicdistinction between,respectively, utierances that are not first-pair parts, utterances that are first paits to other utterances, and utterances that are first parts to actions. Adjacency pair organization also motivates other ways of typing first Jrartsof pairs as requiring specific kinds of second patt (e-9. Yesf No
36s
Corn)ersationaIstructure vs. WH-questions; or the conventionalsetsof summons formats like Hey ! , Excuseme, etc.).While preferenceorganization,working acro55 adjacencypairs,motivatestheconventionalannouncersofdispreferreq responses like llell and Actuall;. Sequencesof various sorts also have linguistic implications. As we noted for pre-sequences,it is possible to make a distinction betwecn posilion and turn precisely because positions in a sequence are lingr.risticallymarked: thus pre-requestshave thosesyntacticfeatures (pre-verbal please,the polite past as in I was wondering ..., the Could 1oa ... forms, etc,) previously associatedwith indirect illocutionary force.We havealsonoted the ways in which given vs. new information is packagedin the structure of pre-announcementsequences. Topical organization is also an area that has direct lingurstic implications,although it should not be thought that there is any direct connection between what has been talked of in linguistics under the rubric of topic or therne and the notion of discourse topic (see Keenan & Schiefrelin, r976). What is clear, however, is thar certarn syntacticallymark€d constructions like left-dislocations(as in Jo&a, I lihe him) are used in attempts to control the flow of topic in the conversational sense (see e.g. Ochs & Duranti, 1979). Further, phraseslike By r&eraay,and interjectionslike fJey, mark introductions of new topics, while utterance-in itial Anyway may mark return to prior topic (cf. Owen, r98z). Much work needs to be done here to clarify linguistic conceptsof topic and their relation to discourseor conversationaltopic; given such clarification,it is possiblethat many syntactic constructions can be shown to be directly motivated by requirements of topical organization in conversation. Finally, aspectsof overall conversationalorganizationalso interacr with linguistic structure, most noticeably in the linguistic formulae typical ofopenings and closings(lrvine, rg74; Ferguson, r976), bu( also in the use of particles llke Lltell aod Ohay in pre_closings, and the like. In the presentstateof our knowledge, remarksof this sort can only be suggestive of the many, largely unexplored, ways in which convelsational organization interacts with sentence and utterancc structure.
366
6.5 Cotclusions Some remainingquestions It is perhapsno accidentthat the analysesproduced by CA so far have a striking (if superficial) resemblanceto the structuralist theoriesoflinguistics that predominatedbefore the I96os. Both kinds of approach are concernedwith corpora of recorded materials; both have as a central methodological tool the use of a 'slot and 6ller' heuristic - i.e. the investigation of how sequential (or sy'rtagmatie) considerationsrestrict the classof items that may expectablyfollow, and of how items in that classcontrast with one another (or stand in poradigmatic relations). The parallel is clearest perhaps in CA discussionsof formulation, where the central issue is why one particulardescriptionis chosenfrom a setof paradigmaticalternatives (see Scheglofi, t972b; also Sacks, rgTz on mernbership categorizations). Just asstructuralistanalysesof linguistic structure have been shown to be theoreticallyinadequateas models of human competence,so in the long run CA analysesmay perhaps be found de6cientas rather simple reconstructionsof the no doubt immensely involved in conductingconversations. complicatedcognitiveprocesses But meanwhile,at least,no other kind ofinvestigationofconversational organizationhas yielded such a rich harvest of insights. A possiblepuzzle that is raisedhere is whether, despitethe remarks in section 6.r above, CA is not after all a'syntactic' model of conversation.For, it is largelyconcernedwith constraintsonsequential possibilities.However the differencesare in fact substantial. First, some of the rules formulated in CA, e.g. the turn-taking rules describedin section6.2.r . r, are as much regulaaive asconstitulive, to employ the distinction used by Searle( r 969) to distinguish speech act rules (themselvesconstitutive of eachkind of speechact) from, for example, traffic rules (merely regulative of independently existing traffic flow). Secondly,the CA rules describeunmarked expectations or conversations; ratherthan the setofpossiblewell-formed sequences in this way such rules are much more like Grice's maxims than Iike linguistic rules, Consider, for example,the rule that given a first part of an adjacencypair, a second part should follow; as the notion of conditional relevance(which we introduced in 6.2.t) makes clear, failure to provide a second is itself a communicational resourcethat can be used to contribute effectivelyto conversation.So the adoption of the 'slot and filler' heuristic should not be construed as carrying with it the specialsenseof rule that is found in linguistics. 6.5.2
367
Conversationalstructure Another puzzle that arises is whether the unreflective use of categories like request, inoitation, gteeting and the like, does n61 embody an implicit theory of speech acts. Might it be that, while speech act theory has been attemptrng to provide an internal characterizationofthe function ofturns, CA hasbeenconcerned with inter-turn relationships,so that some simple synthesis possiblei is Workers in CA would reject such suggestions.First, they would potnl out that the terms /eqae.st,invitation, gteeting, and so on, ur" not th" inventions of speechact theory, but rather part of a rich (if largely urexplored) natural languagemetalanguage(seee.g. Allwood, r97o; Verschueren, rg8o). It does not follow from the existence of such terms either that the.e is a close connection between ,folk, mera_ languageand the categoriesactually utilized in speechproduction, ()r that such categoriesare properly explicated by prouidirrg of necessary ""t" and suflicientconditionsforspeechactcategorymembership (c o n tra s t:S e a rl e ,r9 6 9 ; L e v i nson, rg79a).Inanycase, i fpressed,C A workers would claim that intuitive useofcategories like zegr"r,should in fact be backedup by at least(i) a full sequentialexplication in terms of the range of expectable responses (like refusals, deferrals, compliances, etc.), (ii) an account of the way that requests are typically formulated in order to obtain rhe desired .""po.rs"" 1"". section6.4.3 above).Secondly,it is incorrect to vi"* CA a" p.imuiity concernedwith inter-turn relationships: the discussion of .xamples like (59) or (roz) above, as well as the re-analysis of indirect spe'ech acts, should make clear that CA is specifically interested in the relationshipbetweenintra-turn structure and inter_turn organization or sequence.It is not clear, therefore,that CA hasto yield any quarter at all to speechact theory (seeTurner, r974b). This raisesa final and central issue.To what extent are aspectsof conversationalorganization universal? Or, to what extent are the featuresof that organization reviewed h€re restricted to English (or even a sub-variety thereo| ? The issue is central for a number of reasons;if basicaspectsof conversationalorganization are universal then: (a) linguists may be able to explain significant linguistrc universals by pointing to universal functional p.""".lr"" exert-edby basicpatternsof languageuse; (b) generalpattern" of child lungJug. acquisition may be explained by referenceto a single bu"i. l";;i;g srtuation, which is conversational; (c) pedagogicai programmes rn second languageacquisition can take certain busi" p.uglatic pu.u_ 168
6.5 Conclusions to the kind of social meters for granted; (d) there are distinct limits explored in the been has that of language use variation in the would throw light such universals Further' ethnographyof speaking. a speciesare as perhaps humans nature on a basic facet of human are by as they activity conversational as much characterized by tool-making' and difiering cultures, complex social systems At the presentwe simply do not know to what extent conversational organizationis universal - very little comparativework hasbeen done (but on this level for languagesother than the familiar European ones features of the seee.g. Moerman, 1977).But it seemssafeto say that, reviewed in this Chapter, those that have been described as /ocal tronagement ststems- e.g. turn-taking, adjacency pait organization' repair systems- have a universalbasis,even if the descriptionsin thls Chapter are culturally skewed in certain ways. Overall structural units - like the notion of a conversation- are much more likely to be culturally variable; indecd this is a significant theme in the ethnography of speaking(seee g. Bauman & Sherzer, r974) lntermediate organizations, like preference olSanization and pre-sequences, probably lie somewherein between: such things probably exist in all cultures, although the kinds of actions they organize may be quite different (e.g. there is a differenceeven between American English and British English in the preferred responseto a compliment) But these are speculations. Disentangling cultural particulars from universal tendenciescan be a difficult job, and given the importance of the issue, this is likely to be a preoccupation of comparative pragmaticsand sociolinguisticsin the years to come.
Appendix: transcription conventions The conventionsused in this Chapter in all examplesfrom cited sources(except those from Merritt, I976' Sinclair, r976 ^nd l,abov & Fanshel, r977) are mostly those employed in Schenkein' rg78: xi-xvi and developed by Jellerson and others. The most important are:
*
point at which the current utteranceis overlapp€dby that transcribcdbelow asterisksindicatethe alignmentof the points where overlap
(o.o)
c eas es paus es or gaps i n w hat i s v ery approx i matel y
//
tenths of s ec onds
369
C onoer sa tiona I str uc rut e
(.) , CAPS italics :: = : t . , ( )) ( ) + hh
(closer measurements often being irrelevant because the signiicance of pauses is linked to ,tfr. i""t, of any particul.r conversation _ see Goodwin, "l-. ""rr""rggr: "f r ta) -"frorl'p"u"", micropause - porentially signihcenr Uu, ,.rv comparable perhaps to an average syllable duration or somewhere below o.z seconds, duraiion telatively high amplitude, or, in JouSi" analytical i"."rrtt labels ""es, syllables stressed by amplirude, pitch and duration lengthened syllables glottal-stop self-editing market 'latched ' utterances, with no gap not a punctuation ,nark, but a rising intonation contour used to indicate falling intonatioD c;ntour used to indicate maintained (,continuing,) intonation contour "" used to specify ,,some phenomeno, ,h"; il;;;;;;";;;; oo€s not want to wrestle with.,, or some non_vocal action, etc. uncertain passages of transcnpt clraws attention to location of phenomenon ofdirect interest ro olScusston indicates an audible out-breath, .hh an in_breath
7 Conclusions
place of tn the history of human inquiry, philosophy has the it tha c"rrtr"l sun, scminal and tumultuous: from time to timc t sclence' as I station take to throws ofi some portion of itself a towards steadily progressinS regulated' well and planet, cool distant final state .'. ts it not possiblethat the next century may see the birth, through the joint labours of philosophers' grammarians,and numerous oth€r students of languaS€'of a oJlaaguaga?Then we shallhave ir,re and .o-pr.h.r, sive science philosophy (there will still be part of one more of rid ourselves plenty left) in the only way w€ ever get rid of philosophy' by kicking it upstairs (Austin, t956: r3r-2)
Introduction In these conclusions we shall try to tie together some of the loose strands of thought that have run through this book, by considering the relation between pragmatics and other disciplines' One discipline will stand noticeablyabs€nt:philosophy, the'prodigal provider', cannot €asily re-absorb the empirical studies that it has spawned (but cf. Atlas, t 9?9). The general tenor of this book has been the description of how, from original, mostly philosophical concepts, a series of empirical modes of inv€stigation have developed, which jointly form the climate of the Anglo-American tradition in pragmatics. As the quotation indicates, Austin foresaw, and indeed hoped for, just this development of a field that he, perhaps more than any other single individual, did most to promote. In the sections below, we shall first consider the inter-relations between pragmatics and the other 'corc' components of linguistic theory, then between pragmatics and the 'hyphenated' linguistic disciplines(sociolinguisticsand psycholinguisticsin particular), and 6nally between pragmatics and less closely related fields. 7,o
370
Conclusions Pragmatics and 'core' linguistics A great deal has been said in this book about the relations betu'een pragmatics and semantics; about how pragmatics may simplify semanticanalyses(Chapter 3), allow a semantictheory to be built on homogeneouslines,and indeed on a logical base,and removq problems from the semantic field altogether. We have also argued that there must be an interaction between the two components (Chapter r ), and we havespeculatedon how this interactionmay be responsible for many of the inferenceswe have called pragmatic (Chapters 3 and 4). More specifically,we have reviewed reasonswhy not all aspects of deixis can properly be thought of as semantic (in the truthconditional sense), why presupposition in general should not be thought of as an essentiallysemantic problem, and why the performative analysis,which would havemade illocutionary force a semantic notion, ultimately collapses.Further, the theory of implicature has helped immeasurably to teaseapart the semantic and the pragmatic content of words and sentences.Finally, we have noted many ways in which pragmatics interacts with the theory and description of the lexicon; for example, we have noted the existence of pragmatic dimensions of meaning in most deictic words, the existence of pragmatic paiticles (like roel/and azyrray in English) whose meanirrg is best explicatedin terms of pragmatic concepts,and the predictive power of implicature in the concept of 'possible lexical item'. However, as was indicated in the Preface, a different textbook might have sttessedthe relation between pragmatics and linguistic form, i.e. between pragmatics and phonology (including prosodics), morphology and syntax. Here it is worth assembling a set of reminders to indicate just how deep such relations may be. Indeed, the general process of the unburdening of intractable concepts from semantictheory and their absorption or re-analysisin pragmaticshas an interestingcorollary, namely that many of the putative interactions between semantics and linguistic form that were assembled,especially during the st.uggle between generative semantics and the standard theory in the early rg?os, must now be analysed as interactions between pragmatics and linguistic form. Let us start by' bringing together some of the interactionsbetween syntax and pragmatics that we have noted in passing.rIn discussing ?.r
I For more .yst€mrtic coll€crions of such intcr.crions, sce Grccn, roZ8r; G.zd:r. ro8oa.
7.r Pragma,ics and ' core' linguistics socialdeixisand conventionalimplicature, it was noted that honorifics raise significant problems in morphology and the description of predicateagreement.tn discussingimplicature, we noted that what G. Lakoff (1974) has called syntactic amalgams seem to be governedby generalizedconversationalimplicature. There are many possibleconnections,both synchronic and diachronic, b€tween the exploitative implicatures (the figures of speech) and syntax and semantics (sec e.g. Sadock, t974 on queclaratives or rhetorical questions in English). As for presupposition, since many kinds of presupposition-triggerseemto be essentiallysyntactic(e.g. clefts) or to have syntactic consequences (e-g. factives - see Kiparsky & Kiparsky, r 97 r ), there seemto be intimate relationsbetweensyntactic and the inferenceswe call presuppositions.When discussing processes theories of speech acts we noted that (a) the fundamental syntactic facts about sentence-types(imperative, interrogative, declarative, optative,etc.) which in turn govern all sorts offurther syntacticfacts, may plausibll' be related (though exactly how is a mattet of controversv) to concepts of illocutionary force; (b) there are innumerable interactions between indirect illocutionary force and sentencestructure. Since the notion of indirect illocutionary force ma1'be re-analysed in conversation analytic lerms, as argued in Chapter 6, it follows that there are strong relations between discourse structure and sentence structure in this area too. There are many other kinds of interaction between conversational structure and syntax that wete brought up at the end of Chapter 6; for example, there are rnan]'general syntactic p.ocessesthat seem to be motivated b-vaspectsof conversationalorganizationlike turn-taking and repair. But perhaps the most interesting lie in the area subsumed by the (rather unclear) notion of topic, for many of the syntactic processes called movement rules seem to have the function of indicating how information in the clauserelatesto what hasbeen talked about before. Here a general speculation,raised in Chapter t, becomes televant: perhapsthe great bulk of the derivational machinery in the syntax of natural languages can be functionally explained by reference to the specialized conversational jobs that many sentence structures seem to be designedto perform (seepapers in Givon, r979a). Relations between pragmatics and phonology (including prosodics, and intonation in particular) have received much less attention. But we have remarked in passing how there are connections between
Conclusions social deixis and phonology (e.g. palatalization in Basque; Corum, r975), and social deixis and prosodics (e.g. Tzeltal polite/formal falsetto; Brown & Levinson, tg78t z7z), Grice (1978: rzr) has attempted to give an account of the significance of contrastive stress in terms of conversational implicature, while the relation of stress to presupposition has long been noted (Lakofr, rgTr; Chomsky, r97z; Wilson & Sperber, r979). Intonation clearly plays some role in the disambiguationof actual(often indirect) illocutionary force (Liberman & Sag, r974), and can invoke activities or frames of interpretation, thus acting as contextualization cues (Gumperz, r9?7). The role of prosodic factors in the governing of conversationalinteraction has been noted in many places: we have referred to their role in the turn-taking system,in the lengthenedsyllablesofoverlapping speech or dispreferred r€sponses,in the marked introduction of new topics, and so on. However, there have been few attempts to provide some systematicaccount of thesephenomena(but seeBrazil, Coulthard & Johns, r98o), and this is a field that needs much further attention. Pragmatics, sociolinguistics and psycholinguistics We noted in Chapter r that only the most.estrictive defrnitionsof pragmatics would draw anything like a clear boundary betweensociolinguisticsand pragmatics,for sociolinguisticsis a field that cross-cutslinguistic levelsor componentsof a grammar. Indeed pragmaticsand sociolinguisticssharemany areasof common interest, and sociolinguistshave contributed much to certain areas of pragmatics, especiallythe study of social deixis and speechacts and their use. However, pragmatics in turn has much to contribute to sociolinguistics;for in trying to understand the social significanceof patternsoflanguageusage,it is essentialto understandthe underlying structural properties and processesthat constrain verbal interaction. So, for example, Bernstein (r973: Chapter 6) has attributed sociological causesto patterns of hesitation without understanding the underlying conversational motivations for such patterns (e.g. the role of preference structure). Similarly, sociolinguists have tended to ignore the conversational motivations for the use and location of addressforms (contrast Ervin-Tripp, r97z and Brown & Levinson, t978: r87ff). Indeed conversationanalysisin generalhas a great deal to offer to sociolinguistics. For example, the view of conversation as 7.2
374
7.z Pr agrnatics,sociolinguisticsand psycholilguistics basic or paradigmatic and other forms of talk exchange as specializations (Sacks,Scheglofi & Jefferson,r978:45fl; Atkinson & Drew, r97g) may help to put the ethnography of speaking on a sounder comparative basis (cf. Hymes, r97z). Similarly, the variationist paradigm associated with Labov (I97za) would benefit greatly from the systematic application of Labov's own observation that sociolinguistic variables are in part discourse-conditioned (Labov & Fanshel, r977: r39). But the fields have so many common concerns that there is no real danger ofthe lack of cross-fertilization, especially amongst sociolinguists with an interest in language understanding (Ervin-Tripp, r9?6; Gumperz, r 9?7). Relations between pragmatics and psycholinguistics may be considered under two heads. First, there are the inter-relations between pragmatics and cognitive psychology, and especially theories of languageprocessingand production. Since both disciplines share a basicinterestin the processesof languageunderstanding,they have a mutual interest in the development of concepts like implicature, presuppositionand illocutionary force. Here, pragmatics is likely to be the provider, psycholinguistics the tester, refiner or rejector. For, in the development of pragmatic concepts, there has been little considerationof issuesof psychologicalplausibility, and pragmatic theories may have much to gain from rigorous testingby psychologists (seee.g.Clark & Lucy, r 975, on indirect requests).On the other hand, advances in discourse analysis may show that certain language production parameters- e.g. pauses,hesitationsand self-editingsthat psycholinguistshave taken to be straightforwa.d indicators of internal cognitive processes are in fact subject to manipulation for interactional purposes(seee.g. Goodwin, r98r: 6off). The other branch of psycholinguistics that has much common ground rvith pragmatics is developmental psychology concerned with languageacquisition. This is a burgeoning field and, as made clear in Chapter r, it hasdrawn much from pragmatics; it is now beginning to contribute much in return about the way in which contexts of languageacquisition play a crucial role in how what is learned when. Derelopmental pragmatics has not been covered in this book, but useful sourcesare Fletcher & Garman, r979 and Ochs & Schieftelin, r979.
Conclusions 2.3 Aphlied pagmatics Applied pragmatics: pragmaaics and other fields Pragmatics has potential application to u n.ia" *itt . stakein how utterancesare understood. " Such 6elds inclua" ,i""., ,rU. the study of rhetoric or literature, that are not immediate;;;;;;,.,"0 7.3
with practicalproblems(thus Sperber a w,r".,
ii"l,ij".,,i.*l *" a close relarion betwcen pragmatics and rhetoric). But thei orso include fields that are primarily concerned wirh solving problems in communicarion,and it is here that the applicatio"" o;;;;;;;;" likely to be of direct practical "f "".
tobeespeciary i,?ll'l1li.d:L"::::iHH;:T ;3em "."-,",
linguistics(i.e.the theoryand p.actice of seclnar""rr"a"
i"."r1""1, the study of man-machine interactron, the study of communicational difficulties in face-to_faceinreraction ana tn" ;; catronaldimculties that arise when "tudy ";;;"",_ communica,"." ir'i."._ '^;: to-face interacrion. In these ".. ""i :'l ' four ar.,. "-^,,:";;^
insights promise,, l?i:n:rJ.l"iffl: "iL"i",l ".,11i,l.,::ilfi
them one by one.
of pragmatics to problems in second language ,^^l: "1o,,:",t1 learnrng is based on the assu that' the probable universarity of processesrir.. '10,tj3". .despite there are likelv to be srgnificant difierences .., :T:lt:1t-"re'. ure of languagesbut in "rl" their use(Hymes, ;;;.;. ;;;',,|-:le Lstrucr
orusage, il.'":"'"'i ::"li:':Jl*: J,',:'" T ;:l: "i "".-"',"''uI'
expressions (Brown & Levinson,r97g), therei" Ii"fot cross-cultural "o"r,a"r"if" misunderstan( t;.','::T:f;":,"j?T":::J
seem ro besignificantry
;*:,,
::: c-omplaintsthan English-".. speakers(House & k^o;r; , ;; il; ;_ Walters, r 98 r ). There thus arises the possibiliiy , contrastile pragmatics, that would ", "^,"_",," i"olut. pot"rrtiul u;;;;;,.understanding arising from the learner,s ;"r.,,;;;;;-;;;,; structron in the languagebeing ";"learnt will have the same;-pf i.u,ur"", presupposrtions, illocutionary force and conversational ;;; ;;:;_" analogous construction in the native l".,gu"g". Th"." i" ;;;;;.", researchon such issues. In the field of man_machine interaction (i.e. the study of the , difficulties humans experience interacting with computers), pragmatics also has direct applications. lf," prJUf"-" i".";;;;ffi,;,. need for more and more workers
tousethem,,"."""r" rL;;;.;;ill,:IHJloj}:T.J"i.n[: :T:
language shared by machine and human work on principles sirnilar to natural languages and their rules of usage, the computer age will not need to await the massive re-education of the labour force. But such engineering requires a prior analysis ofthe properties of natural language usage, and it is here that pragmatics promises some help. For example, knowledge that the quantifier Jott!€can, but need not, implicate 'not all ', allows the programmer to avoid making a direct match between the English word and the logical existential quantifier; in translating English input into machinc readable programming language, some program component must test for the likely reading in a particular context, Work proceeds apace in the research divisions of the giant computer companies on precisely this sort of problem on the modelling of presupposition, illocutionary force and conversational routines (see papers in Joshi, Webber & Sag, r98I). In addition, but with applications further in the future, there are projects concerned with speech synthesis and comprehension; as the immediate technical difficulties in these areasare overcome there will be increasing interest here tqo in the contributions of pragmatics to theories of languageunderstanding, Finally, there are the contributions that pragmatics can make to problems of communication between humans who speak (more or less) the same language. For example, there can be significant inter-ethnic misunderstandings due to different pragmatic analyses of utterances whose literal content is perfectly well understood; leading questions, probes, hints, etc., may well not be interpreted correctly. Here work by Gumperz (1977; rqSz; see also Gumperz, Jupp & Roberts, 1979) has opened up an area of great practical importance. Another area where pragmatic analyses may be of great interest is the design (or more often, re-design) of institutional proceedings; horv should, for example, newly introduced small claims courtsbeorganized ?Should theybeconducted on more conversational lines than ordinary courts of law, or are the traditional procedures actually more conduciveto the orderly pursuit of truth (seeAtkinson & Drew, r979)? Similar questions continually arise among those interested in reforming or improving classroom practices. A rather different setofconcerns is raisedby the possibleexistenceoflanguage pathologies that are essentially pragmatic; for example, there may be difficulties that arise in the rehabilitation of brain-damagedpatients that are specificallypragmatic in nature. If this turns out to be the
376 377
Conclusions case, again practical help will rely on prior pragmatic analysisof normal languageusage(see Lucas, r98r). Finally, there are familiar communicational problems that arise when humans communicateat a remove through space or time, by means of recorded or written messages.In Chapter z we explored how natural languagesare constructed, so to speak, around the assumption of face-to-face interaction, and we noted how deictic terms can be misinterpreted when this face-to-facecondition is not met. Analytical considerations may be quite helpful here to the design of crucial notices (e,g. on roads, or for the maintenance crew of aircraft, etc.), questionnaires, and other down to earth usagesof written language.They may also be useful in the design of special programmes of learning for those who have difficulty in literate skills. As another example, quite interesting problems arise when normal conversationalturn-taking cannot operate, as in communications by 6eld radio, telex, or the messagecapabilitiesof computer terminals; how should substitutes for the normal practices be designed ? lt is only recently that the possibility hasarisenof informed adviceon such relativelysimple but important issues - advice based on the detailed study of natural languageusage. As always in the application of academic ideas to vital practical issues,there is the very real possibility of the premature acceptance and application of untested concepts and theories (with the sorts of potential dangers made clear by the premature application of sociolinguistictheories to educationalpractices- see the critique in Dittmar, r976). Here the pragmaticist has a responsibility to point out the limitations of current approaches,and to demonstrate the empirical basis for the working categoriesemployed. It is for this reason that this book has surveyed a relatively restricted set of issues in a depth that will make those limitations clear. rather rhan covered a larger area in a relatively superficialway. Austin's vision of a "true and comprehensive tcience of language" still, as he predicted, has some time to wait.
37 8
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BibliogtaPhY in Itali'n convcrsrtion ln Givon (t979': Duranti, A. & Ochs. E. (r979). Left-dislocation r7?-{tE ) lnl' oa|uas' Studi" Rt co 'tid fam,,ndson. W ( rqz8). A note on P"sm'tic ^ecives (L'trccht), PP r 00-6 PhD unPublishcd \i: i t eTe). A Mod't !o/ th' Ano!'i' ol slok'n Di'ton'e Ed;dson. dirrc.ta.ion. Ruhr-Univc13itit, Boch!'m. Mod'l lol A"qlt\is London: Loneman Ddmondson, w. (tes') . Spok.l Dis.ou"': A al'!rn'tion'ndco-occurrcnce ln Gumperz rulc:: sociolinsuilic s. f, ez.t.on i,"in-T,ipp, (r9?2: !rJ -s o). & H )mes of Americ'n linslish direciivcs' frvin-Tripp, s. (t976). ls Svbil thctci'l'he 3rructurc La gns. iu Soc;.t!, s,2s-66ln Ochs & Schieffelin (r97e: E rvi n-'I'ri P P . S . (te79). C hi l drc n' s vcrb.l tu.n-takina. l 9r -4'{l I ..quest. ln Parr.r. Sbisi & E rl i n-Tri P P , S . (te8' ) H o\ to mak . .nd und"s tand ( V €tschutren r98r: ' 95-2ro) (eds ) (re77) Chil.l Di'.out'.. Ne* York: E rri n-T.i pp, S . & l l i tc h€l l -K ..n.n' C Acadenric Press S tmto' i un o" J L A x tti ' London: R outl eds e& K es an P a! r'.nn, K .T.(c d.)(Ie6gt (te6a) D i s l os s i ..In H y mc a(t964: a29-39)'(R eP ri ntc di n C i s l i "l i t' qz ;' C. A . Fersuso.. 2s2-E2l.t fo'mul's Laasuasc in Societt" Ferguson.C. A. ( r9Z6). Tht 3truct!'r.,nd us' of Polittn€ss ( tgl tt: 2 | 3s ) ) (R tp.i nted i n C oul mas j 7-5 I 5, '. Foundatioft ol Laasuas'' neictic cst.so.ies in th€ 6'm'ntics of filfm".e, C - J. t 'ont '.ler'1. des c ri P ti on l n l ' i l l more Fi l l more.C . J . ( re7I.). v erbs ofj udei nc :an c x c rc i s ' i n s emanti c ( 27J -9o) & Lans c ndoen ' 97r: Papel' (D€pa'tment Fiffmore, C. J. ( e7 b). 'l'osards , thcor) of deixis' Th' PCCLLU ' ' of Li ns ui s ti c s ,U ni rers i ty of H .s ai a)' 3 4' 1r9-4r' t6 F;fl m.te, C . J . (' 973). ]l a)' $c c ome i nf S "?oti ' a' e' s 7- t |ndi ' ne U ni v €rs i t!' Fi fl more, C J . (IeTs ). S a' ttoC tu' L' dur' 3 oh D ..i \i ' ' IeTI Mi meo' I-i nsuis ri .s C l \i b. l n C ol €(r98 r: Ial -66)' Fi l l more,U . r. ( r98r ). P r.amati c al nd th. dei c ri pti onof di s c o"B e Ncq C.'1. e L"n*eodoen, D. T. (eds ) (r s7t) Stttdi" in Lingu'!l'' S?ndnn'! firr-"*, tvl'insron. & Hoh, Rin.h.rr Yo.k: sandhi in Trukc$ Fischer, J. L. ('e72) Thc st:rlistic significance of conson'ntal 'nd P onep ean.l n (i umptrz & H )' mes (t9?2: 498 5t I)' Cambridse: Cambride€ Fletcher, P. & (;a.man, ll. (cds.) (t979) Ldnstuae' Acqui'ition Uni!crsitr Prcss. R'adi^s' i^ th' Fodor,.l. A. i raa, J. J. (ed3.) (re6.r). Th' Sttu'tu/' oJ Langudse: P'entic'-H'll' Cliffs, NJ: E.sle*ood o! Laneuaee Philotopht Fos.fin, R. (re67). Et d.nt. and M.anins. Ne* York: Humanirics Prcss' In Shop€n Foier, 11'.& van vrlin. R. D (in prcss) lnformation Packasins io th€ clau3e' D. (te7a). Th. sp.ak.r kno$s bcst P'inc'plc Par'a ltod th' Ioth R'sionat F--".: Mering ol th (hicago L;nsui'tit SN'.t)', PP t62 7? r*se., B. (,sir"). A" .xsmin.tion of rhc pcrformtrivc tn'lv3is Pa,"t id Lirytnti"'7' yimeo' Indian' Frrser, B. (re7{b). An snallsis of vernaculrr pcrfotmative verbs C Iub. l ,i ns ui tri c s t ni \er s i tv M. Bl'ck ('ds l Tran'totioas Frcee, C. (t952). On s.ns. lnd.efer.ncr. tn P. T. Ge.ch 'nd Bl'ckwell pp 56 7E' hon th. Phitotolhi.dl llritings o! Cotttob I"?s' Oxford:
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BibliograPhy La m b cr t. $ . t. &' I' u cke t,C.R ( te 1 6 l Tu, V o,r, U 'r./ R os l c). Mass.:N e*burr H ouse and ssscdi oni n thc semanri ci nal vsi sofnouns l ,a n scn d o e n .D. T . ( te ? I) . Pr e su p p o s i ti on a n d r r r b s in Dn a lish - ln ste in b cr s & Jakobovi ts( re7 3ar-4). ': La n ce n d ftn , D.' I' . & Sa vin . lL B. ( !e7') 'l 'he pro.i ectonprobl em for presupposi ti r)ns ln F illm o r e & L a n se n d cn ( r 9 7 ' : 55 62). L ca ch , D. R. ( ' e 6 a ) . An th r o p o lo sica laspcctsof l ansuaa.: ani mal catesori es.nd vcrbat abuse. ln D. L€nneb€rs (ed.) Na! D/?diont;n th. Stud 'o! Loneftee Canbridat M a ss.: M IT Pr css,p p . z: 6 t. Leech, C. N. (t969). TNaAr d S.na,ti( Da{.;ptiou of Enslnh. Lond('n: Lonsman Leech, (;. N. (re?a) S.zdrr'.t. Harmonds\rorth: Pensuin B@ks. Leech, (;. N. (rqz6). Mctalansuage. pragmatics and performativcs ln C. Rameh (ed.) s.na i.!- Th.o4 od Aprli.atiou. Geor*eto$n UniYersitl Round Table on Lansuaaes and Linsuistics. \ 'ashinston: (;eoracto*n Universitl Press. pP. ltI 9lt. T. paper'{6.Tri e. (R cpri ntcdi s l ,€cch L e e ch ,C;. N. { r 9 7 7 ) . L .r r e u d e .d d T o t.I'..\.l :.
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Bibliogrcphy D l'kxrg their dc\elopm€nt in infancr. lnM 'on Cranach, K FoPpa' W LePtnics& (cds.) Naa, Pcrrpe.tit'c' in Ethotosv. Clmbrids€: Cambridee Univcrsitv Press' p P. 5 3 0 - 7 r . l'insu;stique dc Trubetzkov. N. S. trqrsl Gr d.iile d., PhodolosP Tr'!'ux du C€rcl€ A'nold' Trudsiff. P (ed.) ('e78) Sriot;netitti( Pat!'n' in Blitith EhBIish l'ondor: 'I'urner. R. (rgz:). Some form.l proptrties of theraPv lllk ln Sudnoq (1s72: 367-96) Turner. R. (€d.) ( t 9?+a). Ethmd.thodok,$' : SctcctadRcadinss HarmondsNorth: Pengurn' (1974^: ts7 2t5'' Tu.ncr, R. (te7{b) words, utrc'.nces and sctivities ln Turner L f l m a n , s. ( r e o 2 ) . Pr u .i| l.' o l S.Na ,ti.s.znd ed oxfo'd: B l ack$el l ' ol S'"t'M' L'.teno. T. f'. (te7') l Stud) ol tapa .s. Modatitt : a P'rlornat;r'c Anot)'n Pdrr;Lt. UnPublish€d PhD dissertarion' Unir€rsit! of Michiean' vcn Dijk, T. A. ('9?2). Sod. As4.ct' ol T.'. C'dftna'r. Thc Ha8ue: Mouton' van Dijk, T. A. (cd.) ( ts76l. tuasnat;c' ol Lansuds. and Lit..atu'e. Amsterdam: No'th Holhnd. Yan Frrasscn. B. C. (t969). P.€supPositions.supe^ 'luations"d fr'c losi' lnK Lambtrt (cd.l Thc Logicat Way o! Dotis rritrg' New Haven : Yale Univcrsitv Press' PP 6?-e2' Ven t'raassen, B. C. (re7r). Folnal S.nantic' and Losic N€w York: Macmillan v€rschucrcn, J. F. ( r978r. P.osndtict: an A^^otat.d BibhograDhv AmsrerdamI Btnjanins (Supple'n€nts lppcar annuall! i^ the lou,nal oJ P,ac^at;.s'l v.rschu.r.n, ,. F. ('eSo). what P.ott. 9ay Thev Do anh Wotds. UnPublish€d PhD di$.rration. Univ.rsitr of Californi., Bcrkelev. W at6 , R. ( 1 9 7 9 ) .Dcixis. In F le tch e r& Ge.man (1979: 24r-60) \rafker, R. ('e7s). Conr.rsational impticatures ln s Bllckburn (ed ) M'onins, Rcl'tence ond N...ttitt. Cambridgc: Cambridee Univ.rsitv Pres!' pp. r33 Er' Walt€rs, f. (ed.) ('e8'). Th. So.iotinsuntic' ol D.|.r.".. and Polit'.ne'r' Special issue of Intcnationat lou,nal o! .h. St'riolosr ol Laneuas., 27 The Hague: Mouton' Warson, R. (t975). Th€ int€ractionaluses of Pro[ouns P.agnati.t MiooJi'A'' t I' AJ c-t watzfatrick, P., B€avi.,J. H. &Jackson, D. D. ( Io6?). Plosnaticrol HunonComru^i'otion' Ncs York: w. w. Norton. Wcinrcich, U. (rg66l Explorarions in semantic theorv lnT Scb.ok (€d., Cu"'nt T"nd' in Linsuisrits, Yol. 3. The Hague: Mouton, pp. 39s 477. werth, P. (ed.) (,e8!). Com."at;on and Dis.ou't". London: Croom Helm W i l ks, Y. ( r e 7 s) . Pr e fcr € n c€s€ m a n tics.I n K ccnan (te75r 129-48) yorkl Wifson, D. ('97s). Pr.'u4positiont oad Non-Ttuth Conditiondl S.manti" Ne* Ac.deBic Ptcss. wibon, D. & Sp€rber, D. (1978). on Gric€'s th€orv of conversation Pras'dr;i Mhrofichc, t.s, Ft-G'4. (R.printcd as wilson & Sp€rbc. (re8' ) ) wilson, D. & Sp€rb€r, D. (r979) Ordc'.d .ntailments: an alt.rn'tivc to P'csuPPosrt'on:l th.ori.s. ln Oh & Dinn.en (t979: 229-374). Wilson, D. & Spcrbcr, D. (rq8r) On Gricc's theorv of convcrsation ln w€tth (r98r: r55-78). Witiacnst€in, L. Os2tr. T/actatut Logio-Philo'o\hicut. (R.Printcd and translated Wn tse n sr cin( r 9 6 ' ) .) Witts.nst.in, L. (r9s8). Philosophi.al In1'.stisatio'r. Oxfo'd: Bla.kwell. Wiiracns.€;', L. (ts6tl. Ttoctdtu' Log;co-Phito'oplticut Transtat€d bv D. F. Pe"s & B F. McGuincss. London: Routlcde. & Kea.D Paul W@tton, A. (in pr€ss).Thc man.g.mcnt ofsrrntinss and r€i€ctions bv parents In request .equenc6. .s.'n',t 4. wund€rlich. D. (.d.) (t97r). Linsui'ti'ch. P,asmatih. F.ankfurt: Athenium. Zwicky, A. (t97a). H€y, wharsyaname! Proraclingsfton tha Tenth RecionalMeeting ol tht Chkago Lingvitti. So.i.ry, pp. 787-80t. 3 90
S U B JE C T IN D E X P.scnumbcB in botd typc indic.!c dcfinition!ot mdn ditcu!.iont. Th. first occurrcncc of rbbrcvietioos is indcrcd i rhcr.rftci rcfcr€ncc3 will bG tound ifter ih. full form.
cbility, p..sm.tic, z+-5 , st,367,377 'eboutn€s!', 89, 22o-2: accouits, conv!B..ion.l, 306, 3o7, 334 lcqui.;.ion, xii, 43, ,f7, 60, 6r-2,68, 226, z8r-2, 284, 3or, 368, 37s of dei xi s ,6r-2, 68 of sccond hngu.gca. 368, 3?6 of spccch rts, 28t-2 th€o.y of, 4,r-5, 60 .nd discoursc, 288-94 rnd sFeh rcts, 22?fI, 24o, 216,2.ss aclion-chrins,33?-8 ss conv€rsational respoN€s, t37, 259, 288,29 I involv.d in 3pc.ch, 236; tcc ako udct illocutior..y ict3, sp€€ch acts mapping of utt.nncca onto, 263-76, 28H4 addr€s, 63, Zo-r, t28 9i t.. alb p.nicip:nt-rol€, summons€!, terms o. ri tl c s of,51, ?o-I,75,89,9r, 92, r28-3o, 298, 3o3, 11,!.,!15, !74 .ddrc$cc, r6, 23, 52, 53, 62, 6t-7., I r, 9o,92, r13 14,2{ & -9,25o, 260; r?. dlo p.rricip.ncrol. honori6c., rr. !rd.r honorific. idj.c.ncy p.i's. 289, 293, 3o3J, 3o9-r2, 32o, 322, 323, jz4-5, 32.7-8, 33.4, 34t, 35o:' ue also undet prcscq\rcnc.s, qucsnonr, rcque$s, 3uftmonses, ctc, charactcriz.rion of, 303-4, 306-8 .nd condition.l rcl.v.nc., 306, j2o in clo€ings, j17, 32+-s 6.tt p.rB, jo3, josfi, 324, 35o fuhd.rncntrl unit, 3o4 '3 and lingubric rtrucrur., 365-6 rn opcnrnrs, 3o9-ro, 322-3
prcfcr.ncc ors.niz.tion in, 3o7-E, 372-7,3+ 5 rulc for u.., 3o4 !.cond p.rtr, 3oJ, 3o4, 306 t, 3zo, j24, 33Jfi, 35oi dbp.cfcrrcd, r.. dilpr.f.rrcd .um; nngc of, 3oG-7; unfonhcomina, 306, 320, 327, 328, 335 m.nncr, r84n p€rformctivc, r49, .55-E, 262, 263, 266 phcc, 54, 62, ?9fr timc, j4, 62, 74ff sdvicc, 267, 2?8, 334 of prcdicrtca, zo, 9t 2, t3o, 373 in convcrsrtion, rcc disrgrecmcnt Alsonquian l.nau.gct, 68 r11, r6t 4ritc. otn a , 18, 123-+, r!t-i, .hbiSuity, rvoid.ncc oI, ro2, 272i t.. oko Manner, maxim of .mbiguny: claim!, l7-8, 9E roo, ro&-9, rr9-2o, r3z -15,2or,z o]l 2s 7-8 and conv.rsaaioml..qucn.c, 33o-r, 353-4 d.ictic, 7s-6, 82-3 of fir.ril v.. indi.ccr forec, 269-76, 28o, 330, 354, 303 of n€a.ti on, t7r-3, r9{ , 2or, 2ol , rro, of scopc, fz3-4, t7r-2, r71, 2or, 22r-2,257 Am..indiln lingu.8.., 12, 75, 77n, 78, altu und.' ;nd;o;d/al at , aa, 8a , 'c. .mpl i tudc , 3or, tr3, 37o .nrl ogy , rs s , |s 9 62 ,n.phor:, G7, 8s-?, '88,217-8,262 .nd discourrc d.ixi!, 8on, 85
397
Stbject index
Subject index anrphoric us!s., of d€ictic cxpt€ssions, 67, 80, 8s-7 and, 35, 98-9, ro8, r r9-2o, rzi, t32, I J4, r39, r92; r.r alro con,unction p r e g m e tic,6 1 , :5 6 ,5 4 5 ,9 8 , r o s, t.g, 160, rj2, rgg, 2o5, 22810, 232, 4s,24E, 26s-7, 2s2-t; t.. ako spp.opn.t ncss .cm a n r ic,8 6 , r Sr , r 9 r t, r 9 9 , 2 o r ; r .. a&o conir.diction, frl.choods (c.rcsoriol) a n tu a t, $ , Es, 8 7 , 9 6 , I o o , t6 2 ,3 6 6 , rnrwcr., 106, ro7, 271,291, lo}, 3o4, 3 0 5 - 6 , 3 o 7 , 3 r o , 3 1 2 , 3 2 1 , fi6 . 3 s4, 362; r.. al'o dj.ccncy p.irs, 'Antithclis',
246ff; r.? a&o
'rtd.'
sp€ech
'Appli.d lingui3tic.',.nd prasmrtics, 368, 376 c pp ' .ci.tio n t, 3 2 8 J, 3 3 r , 3 j4 .ppropr'rtenc.s, 7, 2ar, 3t1 t77' 204-5' 229fr, 246 ,ppropri.tcncss-condnions, 25 r po lo 8 ics,2 8 r , 3 o 3 , 3 3 4 , 3 3 6 , 3 s8 dcinirc, 6rn, 8t; raa olro dcfinitcncls ind.finite, r26 a r tifi€ ia lin te lliS.n cc,2 r , 4 5 , t6 r - 2 , 2 8 t, 286, 332-3
conc€pt of, ros, r33, r69fi, 2{o, 242, 243,246, zSr-5, .56, 26r, 265, 266, 2?7,337i r.. dfto conlt.tivc!, rcprcacn..tiv.., rPc€ch tcts, .nd prclupposition. r69fi, r8o-', I97; r", alro urd.r pr.supposition &!r€!!mcn$, 33o, 3i37, 339 etomic conccpts, r., componcntill anriburiv.! u3€s,r.. r.fctcntiol uscs audicncc, ?r, 8r, go; re, alro bysr.nde's ruSmcntinS contcxt, rrr lrdrr contcxt (incrcmcnt.l mod.l of) A'rtrrli.n f.n8u.ge3,,i3, 7 t, 72, 82i sec alro nd., indie;dual lansuas.r autbo'izcd lpc.kcB/r€cipi.nrs, 9r of remanticr from pnamrtic:, 20, 3a-5, sg, g+-s; tcc oko uadct compon.nts, pnSm.tics, !.tnrntica of rynt.r f.om pr.gmrtic., xi, 267-8,
398
37zii secoko snd., pragmaracs, syntactlc rulcs 'b.by-ral k', 8-9, t t, 282 Mcksround vs. fot.a.ound entailments, bsckground knowledse or b€lief, 4n, 2r 2, 23, S r, 53, I tl , t25, r4l , 146-?, t68, r?1, I80 I, t87 8, t9o, r97, r99,2o+-3,2o9,2 tI, rr5, 2 r9, 22r, 276, zB t,28s,332, 352, 3s4-5; i'. arro common stound, mutuel knowledgc bicl(g'ounding, of information in cl.u3., 4t t 2r9-2o, 22r-21 225, 373a t.. atto 8iv€n/nGw, prcaupposnion Bcsqu., 93 &.asr.-claus.s, 2r 4- r 5, 256, 262 ,"/o'.-€lsusc., r79, r8z, t87, zr5 bcli€f. J, ror, ro', 46, 271i t.. ako b.cksround kno*ledsc, Moo.e'3 b.lie., 46, r37 biconditional, r46 bivrf€nc€, f?4n, rZs, tz6, zor; seeako brevi ty, ro2, ro7-8, r t2, r35, r36 btt, r2o, r27, r29, 2r r, j j 8 bystandcrs, 68, 90 honorifics for, qo r C. 3o7ni r.. clllcr CA, 286; raa conversation snalysis c.lculsbility, of implic.tut.s, r r7, I t9, r2o, r2E, t29i t.. aLo und.r conv.rs.tional i'nplicsturc cal€ndrical m.$urcmenl, of time, 73, ?5_o callcr, in t.l.phonc cslls, 3o?n, 1o9fr, 32?-8, 3+3 5 crnc€ll.bility: of inf€rcnc.s, tr4-r6t t.c oko dcf€$;bility, luspcnsion of conver..tion'l implicstur.!, r t4-t6, r 19, r20, r3,r, 143-4,224-5 and conv.ntion.l implicrtu'e!, r28, of prcsuppositions, r73, t87-9o, r9r-8, 2o7-9,212-16,224 crnonicsl situ.tion, of utt€r.nc€, r., situ.tion of utlcr.nce channcl, of cohmunicstion, 23, 63, 3 ro, 120 C hi n.ntec,8{ Chinca., ?8 child languagc, rez acquisition
Chinook, 73 cl.!3room intcr.ction, lq, zzg, u8t,3r8, 377 claus.l implic.turc!, t . !rd.r Quantity cl cft rcntenc .s , rz s ,z t7 .2 implicature of. t2s, 2r7-22 i mpl i ci t, r 83 prcsupporition! of, 182-3, !89, 206, 217-22,373 217 truth condition3 of, rz',2or clo.ina!, convcr!.tion!1, 16, +9, 7t, 79, 3r6-rt, 3zo, 324-5, s+6; scealso ovcr.ll ors.niz.tion 'rzd.. of, cl€m€nt! 3I7 prc-cloringr, 3 r 7 rE, 322, 125 codins .ime, 62, 73ff, 85 cohcr€nc.. in convcrietioo, 5!, ro7, 286. 288, 3r3-tsi t.. ol'o tnd.r ron., 5r-2, 64, 83-4; tcc olso vcrbs of comm.nt, rre topic/comm.nr commithcnt, of 3pc.kcr, 24n, r34, t35 6t r4t, 2| 2n,21o, 276-8 common ground or knowlcdgc, r9o,2o5, 2o9; r.. abo mulu.l kno*leda. commnnicetion, rS-rE, 2+, 2s, 26-7, 29, 38-40, 49, 97-8, ro' , rt2-r3,24' , 2t2, 176i r". dtro meanins-nn cornmunic.f ivc compct.ncc, zsi t.. alto .bility (pr.smaric) communicativ. contcnt, of utt€r.ncct, r4, 15,98, r3r-2, I43; r.. arto !c n.c nc .m..nin8, uttcr.nc€-mcanmg, m..nins-nn, *ord-m.snin8 communicrtivc inlcntion, t, intcnnon communicativc po*cr, of a hnSuagc, rr2-r3; tt al to c x prc i ti bi l i ty compsri3on, rcr6! l.nsurycr, xi, to, 42-3, 45-6, 47, 69-?2, 75-8, 8r-4, 8E -94, I2tn, 20t, 216, 43,?"42,27o, 276, 29 6, 3ot, 3r3n, J 4l n, 368-9, 376i r., arto univ.rsals rnd irhplicctu'c, 3s ind pr.supposition, r83 vs. si mi l c , r54;r.! dr' o 3i mi l c s comp€t.ncc/p€rformrnc., 7-9. 24, 33-5, j6 complcx 3.n!€nc.!, rgrn ind proi.ction, r.. proj.ction problcm complimcnt!, 339, 369 componcntid rnilFis, of me.oing, t2, 69, r48ft, r99, ro3 4
components of linguistic th€ory, 8, 9, r3-rs , 22, 21 33-5, 36, 59, I29-30, 4s, ts6,267-8, 372-1 compchionslity, r9r, zozfr, 268, 27o compound $ntcncca, rgtn, ry2fri s.. ako logical conncctivcr conativ. function, of sPcccb, 4l cond;tionrl rclcv.ncc, 293,36, 3ro, J2o, 367 c ondni onab, tr5, r37, t{ r-2, t45-6, r88, rs2-3, r9S, t96-E, zoot 2o2,2o8, 2r!-1, 2.1, .66-7 countcrf.ctual, I8t conjunction, j5, 98 r, ro8, rr9'.o, t27, t2g, r3z , r34, r31,49, 116, r97, 2og, zrr', t . alto a"d, bu.,logi.rl a3ymm.tric, 35, 98-9, !oEn, t I9, r46, r65 conn.ctivca, r.. lo8ic.l conn.ctiv€s rnd discouruG,288 connotrtion, 49, r50; t...rro incid.nt.l vs. dc6nins ch!r.ct.ristica consistcncy, of infcrcnc.3! rt cont.rt (incr.m.nt.l model o0, inf.rcncc (inconsistcncy o0 constancy und.. t.g.rion, rcc under constativcs, 229t1, 234-5; t,, dlto aslariron, ltstamants constitutiv. vs. r€8ulativ. rulc., 238, 36? c ont.x t, r,5,7, E ro, r3-r4, r9-2r, t2-t, 24, 27, 3o-r, 4?ff, 54-9 p.!sim, 63, 79fr,89ff, 95,99, tr5-I6, Iz I-2, I4j , rl r, t6t, r77, r8G3o pas l i m, 2o5, 2ro-rr, 2t2-r5l 22o,237, 215, 27r, 275,276-83 p$s i m, 29r, 295 definit,ons of, 22 1, q, zrz di s c ours .-, Io2, tt5-t6, r86-90, r99, 2r r, 29r, C h. 6 pc s s i m:t.. al ' o cncodcd in 3cnt.ncc., 9-r r, 3 r, 47fr, C h.2 p$s i m, I8ofi i n.rc mc n.rl modc l of,23n, J r, 143-4. z r2-rs ,276-8 snd indircct sp€.ch rc$, z1'fr,214-8j, rnd infer.ncc c.nc€lktion, t?" clncclhbility, defcisibili.y snd infcr.ncc scncr.tion. '.. convfi.rtion.l i.nplic.rur., fr.mcs, 'inlrituiion.l' vs. conv.rsttion.l, 39, 279-8r, 284 3or i nti a-s c nteD ti rl or , l i nS ui s l i c ,rrs , r+ 4, arto projcction problcm r86, r9o-8; '.,
399
Subject hdex
Subject index loc.l systcms in, t n u ll,8 - 9 |s lds: of indiccs, 58 r, 95; ot p.opolition3, 23n, r 43 1, 212- r S, 216-8 cont.xr-ch.ng. th.ory : of prsamatica, jI of lpcech acts, 27fi cont€xt-d.p€ndent (or -sensitiv.) m c.n in s, f3 t1 ,zo - t,2 6 , 3 7 , 5 44r, 9 4 - 5 , I r 5 - 1 6 , r 3 7 , I4 3 , r 4 5 , r o I , ra6-fp, rg:-, 2oo, 2oa, 43, 269fr, abo 2jF8o, zgt, 32612; 'e. d€fc$ibiliry cona.rt-dcscription, 23 conrcxtu.liz.tion-cu.s, 23, 29, 374 co n tr .d i.tio n ,9 9 , r o 9 , I3 8 , r 4 o , t9 4 ,2oI convention, t4n, r7, 2tb conv€ntion.l rsp€cts of mcrning, t 2n, r4, r 5 , f7 - r 8 , r 9 , ss, tr 2 - r 3 , tz7 3r, 206-7, 2r2, 2r6fi , 229 30, 237, 24r, 43, 264, 282, 3671t.. also convcnional content, ar.mmrticaliz.rion, 3cntcnce-m.anina n o n - tr u th - co n d ir io n a l,r l- r 4 , t9 , 96, t.. a&o conv€ntion.l 'z?-9,-2o6ff; non-truth-conditional ihplicaturc, rsrcts of meaning, presupposition convcntDnrl conr€nl, r2t\ 11, r5, r7, 19, 4 9 ,9 7 , r r l, r z8 , r s9 ; 3 .. d lto scntcncc-mcaning conv.ntional implicrture, 19, 88, 96, t 17, tr,7-rtr 1 2o7 Kr ttu n cn & Pcte B' th e o ty o f, r 3 r , cnd prcsuppo3ition, r3r, 2t6, .r7 properties of, r28, r2g,216 r€duction or, r28ff and synt.x, r3o, ix convcntionrlizalion, of implicttutca, I66 conversation, 43, 46-7, 278-s, ch. 6 .n.lysi! of, t.t convcrs.tio. .nrlylis ccntr.f iiy of, 244-5, 32r, 371- S clorins! of, t." cl6inSs vs. convcrs.tion.l lctivity, 3t8 cohc.€nce cohcrcncc in, '.. cu ltu r .l vr r ia tio n s in , 2 9 6 , 3 o r ,3 r 3n, t+3n; r. ,bo uniecrsals of dcfioition of, 284, 3!t r n d in fcr .n c., 3 9 , a 9 , Ch . 3 ,2 7 s,2,47, !2513, 364 vs. 'iGtitutional' discourcc, 284, 30I, J1 8 , J2 l intuiiion! .bout, 287, 292-3 400
"
local man.S.ment
opcninss of, t.. ,'de' ovc.rll ov.r.ll organization of,
'..
ove.all
ahd pnS m.ti cs, 284-5, 36{ 6,373 *quencing rulcs in, 288, 289 94,367 lequcntial orSanizarion of, tc. und.r Pre-s.quenc€3,sequcnce sp€cch act mod.ls of, 288-94, 3o3, lo4, 368 structurc of, 49-50, Ch. 6'syni.ctic ' mod.ls of, 286-7, 289'94, 3o4, 367 6nd syntax, 365-6, 373 rums in, r.. tums, turn-taking units of,288-gr, zgZ; rec also turns univ€rs.ls of, 296, 3or, 368-9 convc.sation anrlysis, ix, 47, 278-9,282, 286 7 , 294fi .nd coni€rt, 295 dal^ of, 287, zgs-6, 326 vs. discourse anilysL, 28a-94 fu.cti on.l i sm i n, 3I9, 322 s, 365-6 .nd lin8uistic!, 364-6, 173 methodsof, 286-?, J'8 326 t&o turn-r.kin8 '.ul€s'in, 36?; '.. .nd 3entcn.€ or turn structure, 287, al'o uud.' turns 2sj,3o2 3,36a, '.. conversltional.ctivity v.. conversation, 3r8 conv€rs.tion.l ihplicarufe, ro, I4, 45, Ch. 3i rr. atro impticatu'e .ctual v3. pot.nti al , t3{ celculability of, ra: olculability cal cul eti onof, rr3-t4, t22 s, '26, r34-6, 2r8 canccllability of, rae rnder cancellability chusal, ,.. t Qutntity 'del and communication, ql 8, tot dcfinition of, I 13 and fclicity conditions, ro5, 2{r, 258-9 snd 68ur.s of spccch. rca fisures of
by floutina, t.. ud?/ .xploitrtion, flourinas gcnctalized, t+, ro1, 122, tzr, 126-7, r32-47, r43n, r63, t66, r88n indctcrminecy of, t 18, r28, 160 .nd indirect sp€.cb .ct, 27o,273 4 Li nds of, r2G7, '3r .nd language structur€,97, r62-q 373 .nd loSic.l conn.ctivcs, r", md"' convers.rion.l imPlicaturcs
convcrs.tion.l impliciture (cont.) and lo8icaf form, r22 s, 2r8, zzo 3 and msni ng-nn, ror lnd mctrpho., r47 52 perticuli.iz€d, t4, tzq, 166 snd pr.s uppos i ti on,r2s , r96, 2I3-r{ , 2t7-25 projcction of, 224 st tc. ako !nd./ projcction p.obl.m propcnics of, rr1-2.,223-t, ta obo c.culrbility, crncclhbility, d.f€asibility, non-conv.ntior'.lity, non-de..ch.bilhy sc.lar, r.. u'd./ Qurntiiy and simplific.iion of semanrics,98-too, t32-47,372 standard, toa, to6, to7, tta, t26 end syntax, 164'5, 373 tcsts for, r 18-22: r.. d&o propcrtic! of Nnd truth condition., r22-5 univci6.lity oi ro3, r2o ? convcrsation.l impli(.turcs : of cl ei ts , r2s ,2r8,222 of conditi onal s ,I r5, r32, !ar-r, 145-6, r88n,2r3-r4,22{ of conjunctions, 35, 98-9, ro8, r 19 20, t32, t34, t37, r39,44 7 of disjuoctions, r34, r36-7, r3&4o, f4r, r42, r88n, z rr, 2r3,2ra,224 of ncgativ. !cntc.c.s, zr?-22 of non-entrilcd cl.uscc, r", !r/r/ Qu.ntity (chusal implicgtur.s) of quantifiers, 37-8. roo, r2r, r33 4, r38, ra3-4 or tcal€s, r.? rird.r Qulntity (sc.lar implicaturcs) ako und.r indtuiduat l.xi.ol it d' and '.. 'tri 8aer.' conver..tion.f postulatcs, 27r-2, za2,.9l convcy.d m€cnin8. r5n, 98i rrr abo impliceturc, indircction, uttcr.nccco-opcrati on,45, 50, 5 r, rorl T, ro9, r2l ind Ch. 3 p.ssim, r6j, zos,24r, 273, 354 .nd coun pr@cedioas, r2r-2 co-opc.rtive principlc! ror, ro9, I 13, r r? co-ordin.tion, in intc.rction, {5, Ch. 6 co- r€ferencc, 67, 8s-?, 248 corrccti ons ,J 3o,34r,36oi ta ol to rep r '.mb€dd.d' vs. 'cxposcd', 360 CT, 62i r.. coding rim€ courtroom intc..ciion, I z t -2, 28+,3 r8, 377 crossl;nsuistic g€ncr.liz..iotu, r..
Cubeo, 88 cul.ural varirtion, r., compcrison (acrGs lansurses), univ€rs.ls, variition (locialin8uistic) DA, 286; r.. discours€ analysit d.y! of th€ w€€k, words fo', r.? diurnal
dccl.r.tivc6, 40, 228, z+2, 2+3,214,2so, 25r-5, 26318 ps s i m, 35o, 365; t , atro renaenc€-typcs dcduc.ive inf€lencc, I r4-I5 deep or und.rlying structure, 247-5r, 260-2, 268; t . ako loaicrl fotrn, rm.ntic rcp.cacntation dc f..s i bi l i ty , t3-t4,2s , t' + -16, r2r 2, r3?, r38, r4z , r43 4, r45, 186-9r, rgg, 2o4, ztoft, 22j, zgji scc ako erncellrbilt y, dna und.l conv€rsstioncl implicaturc, prcsupp6n|on ind discourse mn..xt, rtS 16, 186!0, .lrd linaubric contert, II5-16, r86, rgo, r9rfr,22o d€Gnitc .rticlc, r." u'&' srticle definit€ dcscriprions, 60, t7o-+ r8r,2r1 definitc .xprdsioN, 86, t.. al'o snjcle, dcmonrtr.uv€s d.fi ni t€nc $,83 deiciic c€ntr€, 64, 73 deictic .xpr€ssions, 6{ dcictic projection, 64, 68, 73-4 deictic simulirn€ity, 73 deictic u.!sc, kin& of, 64-8, ss, t.. ako inaphoric, gcstu.al, rymbolic us.ge dei x i s , j -4,9,27, a5, s r j , C h.2, 21s So,284,36+, 312 ato acquisition acquisition of, 6r-i; '.. dcscriptivc fr.m.*orks for, 6 r ff discours€, tS-9; al'o dbcours€ ''. lnd indice., r.. u"d./ pr.smatic indices .nd logic, 3-4, 58-j pirnn, ≪ secolso prrticipant-rol€, philosophi€rl cpproaches ro, t.. unA., philorophy plac., ?g{ji r.. u/ro pl.cc d.ixis r€d'rcibihy of, s7-A rcl.rivizcd to tcxt, 67n socirl, t99{; ,., dtro socirl deirig .nd 3cmsnrics/pr.sinatics bord€r, 55, 59, 9{-o, 249-50 timc, 73-79; r.. ato liri'c deixis
40r
Subject index
Subject index dcixis (.onr.) .nd truth-condition!, 20, 53, 58-6r, 8?-8, 94-{ dcl.y, in convc!!.tion, lo7, 33{, 330-7' 3j9, 3{r; tr. dl'o paulc! dcmonst'.tivct, 54, 60, 6rn, 62, 6s, 12' 7d3, 85 d cn ie b lein fc' .n c.s, Io 5 , Ir 5 , r 2 9 , t{ 3 , r86, r9{-5 dcontic modality, rg2,2oz, 277 d€lcription!, thcory of, r7o-4 rt6, r28, 206,.23-1; t . d.t.chbiliry, alro non-d.trch:bility dctcrmincrr, 8:-3; rac oko dcmonsrntivct, a'l rty'.' .rticle di.chrony, .nd dcixit, 64 .nd implicrlutc, 165-6 d i slo .sir ,9 r ,9 3 dir€ctive, z4o, 24i; r.. olso o.d.rs, dbagrc.mcnt, in convcB.rion, 3o8, 334, 3 3 6 ,3 3 &j disrmbiguation, contcxtutl, 7-9, 27-8, 76, rrg, \6, 43, .69fr,218-80, 33off; rra alro embiguity discoursc, 2?. 33, 3s, 64, I62, tE9-9o; t.. ar.roconvcr..tion non-tonv.rsrtion.l, 64, 28{, 288, 3oI, jr 8 , jzr wcll- vs. ill-formcd, 286, 29r-!, 306, 32rn discourlc in.lysis, 286-9{ d.tr of, 286-7, 351 c.tcgotica of, 286, 28E 3 critiqu! of, 28994, Js2-3 intcr.ctioorl v!. t€xa-gtrmm.ticil, 288 intuitioh! in, 286, 287, t92-! mcthods of, 286, 287, 3t9 scntcnc.. in, 287, 288 scqucncing rulct in, 186-7, 289-291, 306, 367 lp€cch .ct6 in, 2E8 ra, 352 dilcour!€ con.cx., rnd plc.upposition c.nccu.tion, r89-9o, I99_2oo, 2t I i r., dlto convcr!3tion, di.cour. dcixis dcixi!, 6:, 77n, 79, t5i, ditcour3 l,b .nd convcntioml implic.turc, r28-9 impurc, t7 .nd truth-condidonr, 96, r 2EJ r.2, dilju n ctio n , r 3 4 , t3 6 7 , t3 &a o , ' 4 t, r88n, r93, I96-8, zoo, 202_3, 2t r, 2 1 3 ,2 1 1 .rclulivc vr. inclutivc, t 3E-ao dbprcf.rrcd turn., 50, io7-8, t2o-r, 402
332-9, 3s7-8i t e also under prcf.r.nce orSrnization rvoidanc. of, 3iJ, 346, !56, 35?ff char.ct€'istics of, 333-6 typical cootcnts of, 336 disprefctrcds, 3o8; raz disprefcrrcd turns distal demonstrrtivcs, r.e proximal v3. di!..1 dcmonstr.tivca disaribuiioo.l €onstrrin.s, t.. tnd.. synt.c.ic rulcs diurn.f 3p.n5, wotds for, S2-3,74-6 domiin of discou.re, 8on, 87 D r.vi di .n,365 Dyirb.l, 72, 82, 9o-r, 93
Gristcnrisl qurntificr,38; J?. drto qu.ntificrs, tot. cf,irt.ntid .t.t.mcnB, zl5i t ? a{to d€6nitG dcscriptio'. cxphndion, {off; t . d&o function.lbm
ccho-quesri ons, 34I, l S t, 365i r.. al to nert turn r€pair iniriltors .gft.ntric pcrticul.rs, s? cl l i psi s, r65n €hotiv€ function, of speeb, +I €mp.th€tic deixi3, 8' .ncodi ng, to-r!,2r, j r; r.. d/ro gramm.ticaliz.tiob cncyclop:edic lnowlcdac, 2r 2, 80, r{6-7, ISo-r, 2o4i s.. oko background lnowledge, muturl
fic.-ro-f.c. inrcrrction' 43-7, 5{, 03, 287, 29+, 295, 7t-2,237, 282, '81-5, 3o9 .nd Ch. 6 p.$im, 378 vr. rchycd communicr.ion, 52, 6&-9, 72,73-1 ,297, 3o9 factivcs, r.. !trd.t p.csupposition! of,
€ntai l mcnt, r4,52,96, t03, rr5, It6, r28, 133-8 paisim, 43, r7j, r7a, t154, r78, r85, r9rtr, r99-2oj , zr3-t5, 2r7, 2tg-.2o,223' 258-9i t.. dko loSicsl conscqu.ncc b.cl ground vs. fo.e8'ound,2I9 20 d€finition of, r74 rnd felicity conditions, 258 9 foc.l ic.lc of, 2'9 .nd i mpl i crturc, roJ, r15, rt6, r23, r33, rJ4, r35, rt6, r37, r3E , r43, 2rl -r+, 2r7,223 .nd prcaupposition, t7t, t1+-6, r?8, r8s, r9rfi , I9q-2o3, 2I3-Ij cpi stcmi cl ogi c, r3s-6, r37, r4r, r44, 2r3, 278ni r.. dl,o lno*lcds. cpi3lohry tcn.c., 7{ .qui-NP dclction, 249
ctcrnel :cnrcnccs, rre tcnscl.ss scnt.ncca of !pc.kin8, 279, 369, ..hno8fiphy 375 cthnohcthodoloay, 46-7, r95
cxcl.mrtive!, 42, 242n cxclusivc vs. incluriv€ disjunction, ,r, disjunction '.ndar
of r communicativc convcntion, 26, r I2-I3, !67 of thc mfiims of conv.rt.rion, to9-I3, r rEn, 126, r43n, 147-42,292i te. oko Rouiins, m.xim! ciprclribihy, principlc oI, 43, 21r-2 cxicnlion €rpr€ssion, ro7fi
fsl3choods, c..eaorial, rro, 15t, r57 f..turc thco.ica of m€rning, it, t48-5r' atro compon€ntial .nslFis, 203-4i '.t !.mtntic f..tur€t fe.db.ck, in int€raction. 3l? fclicity, 24, zot-S,i t.e aato sppropri.tcn€$, fclicity conditions fcl i ci ty cond i ri oN , t4, 25, ros t r I3n! ftan, z q, 22r3r, 4P-1o, 2a4-5, 2sr, 2583, 266-7, 271-2, 273, 28o-r .bi l i ty, 25 9, 2?I, 358fr cl$3ificrtion of. 229, 239, .4.t consiitutiv. of forccs, 23&-4o, 244-5 .s cntrilrn nt!, 258-9 €$cnti.l, 23E, 239, 24r, 244 r. implicit'rr6, ro5, 24r, 25E-i and indirect rpccch rct., z7r'2, 273 inncxibility of, 238n, 273n, z8o-',
r68
$ prigmrtic PrduPPositiont, 259 pr.prr.aory, 2 39, 2++, 259, 27 r of piornir.r, 218-9 proposiiionsl cootcnt, 219, 211, 272 of rcqucrt., 239-40 .incc.iry, 239, 41, .?r !pc.kcr- vs. hc.r.r-b$cd, 27I .nd truth condition!, 247, 258-9 of e.min83, 2j9-4o fi8urc! of |Pccch, or trop6, 38, Io9-t2, 126, r17fr, 16r, 3?3t t.. alro lnd.t crploitrtion, irony, m.t.phor, rhctoricil qudtions, ctc. clrssificrtion of, t+8 intcrpret..ion of, rs7-8, 160
fi ttcring condition!, fot Pr.tuPpositiont, 196-8' 2o8, 2o9-lo, 224 'filtcrr', of prcruppoaitio t' t.. ln tcr prcruPPo3n|on 6lters, rynt.ctic, t.. !nd.t tvnt.ctic rulcs 6rs. p.rt., tc. und.' tdi.ccncv p.ir. flouting, of thc mrximr of convcrsrtion, ro4-5! forf 3, 126, t1742,292i sc. arro Grploiittion fo.c., t4 illocutionrry forcc fo.cground v:. brckground, 2I9-2o; t.. drro brcksround Inowlcdac fo.€g.ounding, of informction in cl.u.e, aho brekgroundin8, 4r,2rg-2oi '.. toprc/comrn.nt form.lity, 23, 46, 9o-r, 93 formuLc, politc, 46, 7 r , 366 formuhtion, 285, 34?, 367 fr.m.3, for intcrprctrtion, 28r, 282, 332, 374 hanhl y ,2s s ,26,. Fr€nch, 28, 6s, r77, 343n function! of l.n8uagc, 36, 4rfr, 239-12, 278-83, 3I I, 326fl; t.. alto 3plcch fundionrl ptqsurcs on labauag., 4o-7, 166, 368; r.t alto funclionclism functionsli3m, ?, aa?, 97,319, 322-5, 368, 3?3
g.md,
l.n8uag., t.. und.r l^ngu Ee-
8rmm.-o[€fttot, 22r_2 8.p! v3. 3il€nc€, 299-3oo a.2., 3o2; r.. dlto visu.l contrct s€n€r.liz.d implic.turc3, ,.. /'d' convcr!.tion3l impliclturc g.ncrrrivc scm.ntics, {, 36, 176, 272 C€rmrn, ?2 e€s turc ,s z n, s + , 60, 6s ,66, z -E r,z s r; ee alro acstur.l u!.9. Sesturrl u!.8c, of dcicric crPrcldon., 65-8, ?I,80,95 giv.n/ncs, 8E, 22o, zzI, 225, 285, 354-5, 366; t?. arto forcaroundinS, prccupPosition, aopic so, s.,83-$ n. al'o rnd.. !.tb. (or motion) sosls: of .c.ors, 44-5, 29+; J.! dlto intcntion of. prasmrtic thcoty, ?,29-32, 59,76 of . .cm.ntic thcory, 30, 2o4 grrmmer, ovcrell thcory of,8,9, 12,29, 3!, t2g-to, r6zi s.c abo compon€nts, and dd., pttgm..ica
403
Subject index
Subject hdex ar.mrn.dc.lization,E-rr, zr, 32,13, s+, s s , 62, 63, 6t 9, E9, 9r - 3,162- 6, r8r-1,2o6ff, z++ s'cctin$, 16, 46, 7r, 72, j9, 28rn,289, 293, 3o3,3o8n,3o9-rr, 327-8,313-s Gric€.n lrgumcnt, r?. !rd.t convcri.tionll implic.t!re (cslcul.tion o f) Gricc.n principlcs of infcr.nce, r.t Gric.'3 m.xim!, r.r muimt
of
G.icc'! th€ory ofmc.nina, r.. m€snin8-nn group-op€r.ror,22r-z Guusu Yimidhirr, 90- t, 93 h.rr.r, vr. .ddrc$c., ?2 hc.rins/undc.st.nding chcck, 298. 3o3, 3+ofr, 318, 36si t.c ako n xr.u.n .€p r initi.tors, r.p.i. h d e by, sj,2 3 2 ,2 3 1 ,2 ss hcrit.8. cxprcslion, 2o&-9 h € l i r .tio n , 3 o 8 , 3 r 3 , 3 2 6 , 3 3 { , 3 5 2 , 3 5 3 n , 37+, 3?5; r.. drro p.us€s h.r, 3r3, 3r1, j66 H i n d i,7 5 history, of prrgrh.rica, r-5, 3!ff 'holcs', r." ud.' prcaupposition holophr$.s, zBr honorific conco'd, 7o, 90, 93, r30, 249i t.. ako .Er.''n nr honorifica, 25, 28, 63,9o-'4, r29, r3o, 166, lddrcssc€, 90, 92-3 b y.t.n d € r ,9 0 - r refcrcnt, gofi; rcc alro T/V pronoun! hyb.id th€ory of mcanina, r5, !32, I4s, 2as idc.lir.tion, j3 identific.tion, of 3pccl.r, rr. !nd.' idiom!, 268-70 il, 47, rlr 2, r1s-5, rs2-t,266-?i tc. olro condition l. lFlD,2lt; r.. illocutionary forcc (indicnins d€vic.r) iflocution.ry rct!, 23 r, tf6-ji tc. ako v3. locutionlry .c6, 236 vr. pcrlocution.ry .€t!, 46-7t t.c ako pcllocution.ry .ct! ilfocution.ry forcc, 236fi, 27j, 28tt rc. drro F.fo.mr.ivc., rpccch rct! .cquilitioo of, r.. !n/.t rpc€ch .ct3 404
consrituied by fclicity conditions, 238-40, 2{4-5 convcntion.l n.turc of, r". t rd.t sFech indicriin8 d€vic.s, 238, 4s,241,
z4S,
indircct, r.. indir€ct spc€ch .crs ind intcntion, 24 r , 282 ki').& oI,2t9-12i t.c alro !rd.r sp.cch .cis (clsssific.tion of ) litcraf vc. indirccr, 263-76, zsrl tcc also indirccr !p.€ch act! multiplc, z6t, 29c r vs. pcrlocution, \6 7, 21r-2, tcc .bo pcrlocution.ry .cts v!. proposition.l contcnt, 46, 2+2, 2t!, 215 t.dudio.r to t.uth conditions, 2a6 7, and !ynt.x, 2+7-5r, 260 j, 26s-8, 269, 272-3 rrnper.nvc, 40, to7, 231, 242,213,211, 219, 25o, 263-76 p...i.n, 35o, 365 implication, logicrl or matcri.l, to3, !.. alro conditiomls, cntlilmcnt ' '6; prrSm.ti€, r3fi, zr-2, {8 $i
t.. ako
implic.tion.l ic.lc, r.. !c.l€ implic.turc, ro, 27, 31, 37-8, Ch. 3, 285, 292, j72 i r.. olro convcEraion.l implicrturc, convcntional implicatu.c, muims or convers..ioD kind! of, t26-3r .nd l.n8'[gc atructurc, 162-6,77r .nd m..nin8-nn, tor probl.ms for thcory of, r 18-22, tl6, r4s-7 uni vc$.l i ty of, ro3, r20-r, r28 implic.turc exprclsion, 207-9 implicitncss in communic.rion, r7-r8, 38-9; 3.r alr indir.ction in.ppropri.tc utt.r!nc.s, r". .nom.ly, rppropriitcnca!, fclicity, infclicity incidcntel w. defining chir.ctc.istica, r ro, r 50- r ; r?, alro connotrtion indcterminrcy, of implic..urcs, I 18, 160 indcx, r", pirsm.tic indic€! ind.xicdr, 55ff, 57i r., arro dciris indiccs, s". prrym..ic indiccs indircct lp€cch.ct!. so, Sr, 165! 26., 6t!r6, 2gr, z'a, 3s6-41 comprchcndon probl.m, 269fi, 28r dcfinirion of, .63-4 .nd f€licity conditions, 27r-3 idiom thcory of, 168-?0, 2?5
indir.cr 3pcech .crt (.ot,.) infcrence rhcory of, a68, 27o-4, 2?8-42, 29l rnd intonrtion, 269, 374 politcnes of, 2?l-{ rnd prc-r€q ues & ,36t-4 rulca for, 27r-3, 289, 29' .nd !ynt.x. 265 8,269, 27o,272 3, 363-t 366, 173 univ.r*lity ol 2?o, 276 indircct r€qu.sts, J?. r.rd.t requst8 indircction, n18,263-76, slsi t . ol'o indii€ct .p.€ch .cts fndo-EuroF.n lrnau.acs, a8i t.. ako y,A.r ; dio i&a I la,,stq. r inductivc inf€r€nce, r4-r5 ' aln i^felieir.!, 26, 229, 234- St 'c. f.licity enom.ly. .ppropria.cn€.s, infcrcncc, pregmrtic, r3-r+, 2r-2, 48ff, 76, Ch. 3 p.s!im, Ch. { p.$im, 269-76, z1t8z, 28j, 32619, 36q; rcc arro d€fcasibility, implic.turc, p..suppos;tion, indircct spcft b .ct contcxt-scn:itivc, r3-r{, j7, Jjfr, 99, fr5-r6, r 6?, rz t-2, rz 6-j , r37, ri s , rj?, r86fr, ry7, z7g-8r i te. oho dcfersibil;ty in conv.rs.tion, 39, 49, 279,287, 29o, Ir2, 32 rn, 5:6-33, 364 as coroll.ry of usi8" constr.inb, r32, 279-8o d€f.asiblc, r", d€f€asibility fr.mc! for, z 8r, 282, 312, 3?4 of illocutionery forcc, 269-76,278 82, 356-64 inconlilt.ncy of, tlt-,., t+5-7, t8g, rso, 2r!-s, 224-si t.c ako undct contcxt (inc.cmcntil modcl of), inductiv. v!. dcductivc, r 14-rs ki nd. of, r3-r4,38-40, r 26-r j l lioguirtic irructurc rnd, r67, 26j-8, 363-4 .nd mc.ninA-nn, ror rulc. of, 27o-2, 2?9, z9r v!. t m:nti. infcr.ncc, 8-9, r3-r4, 37-{, 55, 94-6,98-9, 132-47, 167, r77, t99-225,24643 cnd icqu.ntirl locrtion, r.. inf€rcncc (in .nd .pech .vc.rs, 2?9-60 i nfo.mrti vco€ 3s ,ror, 106, rrr, rl j , r3s , t16-7,2tE ,222 principlc of, t3t, 116, zt8, zzz input to a prramrtic theo.y, n. u"da .utonomy, 8o.ls
inscrtion rcquenccs, 3ol, 305-6, 3tE inteotion, communicativ., rr, rS-t7, 29, 6c ' ror, 24t, 273, 277, 282, rrs intcr.ction, t . fec€-to-f.c€ intcr.caion, 'intcr.ction.l p€ssimism', 274, t63 int.r.o8.tivcs, {o, r8!', 242, 2+3, 211, 25o, 263-76 pss.im. l5o-r, 365 me.ninS of, 274-5 intcrrupaion, .99, 320, 330 inronetion, r, 36. 233, 269, 296, 3o2, 313, 314, 374 invitrrionr, 328, 333-4, 336, 346 invircd int€rcnc6, r45-5 i rony , 8, 17, 26, 28, 9j , !o9, I 16, 126, 16r, r65,273 IS A ,263;,.. i ndi rc c t s pc ec h.c t! island conit..i.ts, 40 ,.panc ae,69,75, 77, E 3, 88, 90, 9t, 92, 93,94, r29,3o5 Iw . .* , + 2,9o,92,93, s 4,216 kinship t.rms. 70 r i r." alto voc.tivcs, ord srd.r eddr.$ (tcrms or) tno.r,, 136, IE6 loowl.ds€, rr" b.cksround knowl€dgc, .pb.cmic loaic, mutusl knowl.d8e Kor.an, 77n, 90, 93, 9{, r29 Kw6l*.1., 7zn L-t€ns€, ?7-E 22t-z l.mb&-.rtr.ction, lcnsu.sc chsngc, t.. di.chrony l!ngurgc-8!mc., 227, 28o-r; t . ako lpccch .vcnt3 hnguigc atructur. vs. l.ngusgc us€, 7-r r, 43, 89, 93, r6r, r62-{, !6a-6, 372 1 laneueec usct, rfi, z: l.ngu.g. und.ruarnding, .r-2, 24, 18fr, 76, g7-8, 116-7, 269fr, 27s-8\ !f2, 364, 375,377i t . aho ^n;fr.irl iDr.llia.nc.. communic.tion, l^wc, tc. und.t parse Lrtin, i4, 8l l .us hter,29r,324,33r lcft-dillocation, 89, 366; i.. aaro mov€mcnt rulc! lengthcnins, of syll.blcs! 3or, jjz, j4r, i74 l€vcb, of 8rrmm.r, r", compon€nB of linSuistic ahcory leric.l dccomposirion, 256 lcxicsl ircms, lcxicon, *ord-m€3ning '..
405
Subject index
Subject index lcxicahzrtion, t63-4 prlSmallc conslrarnls on, 37, roo, t6!-1,372 pregmatic information i", 8-9, 33-4, r o o , r 2 ? - 3 o , 1 6 2 - 3 , I7 9 , r 8 t- 4 , 20,6-7,2.1., 216, 268-7o, 372 .cduction of compl€xity in, 3?-8, 9 8 - r o o , r J7 - { 2 , !4 s, 1 6 ! 4 ,2 r o , z2 s,2 6 8 - 9 LFH, 263; r.. lil.tal force hyPoth.si3 litcr.cy, 46, 37E l i t cr a l m cm in g , I4 n , t7 n ,4 9 ,9 7 ,9 E, r o 2' rn, rs6; ra aho ccnrcnc€_mcantng' conv.ndonrl conr.nt, conv€Ycd mcsnins, lit.rrl forc. hypotheis vs. n a u r .tiv. u !c, I3 o , I5 r , t5 5 , r 5 o , 1 6 0 , 1 6 I, r 6 s- 6 litcref forcc hypothcsis, 267-5, 268, 27o' 41-4, 2821, 278, 242 3 lit.r.l v.. indir€ct forcc, 263-?6 P.ssim' 3s7, 363; r.. dfto indirecl tPc.ch .cts lit.r.l fotc. hypo.hcsi3 lit.r.ry critici3m, t.. .tylistic! loc.l man.8.m.nt lystcms, tn convcrlrtion, 297, 3oo, 3I8, 329, 369 loc.l vs. ov.tcll orSaniz.iion, t . local m.nagcmcnt lystcms, ov.rall organ|zatlon l €a lism ,8 s locutionary .cts, 236 l o sic,6 ,3 8 .5 7 9 ,7 7 . r o o . r ta - t6 , r 3 8ff' r 4 o - r , r 4 5 , I6 9 fi, r 7 4 , r ? 6 - 7 , Ie g fl ' 2 o r , 2 o 2 ,Z sr fr ,2 7 7 cfr*ic.l, s?, s8, r7s-4i t.. abo .nd d.fc.libility,
I r{-r6
Gpist.mic, ,re Gpistcmic losic .nd natur.l lenau.ge, 6, 58-9, roo, r38ff, r{s, r69fr, r71, qsn, 176-7, r 9 9 *2 o j, z5 r ff modal, r{o-r, 2o2 prcdic.tc, 38i rr. ato qu:nti6..s th r .€ - vilu cd , r ? 6 ,2 0 I lccond-ord€r, rs2n logical conncctiv.s, roo, t 38-40, r4t-2, r { 5 - 6 , t6 4 , Ig In , 1 9 2 - 3 , 2 o 8 , 2r r-r2; r.. dlro condition.lt, conjunction, dirjunction lo8ic.l conlcqucnc., 58, 9s, ro3, r4o-t, r74, r99; r.? o&o.ntrilm.nt, vrlid logical form, rr r, zt8, z2o-5i t.. atto s.m.ntic r€Prclcntition 406
of cl efi sentences,t25, 218 of definite d€scnpt'ons, t 7o-2 and i mpl i catutc, 122-5,2t8, z2o s .nd pr.supposition, t7o 1' 2t8' 22o S and sp€cch.cts,25tff losical mod€ls. of lan8u.g.' r.. riuth-conditionel scmantrcs' and rladcr losic (and natural language) loeical positivism, xii, 22?-E logical priority, of €omponenrs-of gnmm.r, ,.. .uronomv (o_l-. s€m.ntics). components ol lrngursttc
M-tens€, 77 8 Madurcsc, q: Malssrsy, 8t man-m.chine int€r.ction, 3?6 7 M.nncr, m.rim of, to., Io3, ro7-8' t 12, rr6, rr7, r20, r22, I25, rl 5, r40. r65,2I8 marked vs. unmti k€d turns,3o7 8,3r3' 322,3Jl ,3{2, J66 mrrk.dncas, 307-8, 333 maxims of convcrsation. rorfi, Ch 3 passim, z I8, 2+r, 293, 364' 367 t . ' alro Manncr, Relevonce,QualnY, Quantity h€dscs on, t6, nonlinguistic .nelogu€s of, rol Routing vs. ohervins of, rcl flouting' obscrvins, drd ard?' .xPloitation hybri d thcory of, r5, t12, I45, 225 kind. of, r3-I4; r.. ato inf€rencc plagm.tics63br.nchof rh€ th€orvof. I rff i". alro inf€r€nce, lit€trl mcanins, mc:nin8-nn, Pr.amaiics, s€mantics, !.nt.nc!-mcaning, utlcr.ncc_ mcrning, wotd-mcantng m€aninA po.tul.l.3, 27I meani ng-nn,16,49, ror, I r3, | 3I,23E ,24t mcaningfulnesr, t zo- r, zrz of tim., ?3ff m.dium, of communic.tion, 2r, 63, 93 m€nlion, r., usc w. hcntion mcrslinguistic u!.s of l.nsuaae, 7n, +r, 228^,2+7o, 36El t.. olto token-.e8€xivity, u3. v5. mentron m.taphor, 85, roo, r ro, r r8, o7, 1174., r05,:73 end enelogY, r55, r 59-02 .nd crtcgory vi ol .ti on, r5t. r5J, I57
cl.ssificltion of, r52 3 coftpa'bon rhco'y, r4E, tst { constru alrul c a for, I49, r5r, t58 co...rpond€nc. lh€ory, I 59-60 fcature transfet modcl of, r4E 5l focus of, r{8, r5o ahd identity r.l.iion, t52n, I6on indeterminacy of, | | 8, 160 int€raction th€oly, rat-sr .nd languigc ch.ns€, 165-6 and mod.ls, r17, t59-6o nomin.l, Is2 peraphrascsof, rso, ts6, r59{o pmgmatic rh.ori€s of, r 56-62 prcdic.tivc, r s2-l and psycholosy, r47, r5z, r58fr rccogni ti onof, r57! r58, r59, r6t rnd sm.ntic rnom.ly, t . rnd crtc8o.y .nd s.mrnric r€pr.3cntrtion, t54_5 semaDtic theorics of, r48-56 sentcnticl, t5l rnd si m i l c , r5t-6 and syntu, r54, t56, t66 'tri gaeB ' for, r5r misf€adin8 utreranc€s, to6, rtTi t.. atto misplacement ft.rk€rs, 3rJ, 322 rnisund€rstandin$, 279, 3lI, 351-4, 370, 371; t.. abo .r^bigrity , t.p.;r 'mi ti S ato rs ' , 271, 334, 33s ,3+ r modcl contcxts, .nd pr€suppGnion3, r92, r93,2o9,2rr! 22o modal logic, !?. qndrl logic modal i ty,78, r35 modl l s,99-roo, r3s , r38, r{ c -r, I92,2o2 modus tollens, r76 monitorins, audio-visuel, {4, 6s, 95 Montlguc gramm.r, 9s, t}r,.o7, 2oB mood, 233, t{3; rr. alro lcntcncc-typcs Moo!.'s p.rrdox , roo, ro5,2j 5 horphemc., distributior| oI, tc. und.r synl.ctic rul€s morphology, 6J, 70, 77-8, 92, r3o, 249 movcs, i n tc r.c ti on!1,288, 3o3, 3ro, 3r r hov€hent rulca, j7j murud kno*l€da., 16, 44-S, I t3-I+, r87, rqo, zos, z8s; szaalro background knowleds., common Sround narrariv€, r?. stori€s natur.l vs. s.tificill lsnguagcs,6, t38, t15, t74, t?6,376 7i s .. ak o
rnifici.l intcllia€ncc, dcfcssibiliry, losic (rnd nstur.l l.n8u.sc) n€c.3rity vs. porribility, r34, r35, r37, rao-r ; ,"? d&o rnod.lity , atd utdct losic (mod.l) nc g.ri on, r39n. 16!-4, 169-76,2r8 .mbi gui ty of, r7r_3! r94, 2ot' 2o3, con3trncy undcr, I68f, t?? !, r8+-5' r93, r99 dc fni ti ons of, Iz s , tZ8 .rc rn.l v r. i nt rn.l ,2or,22r-2 lcxic.lizttion of , I 63-{ ,copc o(, 171-2,2or, zrt, 22t-2 rnd prc.upposition, t . ud"' prcguppocition lcst, for prduppositio , t. cons!.ncv ncsrtivc poLrity ircm!, t65 n.Sitiv€r, r.. ncSrtion Nel" G'rin€a, l.n8u!8c! of, 82 ncr{i, in conv.rr.tion, 3I tn, 35off; t.. ar'o sivcn/ncw, ort n.rt-spc.k€r iclcctioo, 298, 3oo, tol, 3zo. 365 n.x t turn rc p.i r i ni ti .tors ! 334, j 39,34r, 342, !s r,359,365 null contcrt, 8-9 non-convcnrional rlp€cts of rn..nin8, r2n, f5, ror, rt2-3, rt7, rt9, t3t-2i r.. arto conv.r.a.ional implicetutc, a'd snder lpc€ch rct3 (!nd in!€ntions), prcsuppo.ition (rcduction ot) non-convcntionrlity, of implic.tur€s, I r7, of p..suppositions, 2o6fi, z'6fr non-co-op.r.tion, t2r-2i t.. ako non-dcictic utrg., of d.iciic .xpt.ssion3, 65-8; r"" d&o .n.phoric usrsc of dcictic cxp.€$ion! nor-d.rschibility, ttc-rz, I r9-2o, r,a,a, 2oo,233-{ end conv.ntionil implicrtur€r, r28, r29 and prcsuppoiition, I t6, 223_4 non-synonymy, .nd implicrturc, t25, I44 non-truth-condition.l r3pecl3 of mc.nin8, r3-r4, 19, s 9.87-8,94 6, t2?-3o, Cb. 3 paslim, r88n, r99-22s, ch- 5 noh-v.rb.l cues, ]31i t.. abo s.ze, p.u3€s, pro3ody NTRI, 339; r., n€xt turn rcpcir initistor.
407
Subjcct index
Subject iadex oblcrving, of th€ m.xim3 of conv€rsstion, ro+, fos-9r r 13, rz6-7; ve also ofrerc, z4o, 2s9,272,289, 29o, 293, 3o3, 3 r o , 3 3 + , 3 J6 , 3 4 i, 3 .tt, 3 5 9 pr€f.rr.d to rcqu.tt3, 343, 355, 3s9 o h , 2 , 3,3 3 , r 2 9 , 1 6 2 ,3 r r ,3 5 3 o k a r , 3r 1 - 1 8 , 3 2 2 ,3 2 5 , j+ 6 , 1 6 6 under op€nin83, of conv€rlition6, '.. ovcr.ll ors.nizltion o r , r 3 4, 1 3 6 , r 3 7 , I3 8 - 4 0 , t4 t, r 8 8 n , 2 t t; r.. a&o disjunction ordcr, of reponcd €vcnts, 3s, ro2, ro8, 146; rr. alro Mmn.r, 3torics orde.t, 212,2,17, .16, 263-1, 2?2,276, 2 7 7 ,2 7 8 to convcrs.tionsl principles, r03, 3r9ff !pati.l, rr. dciris rnutu.l, in int.r.ction, ,14-5 o3tcn3ion, r.. aeturel u3age ostcnsivc dcfinition, of preamarica, 27! 3 t- 2 ov.r.ll olsrnizction, of convct$tion, 49-50, 3ot-r8, 322, 328, t29, i66, 309 closing sec.ions in, 316-ta, r22, 366; r:c alro clorings opcnina .cdiont in, 3o9-rz,32., t2!, 327-{, 343-5, 366i t . dto s.G.tings a n d r o p ic, 3 o 9 , jr 2 - t6 ,3 2 5 ovcrhcercrr, zz; rau a&o bystaoders orc.'.p, 296-7, 299, 3o2, 3o3, 334, 3os vs. lntcrrup$oo, 299, 3I9 20 ..solutioo sFtem fo., !oo-r,319 ovcrstrtcm.nt, 165 6 P.cific l.n8uases, 9I; t c abo und., i,rdiuidtol lansuas.' p.rrhnaurSc, 63i t?. alto gazc, ptGody p.rcnthctiel clause3, r?9, r83-4, 266 p.rticip.nts, r-5, 23,6t, 72, E3, 89fi, ro2, zo 5 , 2 r 2 , 2 2 9 ,2 9 5 ,2 9 7 , 3 o o , 3 3 7 , lst-s; lcc alro ddtcssccs, by3t.nder!, mutuol kno{l€d9., pa.ticipant-rolc, sp.*Gr' p.'ticiprnt-.olc, 23, 62, 63, 6tfr, ?2, 7i, 8+, 8s, sr ; tcc olso pcgon, tutn-taking p.rticf€!, 42, 87-8, 92, 93, 129, 162-3, 225,2J3, !65,372i tc. oko aawoy, p.nicularizcd implicature., tc. und.r convcrsstional implicatur. 408
partinS3, r?, closinas, conversation.l p.urca, 255, 299-3oo, 3o7, 32o, 16-9, 3t4, 33?, 138-a, 3,tr-2. 3r!t. 3?o, J75 'fi l l .d', s' vs. r.Psct, 299, 3oo, lo', 32o, 32. psychologicel theotics of, 3u6 v!. silcncc, 299 joo, 3zer, 324, 326-9, 337,339,31t-2 'pcrformadox', 252-8; t.. al'o und.r rdvcrbs (pcrform.tive) compctencc/p€tformanc€ pcrform.tiv. .dv.'bs, t.. und.. .dv.tbs p€rformrtiv. an.lysis, t t pcrformative hypothcais p€rformativc claus€, 247-63 p.ssim dclction of, 24&-9, 25o, 260-2 pcrformative hypotherit, 24743, 27 t, 272 3 col hp.c of,2sr-63 s.mantic b.sis for, 24G7, 25t-6o strong vcrsion of, 25o r synt.ctic bisis for, 2+?-So, 260-3 p.rformrtiv€ pr.6x, 244, 246, 217, 2!l9, 253-5 pe'formrtivc vcrbs, 42, 232,233-4, 241, 2.+t-9, 2So, 256, 258 r, 263 clissification of, 234, 239-4r, 24s pcrformrtivc vs. descriptive use€ of, 2t.-1,, 2+S-{' 252-5, 259 p€.forrn.tives, 22t-t7 pissim, 244-63 passim, 282; J.. alto !'d.' ip.€ch vs. corct.tivcs, 229-3 r, 23+-5 expl i ci t, z3r-3, 237, 24.1,2sr_5i truth conditions of, 245-6, 246-7, zst 9, 2q-4,275 i mpl i ci t, 23i , 233, 234, 244,2+7-8, 25t-5,274-5 no.m.l form of, 4t 3,23s,24t., 217tr tcnsc/gsp.ct of, zl t-2, zrzn truth v!. fclicity of, 228-3t, 234 5, 246 j ,2st-6o p.rlo€utionfry rcts/.fr.cis, 23q, z4r 2, Prop€rti€s of, 237. 292 iespons€sto, 29o, 292 pc.mi$ion!, 2j6, 27j, 28o Fr.on dcixis, 20, 56, 62,6t-?3i pcrson, soci.l d€ixi!
'..
also
6rst, 54, 62, 69, r86, 23I, 248: i ncl usi vc vs. cxclusive, 69, 28on iccond, 54, 62, 65, 69, 92, 248, 249
rhird, 62, 65, 69, ?o, 72 founh, 88 pcEpicuity, ro2, ro4; ,.. dlto Mlnncr pcrform iv€ hypoth6i! PH,247; '.. ph.tic function of hn8u.8€, 4I phonoloay, 34, 93 phitocophy, of lrnguegc, I-5, 36, 285, 371 and d.ixir o' indcticrl3, 55fr, 68, 80, 87, 9{-{ .nd prcluppo3ition, 16?, 16r-76, 225 .nd sp.€ch .ct!, 22?-46 pl.c€ d.ixi!, 5r-2, 62,79{5i
t . drto
.mpiric.l vs. thcorcticrl, ,3, 279, 285 scncrrrivc lidgui3lict rnd, xii, 35-8' 4o' r3o, 167, 176, 217-Sr, 2Oa-3, 372-+ sg,76 eo.L of ,7, ry1.' motiv.tion! for, 35tr; .nd philGophy, PhilGoPhY '", rnd phonology, rzz, :23-1; t . abo .nd ptychofin8uiltic!,27, t7si r.. al'o psycholoSy Pur. vr. dcscriPtivc, r_2, 3 r.duction of, to t.m.nlic!, 94-6, 176-7' rgg-2o1, .1ffi3 rnd rc menti c , rff, r2-2r,33-5,55, 59, 91-6, 176, rg9-2o4, 2 r9-2., 225,
tnd dircourlc d.ixis, 8s .nd tiftc dcixit. 64 s pLa!., to, 26s-6, 268, 269, 27o, 272, 363, 36{ ' plu8s', r."'.'d"' prcs'rppo3irion plup.rf.ct, 77i r, a&o tense poctic func.ion of l.nsui8c, 4t po.try! r47! rt6 'poi nt', of !n utt.nnc c , 98, tto-t, 219,
37' rnd ry ntex ,:i , rff,4r,89,92, r25, t3o, 161-5, r8r-1, 217-5 t, 260-3, 265-8, 269, 272-3, 2s?, 361-6, 372-3 univcr:rl vr. lmgurgc-rpccifc, Io, 4z-3, 45-{; t . ulto comprrbon (!cro3. l.nsursd), univcrsrls pr.gmati.m, r, 5? Pre-rn.ounccmcnl!, ta. ntdrt pic-
point of vicw, 64, 72, 8r; rae alo dcictic
ptc-clo.ing , te. ud.r Prc-!.qucncc! pr.-crnprivc u3c, of dcictic word3, ?5-6 prfcrcnc. orsmizition, 3od, 327, 33.-,t5, 355-6, 357-6+ P.!!im, 368, !69; of tum., Jj2-9; t.. ol'o disprcfcrrcd tu.n!, prcfcrrcd turn! of !.qucnc.., 339"45i t . d&o prcfcr'.d
poli.G pronoun., T/V pronoun! politcn.33, 43, 83,'.. r3r-2, 165,249,273-4, 3oo, 376 *quenti.l, 3{Eff charactcrizationsof, :+6-7, 34s-s2 vs- turn, 348-9 possi bi l i ty,99, r34, r35! rJ 7, !ao-r, r92, zo2, 2o9; t.. alto 6
pr€f.rr€d!, 3o8; ,.. prcf.rred .u.n!, di3pr.fcrrcd tums prcfcrrcd rcqucnccs, l!9 +5, 355fr au.!s.. v3. t.lling3, 35on, 356, 359n o6cr! vi. rcquclts, 343, 3{,r, 355-6, 359, !oo- r in op.nm8r, 343-5 rccosnitions B. lcU-idcntific.tion!, 343-5 m r.P.rr, 339-t2 prcfcrr€d turn!, jo7-8, zlz-+; rcc olso dilprcfcrrcd turns prep.rrio.y condition, ,.c nd./ felici.y prc-ftqu...s,
t.c rnd.,
Pr.-3.qucnc€s
pr.4, r1s; rc. und., p.c{cq'rcflcca (6r!t tumr of) pr.-&qucnc€s, 3o8, 345-6a, 369 rbortc d, J { ?,3j 2, l s E chrrrdcriz.tion of , 346a compGcd of.djac€ncy priB, 349-50
409
r
Subjat
prc-scqu.ncca (60rr.) firut t'rrns of, 345, 346, 3Jo, 3s2, 353, 3 5 7 - 9 ,3 6 2 - 3 ,3 6 4 morivctiom for, j47, j54-6, 357-9, 363 in opcning!, 345-6 porition. vr. turn! in, 348-9, 35o pr.-rnnounccrncntli 32j, 34956, 362 pr.-rrr.ng.rhcnt!, !4?-8 prc-cf 6in83, 3 r7-r8, 322, 12s, 116 rnd prcfcrcncc o.g.niz.tion, J55 6, 157-04 psrrm prc.invit.tion., 346-? prc-offcr!, 3{9 P r c- r .q u cstr , l2 r ,l2 ? , 3 4 1 , 3 1 4 , 3 1 7 , 348, 3SG6a; snd indircct r.qu.sts, 36 r ff prc-:clf-idcotificrtions, 344, 346 t r u n c.tio n o f,3 6 r - 4 p r € 3 up p o 3 itio n ,9 ,1 1 , 2 S- 4 , 2 7 , + 5 ,5 2 , rr 3 n , r r Sn , r r 6 , r r ? , r 2 o n , r 2 8 , r 3 r , C h . 4 , 2 3 5 , 2 .2 , 2 sr , 2 sg ,2 a F s, 3 0 4 ,3 7 2 ,3 7 3 ictull v3. potcntial, zr2 and rsscrtion, 169-?0, r?3, r8o, r97, .nd b.cksround b€licf, rcr background knowl€d8e, common ground, mutu.l knowlcda!, prclupposition (and hutual knowlcdSc) c.nc.llation of, r8qjo, r9r-8, 2o?-9, zr r ,2 r a - ts a n d co n d itio n a lr ,r 8 + , t8 s, r 8 8 , r 9 j, r 9 S, tg G- E, 2 o o , 2 o 2 , zo 8 ,2 o 9 - r o , zt3 - r 1 , 2 z1 i t.. a b o ' fr k ..' o f cnd conjunction, r9?, 2o<),2tr . n d co n ve n tio n il im p lic.tu .e , r 3 r , 2 o j- r 2 ,2 1 6 , zr 7 conv.ntionality of, 206-1, 2 t z, 2 r6fr rnd conv..s.tionil implicrtur., r r6-r7, t3 6 - 7 , I8 6 , r 9 + n , r s6 , zt3 - r 1 , 2r7-25 d c fc..ib ility o f, r 8 6 a r , r 9 9 , r o 4 ,2 r o ft, dcfinitiong of, q2, t7S, rj6, r84-s d e n ir l o f, r ? r - 3 , r 9 o , r 9 f5 , zo r i zr o , 2r + - r s dct.chsbility of, 206, ..3{ r n d d ir ju n ctio n s, r 8 8 , r e 3 , t9 6 - 8 ,2 @ , 20 2 - 3 ,2 r r , a r ' 2 2 + .nd cntrilment, 174-7, r78 t, r9r-8, t9 9 - 2 o 3 , zr 3 - | s, 2 t7 - 2 s cntiilmcnt/implicature .n.lFir of , 2r ? - 2 5 snd fcliciry conditiorc, r68, 259 '6ltcn'of, r 96-8, uoo, 2o8, 2oq-ro, 2r r t zr o t 2 2 1
4r o
Subject index
index hctcrogcncity of, r8o, 2r7 'hol €3' for, r9J, r95, r98, 2o8, 2r r, 2r6 .nd modll cont.xt!, tg4 rg3,2oz and mutu.l know l cdge,2s-6, r r3n, 2o5, zto-tt,212, 2ts .nd ncs.tion, 168, r6q-76, 178-9, r84 5, r93, ror,2o3, 2ro, 2rS , 2t7-81 2r9' 22r 2 end philosophy, r.. r.rd.r philosophy in positivc ..nt.ncc., r9j, r9!t-5, r97 'pl u8s' for, r95-6, r98, 2o8, 2rr, 2rs, Pr.8m.[ct 90, t77,201-45, 259 projc€rion of, r9o, r9r 8, r99, 2oo-3, 2o7-ro, 2r2-t6,223-s propcnic! of, r 85-198 .c-.llocation of, 2t6-25 ..ducrion of, ry1n, 217-25 lcmantic, r74-?, r78n, t9tsoa cnd s€nt.nc. ltrucrurc, 16?, 206 sena.nc€svs. utt.r.nc€s, as bcarers of, r7o-3, t7S , tj 8, zo7 <),2t2 spc.ker-, r7o, t13, tj 7, rygn S trr*son's conceptof, r1z,r7S , t78,tj s su.vival, in mod.l conrcxt., r92, 2o2, 224; in compound lentcnces, r8{, I93; th.ough'hol cs', r93, r9S , 196, r98 susp€nsi onof, rr5n, r95 and syntax, 206, 373 trigS€rs of, r79, rtt-S, zos 6, 2o7, zt2, zt6,2tB r.d truth conditions, tgg 2o3,2t2 and truth v.luc!, t6g-jj, t78 uni vcrs.l i ty of,2r6 of adv.rbs, r8+n of ch.ng.-of-stltc vc.bs, r8r-2, '7{, r88 of cl cfts, r:5, 182,1, r8s,206,2tj -22 of comp.ri$n!, r83 of .ounl€r-f.ctu.ls, r84 of de6nir. descripiioN, tz2. t74, r8l of facti vc v.rbs,25-6, 79-80, r88, ' '8r, r89-90, r93, j 73 of implic.tivc v.rb!, r78 r, r8r of itcrrtivcs, 52, r8z, r93 of propcr nlmes, r7+, t79 of qu.ntificrs, r 7l.'69, of qucstions, r84 of relativc clauscs, r79, 183-4 of iinSul|r tcrm!, r74 of str.ss, r8j , 2r9, 324 of tcmporal clsuscs, t74, r7g, r82 of vcrb! ofjudsins, r82
principles, of hnsua8e us.' 9-r r' 32' 35' t8, 272; t". d&o €xptcasibility (principlc of ), imPlicrtur.' inform.tivcnc$ (PrinciPl' of ) projcct.bility, of ium complction, '97 projcction Problcm, 13 for implicsturcs, r33-4' r30- 7' ra:-4' t 45-7, 24-5 for pr.luppo3ition!, r90, tgt-t, r99-2o3, 2o7- t o, 2r2- ro' 223- 5 promi.c!, 106, 23o. 23&9,21o' 259''77; t.. a&o commitsivc3 pronominalization, 86 pionouns, 3-4, 69ff, 85-7 .nd ln.phota, 85-7 comPon€ori.l .n.lysis of, 69 sDd discouruc deixi3, 85-7 of lizincss, 8G7 and
[email protected] d€ixis. 9off p.op6;ti on., 30 r, 58-9, ao' 93' It7' 242' 245 proposi ti ona l .R hudc s ,r95, 24r proposition.l content, 228n, 49, 21o, p.opositional contcnt condirio , t., und.r felicity conditions prosody,x,36 ,7t,93, t83, .25, 255,269, 296, 3o2, J t t, 3r3, 34,1,364,371it.c d&o intonation, lcngthening, silcss proxim.l vs. distal d.monst..tivcs, 62, 8ofl, 87 psycholoSy, .nd pragm^ries,2, 1, 5,27, r59-6r, 28r, z s s , 3o2, 326, 332, 175 Qual i ty, mari m of, tor, ro3, ro5-o, rog ro, r57i t . abo itony, m.t.Pho. quanti fi €rs,37-8,roo, r2r, r33-4, r38, r,a3 4i t.. d&o arr,.xiltcntial quantifrcr, tornr, univers.l quantifi.'' and grlr' conveGation.l implic.tutes, presuppo!itions Quanti ty. m.ri m of, ror, roz , ro3, IoG? rro-rr, f13! t3t, t!2 47, t63 4, 2I3-r4,354,355 cla$al implicrtu'cs of, 42, 46-45, r88n,2r 3-I4,225 conflicting inf.rcn.c!, r45-7 sc.l$ implicstur.s of, '32-6, '38-46, t63-1,2r3-t+ ,221 quccl ar.ri vc !,373 qu.sti oN , 1 05-6, to7, rE 1,239, 242, 263-5, 26G-7, 27o, 271 5,276, 274, 28tn, .8 9,29o,2s 3, 298, 32?, 33o,
336, 352, 353-4; r.,,rto .nd.n!w €rs , 289, 293, 3o3' !o5' 3o7' lzo. llo; scaalso adjeccncYPrtrg' k i nds of, r84, 273n, 274-5, 327' 366i rt? a&o €cho-qucations as rcqucs$ to tcll, 256, 275 rhctoric.l, r ro, r57, ros' 274, 37! Ouilcutc, 43 R, 3o7n; ra r.c.ivcr r.dicrl p'r8mitic.' 37n' zztn ,^ rari onrhty ,44, tor, r03' r2r. I06.24I' 259,27o of s i c nol s ,16,63;' .. dl ' o rc c i P i ' nt of tclcphonc calls 3oTn, 3o9ff, 32?-8' 343 5 receiving time, 62,'Z:ff recipicnt, of m€ss.8c, 16,68fi, gr' 24rt r:: alro eddresscc!, perticiP.nt-rol.' r.ckonina, of tim., 73' 76 rccognition, of lPeik€r! bv h€rrers' r?' sperk€rs (idcntific.tion of ) 'r'r&' messrees, and dcixis' 73 a' recordcd 378 redundanc y ,t2o, 163, 164' r94i t.. atto
lnd d.ixi!, s8-6I, 79 end prcsupposition, r 6g-l+ and topic, ! r3-r 5 r.fcr€ncc poin.s, d.ictic, s8, gs' z+g-so refcrcncc timc, lz-8, 8+ refercnt honorifi cs, qoff rcfcreotiil funcrion of l.naussc, 4t, 46i rac a&o function: of hnguegc rcf€r.ntial vi. .ttributivc ulca of rcfcrrinS cxprclsions,60 rcflcxivcs, 2+8, 273 rcfus.ls, 33atr, 357 9, 364i n. atto disprefcrred turns, aad lnr'cr ,.g/.t,25 4, r79-8o, r8r, r88, z 23i t.. rcgulativc rules, rzu constitutivc v3. rc8ulitivc 'ulc! rcinforccability, I20 noo-rdtti c ti v G, r65, I83-4, 26r rcstrictivc, t83 ro7' R .l ev anc ., mrx i m of, ro:, toJ , ' o6n' ro9n, rrI.f2, r27, 13' rS 7, 164,
4r r
Subject index
Subject iadex
rcpair, convers.tional, 3o3, 3o8, 3r9, 330, 134, r39-ar, 3a8, JS9{o opponuniti6 for, 34o, 3{r other-initirted vr. sdf-initietcd, 31o-2, 3 5 9 ,3 0 5 othcr-r.peir v3. !€lf-r.p.ir, 340-2 p r cfcr cn ccin ,3 4 r - z .nd syntri, 365 rcpt.!.ntrtives, 24o, 241 r . qu ct.t, So - ' r ,9 8 , r o 7 ,2 3 9 4 o ,2 + 2 ,2 43, 258, 259, 26r, 263-76 pa$im, 28o, 28r, 282,298,3o5.336,3{7, 3{8, 356-64 i r." arro p..-rcqu6rs indircct, 264-5, 266, 268, ljo, 27z, 35tr4 rcfus.ls vs. scccptanc€sof, 3o8, 333,7, 357-j icplaced by ofrcrs, 3,+3,344, 355,6, 3 5 9 ,3 6 0 - | rcspcct, rr. honorifics, polircnesi ihctoric, 38, r47, r 58, 376 rh.to.ical qu6tion!, r.. udcr questions rnual-constriint!, a4, 45,6 'rituql' formulcc, raa formulac, polit.n€sj rol€, of prnicip.nt! in 3pech cvent, rca panicip.n.-rol. S. E. Asian fanguegcc,77n, so, rzgt '.. alro unda ;ndhridual la"suos.' ' s c id ' 8 . im p fic.r .d , 9 1 - 8 , r r zfr , r z7 , r3r! r32 S .m a l, ? 2 ,8 1 sc.l.r, implicatu.es, r.. r.rd"r Qulnrity s czle .lin su i3 r ic,t3 3 , r 3 8 , r 6 3 ,4 ,2 r 3 scoF, .mbiauities of, r", !'dz .hbiguity seconds, or sccond pen., r.r ,rrla .dj.ccncy p.irs scl.ctiohrl rcstrictiom, r ro l c lf- .d itin s, 3 r J. 3 3 4 , 3 + r , 3 6 5 ,3 7 Si' c. lclf-idcnti6c.tion, s!.,ndar speaker self-rcferring cxprcssions, sca tokcn-rcflcxivity *mantic cnrcifm€nr, qi,
rggfii a. ako
.cmcntic f..lures, r.. comrroncnriil s€m.n.i€ pr.suppolhion, vc utdet p.esupposition tem.ntic r€l.tion!, t74, r99 smsnfic rcpr$.ntatton: and irhplicctur., 122-5, 2.o-s .nd prc&pporirion, 2oZ, zr9 25 ,nd lpech .crs, 2+6-q, 268 s€m.ntic lhifr, r65-6 4r2
hordet with pragmatics, sae undet inrer.ction with pr.amatics, rl-t5, 20, 3o..S ,55, 59, 94-5, 98-roo, t22-4j , rS 6ff, r62-6, tZ+-t, rggfi , zrZ zS , 46, z4S , 246-7,25r-60, 268 9, 274-\ 372 kinds of thcories of, rz-r3, r48ff, r99fi, 2o3fr, 245, t . aho t lth-conditional scopcof, r-5, rzff, 28, j 8,55,59,94-6, 98-roo, r32, r48 56, rgg 2o1, zjs simplific.tion of, 37-8, 98-roo, ro8-t, r32-47 r., alro truth-conditional sem.ntics semiosis, rar semiotics scmiotics, branch€s of, r-5, 6, 33 semi-s.ntcnc€s, r65n sndcr of signals, r6, 63 scnsc vs. rcference, r7o snses, proliferation of,99, ro8-9, r3: 47; s.. ako undd .mbig\tiry sentence,t7, r& r9,25,3o--!, 35, 55 6, 59,68 j ,94, ro4n, t33-4, r72, r7s, t78, 2o7j ,2rr, 2r2, 23|n, 242-3, 241fr, z't, 263fr, 2754, 288,29t, 365-4, t12-4: se. oko scntence-fr.8m€nt, s€ntence-mcening, senrence-typ€3,utt.rance .s unit of conve*ation, 288, 29r, 294, 297 vs. uttcrance, rr. lndrr utterance sentenc.-fragm€nt,16, t8, r65n, z9r '64, s€nt.ncc-mcanin8, tj, r8-2o, 59,273i t.. d6o conv.ntional cont.nt, lit€rll sent€ncc-tokens, r9 scnt€nce-typer, 40. 42, 233n, 242,213t 244, 2So, 263-5, 2j1-5, 276, 35o, 357, 305,373 mernina of. 43, 214, z'o, 274-5, v!. s.nt€ncc-tokcns, t9 syntlx of, 25o, j73 and truth conditions, 24jft, 25|fr, 274-S univ€rsrls, 40, 2{2, 276 seq'rcnce, convcrs.tionrl, tg, 279, 2A6, 3o8, 3ro, J26ff, 339-69 pessim; rrc ,rro adjsccncy p.irs, pr.-s.qucnc€s, r.p.i., and undc. conv.rc rior. of pGhions vs. turnr, 348-9, 35o focrtion in, Jr2, 32G32, 315fri r.. ako
s€qu€ncins rule3, in convc.sttion, '.t ral./ conv.rc.tron sttinS, r.. context, fo.m.litY 'scrr;nc a€f.c ri on' ,theo.y ol , ? gi t.. aho dis.mbiau'tion shared knowlcdec, rce background kno*l.ds€, common sround' mutull
indcxic.l, 57 systems of, tr, t.miotica paules silcnc., r", !'/.' si mi l es,r5r 6 si nceri ty ,5r, ro:, ros ; s c aal ro fel i c i tv condirions, QuilitY situation of utt.rrnce, c.nonical 63' 73; r., dto contcxt, dcixis, 3p.cch .vcnt slots, convc.sationsl, 3r2fr, 32s, 33t, 337' 34o, 346, 367 social constr.inis on lanauaSc u3c, x, $-6, 89, 27s i t . also.ittalsocisl dciris, 46, 62 3, 64, 70, 77n, 8994' at'o tz8-9, 166, t77, 3?1i '.. honorifica, T/V pronouns absolut€ v!. .cl.tion.l, 9o-l and conv.ntional imPlicature, t 28-30, 177 .nd praamatic prcsupposilion, r77 t77 and truth-conditions, 96, n8i, scial rank, r.. socicl st.tus social r.lationship, 69 7I,89-9,1, r29, 28o, 295; t.. alro honorifics, soci.l d.ixis, scial statut s@i al strtus , ro, 23,2s ,63,69 7o, t29i ,.€ dl'o honorifica, social dciris sociolinguistica, .nd praSmenct, 2, 25, 27-9, 33, 93-1, 295, 3h9, t71-Si t.. a6o vlrirtion son.,37.''8, rt9...2o, r2t-2, t33 1, t4z-4, 163-4,3??; !.. arro quntifiets sourcc, of m€ssqe, 68, 72-3 dcictic cltcgori.s of, J.z place dcixis conceptualizrtion of, 68, 79, 82-3 S pani sb ,83 speakcrs ,r...5,8, 9, t6, r7-t8, z o,23,.4n, 5r-2 ,53,56, 58, 62, 64, 6& t3, E r, 9o-2, tot 2, roan, tI3, I34-6, r43, f57 8, r7o, r73, t77,2o5, z t2n, 213 14,2r8, r38 9,24o,248 9,25o, 26o, 27 t, 272, 216, 277, 296fr, 3rr 12, 337, 143 5 i denrifi c ati onof, 56, ro9, 3r t-r2, 328, 343 -5,346,354 selection of, ra. n€xt-sp€.ker sclcction
rnnsition b.t*.en. rr. tum-t.kin8 spcaker-m€.nins, r7i tr. alto intcntion, mcanina-nn, uttcr.nc.-h€.nin8 spcakcr-rcfcrcncc, vs. rcm.ntic r.f.r€ncc, spc€ch acts, 9, 27, 42, 45, 7I, 89, to5, C h. 5, 28s , 288ff, 332, 352,351,357fr, 168, 373; t., dto illocorion.ry forcc, pcrform.rives abusc vr. misfirc of, z3o acquisition of, 28r 2 rmbiguity of term, 116, z+l 'Antith.si3' th.ory of, 246-63 ch.rrcr€'ization of, .33-1, 48-42, also f.licity 244 s, 276 8', '.. cf.lsificction of, 234-5, 239-+2, .+s conscqu.nccs oi 237, 259 conterr-chrn8G thcory of, 27G8 convcntion.l n.ture of, 229-3o, 237, 24r, z + 3,264,282 .nd conv.rcation, 278ff, 285, 288-94, rt2,368 d.finition of, ,36 'famify r€lations' of, 238n, 214-5, 274 felicity condirions on, t . und.t l.liciry mapp€d onto utt€r.nc.s, 263 76, z7a U, 288'92 indir.ct, r.. indircct lpccch acts institutional preconditions for, 229, 21o,21r, 2+ ?n, 2tu i nd i nteni i on3,229, 238, 24r, ?82 int...ctionrl $pects of, 47, 2s9-6o irreducibility of, 216,?Stnoi t.c al'o ' Thc s i s ' mul ti pl €, Fr l c ntenc c ,2or,29o I vs. p.rfocurions, 237, 2+t, 213-1, 29o r€duction of, 246,2Sr,255, 258',r.. dto 'Antithcsis' and refer€nce, 60 and sinc€rity, 23o, 235 and 3yntax, 247-50, 260-3, 265-8, 373 'Th€sis' th.o.y of, 243-6, 2s1,257, 263 snd truth-conditionol !emanrics, 24F6J uptake of, 23o, 237, 260 univerrals of, z7o, 276 specch .vcnt, 83, 84, 95,279-8r,282 alto honorifica spe.ch lev€ls, 90; '.t s tl ndard i mpl i c .tur€s , Io{ , 106, to7, I rE ' star.ments, 58-9, r72.fr, 44-5, 242, 263-1, 276, 277, 28rn, t.. al'o assertion, constativ€s. rcPr.s.ntstivcs vs. s€naenccs,5r? |/td.t uttemnce (vs
4r 3
Subject index
Subject indcx 'm.in lin€' of, 88 i n c o n v.Bstio n , 3 2 3 - { ,3 2 8 - 9 , !!r 2 , 319, 3s2, 3s3r t.. abo order, Menncr srr.n8rh, lcnt.nti€, r33, r!7, r16i s.. olto inform.tiv.nc$. *.lc s t r € ! ! , x, J6 , r j9 n , I8 3 , r I9 ,3 4 r , 3 7 o , 37..i t.. oko prc$rdy ltructur.lbm, t6, 367 9r ; r.. alro dislosli!, formrlity, 'iylc. .tyliraic optioni, non-lynonymy of, I.5 3tyli!ti$, r4?, 226 of impcrrtivc!, 2{9 logicrl vr. lynt.cric, r7o-r, 22o-2 .nd .opic, tE, 22o s u m m o n *r , ? r , 9 2 , :8 r n , 3 Io , 3 6 5 r c . !o n ! fo r , 3 r o - r r , !r 2 ,3 I5 ,3 4 5 - { .ummon!-.nswcr rqucnccs, 3o9fr, 32o, 32 r , 3 4 5 - 6 lupplction, |nd honorifics, 92 surfrcc structurc : md irnplic:ture, r 22-5 inacrprctcd, r2Jn ako fnd prerupposition, |7s, t86i '.. und.t .riggct rnd rpccch ects, 247-so,26o-r,265 7 and tu.n! in convcr!.tion, 29?, 302-3 vr. cenccllation, of implicaturcs, I I5, of prcupporitions, I I5n, I94-5 switch, of dcictic ccntrc,64,6a', w olso turn-t.kin8 symbolic usegc, of dcictic crpre$ions, 65-8, ?r l y n o n ym y, r 1 6 , r 1 9 2 0 , r 2 5 , r 4 4 .yntrctic rmlarm., t64-5, 26r, l?3 ryntactic modcls, of discout.e, tcc !nd./ convcrurtion p t | g m r tic co n it..in B o n , xi,3 6 ,4 r , 88 - 9 , 9 2 , r 3 o , r 6 a - 5 ,2 0 6 , ? 6 3 , 265-8, 269, 21 2-3, 271, t63'4, 372-1 p.r8m.tic filtcriry of, ti, 36, 92, I3o, 26t,272-3 !ynt!r, t, 5, 36; r., arro tynt.ctic rulcs snd prrarn.tict, r?, L.td.' p..am.tics ryrtcm-con.tr.intt, {{ 3y3tcm-&nl.ncc, I9 t.boo 'l.n8urgci', ?2, 90; t r rlto bFrrndc's, rocial deixis
T69.10g, E8 tca-qucstions, 47, 26r, 298, 365 Tami l , zo,72,9t,92,93 t.rgct, of mcsssac, 68, 72 3, 260 tautol ogy, roo, tl o-tl , 124-5, I.? tclcphon., convcFrlion on, 52, 72, 29b' . zg7, 3o2, 3o?n, 3o9-t8, 327-E ' 343-5 rcnlc, 2o, 56, ?4, 7H, 25o tense logic, 77 rcn*lcr! l.nau.g4, ?? 8 tensclcssscnt€nces,77, 25o r tcxt dcixis, rtt discoursc deixis, deixis text aramm.r, 286, 288 Th.i ,9r 'Thesis',
243ffi s..
alro undet sp.ech
thi rd pcrson,6rn,62i r.. arroP .rson dci xi s thr€c-v.lu.d lo8ic, t76, t.. al'o truth-v.lue aaPs,truth values rdverb! of, r., adv.rbs reckoning of, 73 scmantics of, ?3 units of, 73ff ti'n€ deixis, 62, 73-9 and discourse deixis, 85 and placc deixis, 84-5 TIi ngi t,8l tok.n-rcffcri vi ty, 57, 62n, 86, 95, 254n ropi c, i n converB gti on, 5r, I I I, 293, 3rr-t6,324,325,366 chanS cof, 3t3, 314 collaborativ. construction of, lrs vs. scntenc€-topic, ??n, 88-9, 366; ,.. d&o 'cboutncss fi rst, 3r2-r3, 3t5, 3r8, 123, 325 .nd linguistic lt.uctur€, 366 in monotopic.l crlls, 316 and rcfd€oce,3r3-r5 topic/commcnt, x, 88-9, 225, tc. obo 'aboutness', backgroundins, 8iv€n/ncw, mutual Lnowledsc, pfcsuPPosrtlon topi cal i zsi i on,4t bro.d v.. n.rrow, 295 not.tion, 369-?0 limitations of. 295, 348n of prdody, x, 296 transderiv.tion:l coNrr:ints, 2?2-l transition rclevince placc,.97, 298, 299, 3oo, l o3,323,324,35{ trrnrrlron space, 3{o 'Fi angul ar' ki n t€rms, ?t
rrichotomy, syntrx/s.mrntica/prigmttics ulso comPon'ntr ot rfl, 33r '!. linsui3tic th.orY 't.iascr!', of infet.nce 4qil of implicarur€3, toE of indirect fo.c. intc'prctittons' 27o r' of mctdphor!, l 5 r. r57 of proupP ori ti ons , r79' t8t-5rrop.s, r.. crploit.tion, fiaurc3 ol 3p'ccn' , irony, mctePhor, und€G"tcmcnt' au'r ,rnd"' qucltions (lhetoricil) TI{P. :qz; rcc trensition rcl'vtnc' pl'ce Fuih, .nd frllity, 3-4, 20' 55fi,77'86' ror, r05, ro9-ro' I r{ -r5' I r7' r2{ ' | 36, t53, I55, ne1' 2r7,227' z z an' 22s, 231-5, z1o, 2!.2' 216-7' 252-31 t.t drto vcrifilbility Pr.gm.tic v!. 3.mantic, 252-3 truth-condi ri ontl l c mrnti c a, I2-r5' 26' t6a' 34, 35,55' 94-6, r28, Il tff' r9Y-2o3, 227, 21tt-7' 25tt)o' '71fi, limitations of, r2ff, 34-5' a8ff, 59. 94-6' r99 2o3, 97-8, I 14-t6, t24-S' t2E n' 2r9-2o, 2.7fr, 246, 25r-
Turki.h, 8t t'rrn3, t96-to3, !o7, 3r7,32', 33r-2, 332 4, 3a5-64 P .s s i m, 165, 368 .onstructiontl unrtr ol. 297-6' 3oo lo2, 365 dc l i y c d,334ff dc l i an of, 337, 35t' 362-3' 364' 365 cirendcd, 323-4, 354 sap! b.tw..n, 299-3oo. 392 int€rrcriv. conlltucl|on ot' 33o-7' 339' 168 ovcrlep of, rar ovctlaP vs. positions, 34t-9' 35o pr.fsccs to, 334 3urf.c.-structural n.tuc
of, 297'
turn-i ak i ng,r2,68' e963o3, 3r8. 3r9-2r' 322'5, 326-7, 33o' 33I-2' 354' 376 rudilory motiv.tion for, 3orn .thologicrl brlis of, 3or initistion of, 322-3' 324 locally-mtniacd vs. Prc-'lloc'tcd' 297' 3oo,3or,3I8 snd P.us6, 299-Joo' 3o2, 320-7 Prcci.ion of, 29?, 298 Propettics of, 29G7 rnd prosody, 297' 3o2' 374 rules for, 2g?, .98, 299-303 Passrm' 326 ' 3i 8nal l i n8' model of' 3ot 2 s us p.nti on of, 323-4' l 2E ' 3l r' 346 .nd 3yn.ax, 305 t€tmin.tion of, 324-5 univcrs:ls of, 3or T/V pronouns ;28, ?o,89' 90' 92. r28-to, I66 and t'uth conditions, 96, 128's' r77 Tzeltal, 93 undcrst.nding, 5.. lanausg. und€r!tandin8. uptake di s pl ayof, 3tt, 33I-2, 339-{ 0 undct3tttcmcnt, r57' 16r uni v ers .l qul nti nc r, 38, r2!-4' t!3 4, ta4, 163-4: t . al'o quantifiGrs univ.rctls, of prrgm.tics, xi' ro' 40' 45-7' 69, ?8, 90. to3, t2o-r' z or' 2ro,22r' 244 21o, 272, 276' 296, 3oI. 368-9' (.€tos3 376i r.. a&o comP.rison lansuts.s) uprak., 2to, 237,260, 2ESi t.. alto uncte' 3pcech sct! ustae conditions, 245, 2{7 usaScthcoty of mcrnin A, 227fr, 245 6
4r5
4r 4
Subject index v!. mcniion, 7n, 86, ro9n, rjgn, 47n urc'| of lmgurgc, r-5,23t t . aato .Pcskcr. rddre$.€t, Fnicip0t.. urcr of hngu.gc, r". functiont of lrngiraac urtcrmcc, !r 16, r8-t9, 2{-6, 3o-2, 34-5, 5 S- 9 ,9 5 , Io I, Io a o , r 3 2 , r 4 !, r 4 0 , t7 o - 3 , 1 75 , r ? E,.o s, 2 r r , 2 12 - r 3 ' 219-2o, ?'Xtn, 2+2-t, 211, 259, 271-s, 27&-83, .88fr, 28sn, 326fr, 332' 361 dcnnition! of, I8-r9, rgn, 289n nonJinguirtic, 16 r7, 29r, 3zr vr, rcntcncc, s trcrrct of ruth-condirioG, r7'2o, 31-5, 5S-7, 58 - 9 ,9 5 , to in , 1 3 3 - 1 , r 7 2 , r 7 s, rqqfi, z:8fr, z+7, asrfr, z7+-5; er bcarc. of forcc, 13rn, 2&-3,271-5i :. b..r€r of imPlic.iur.., ro{n, 122-32, t3t-4; r! bc.rcr of prcsuppo.itions, qo1, t75, r78, 207-9, 2r t, 2r2, 2t9-2o, 225 .r unit of convlts.rion, 28E, 29I, 294 utacrtncc-.ct rt. uttcrencc-Product, t9 uttcrsncc-m€inin8, r8-2r, 59, 364 uttcrtnc!-typc v!. uttc..ncc-aok€n, 19 uiter.ncc-unit, 280ft. 29o-r ut.
v.8ucnca!, 99. r38, 352-3 v.lid inf.r.ncc, r r{-t5, I4o, r?4 vrrirblcs, lociolinguistic, r,, v.ri.tion vari.rion. sociolinauistic, 2, 29, 375
vcrb:: cheryc-of-strtc, t?4, I8t-2. rE8 fectivc, z5-6, r79-8o, r8r, r8t, r8q{o, r93 ofjudeine, t8u of motion, t3-4 pe orm:tivc, r.r Frformrtivc vcbs of propoli.ion.l trtitudc, r9s of $yin8, t95. tr5, 256; ,." arto pcrformrtivc vcrbr vcrifiibility, 227 by u!c, 247, 2Jr vi.ibl€/invbiblc, deictic cltcsory of, 63n, j1n, a2 viru.l contrc., in communic.aion, ?2, 95, 297, to2 voc.but ry, 8cn.r.l, r38, r+s; ra a&o vocrtivd, 53,63, to-t, 89n, 9r, 92; r?. aJro .dd.6s, p.onouns voicc-qudity, Jrr, 327, tt4 warninas, 2J4, 23E, 239-40, 247 @"r/, 33, 88, 98n, 162. 3oZ, 334, 138, 366, 372 word-m..ning, 33, r3?, r4&-9, 162-3, 2,o1,228n, z47t.St-9t t4 ako word-ordcr, 8E-9, 22s w.irine,23, g}i t c ako di8lo!.i., litcr.cy, rccordcd mca.rSca Yorubi, 78
IN D EX
OF N AM ES
Albc.t, E. M., 3or Allwood, J., 25, 3on, 58,77, r3S, r52n, t76n, 2or, 22t, 21r, 259, 27 r, 311, 36t Andcrron, S. R., xi, 43, 62, 63n, 67n' 77n, 8r, 8r, 88, 260 Andcr$on, L.-G., 2s, 3on, st,77, r3s' | 52\ r7on, 221, 27 | . 3r I A nnrmrl .i ,8.,2I6 Aqvirt, L., 254n Argflc, M., 3o2 Aristotlc. roo, r1o, t+7, r7sn' 22711 Arnold, C. F., 296n Aitinlon, J. M., 39n, 46, 9r, 2t7, 29{n' Joo, 3o9, 33t-4, 335n, 345-6, 3?5, 377 A tki nl on, M ., 4r,47, 60 A tl $, J. D ., x i v ,60, r25, I3I, 136, r47' r7o, r82, 2or, 206, 2ro, 2r7,2ao, 22trr,212,l 7r Awtin, J. L., 25, 36, 227-7\ 233-1o, z1j, 24s-7, 2s9-6o, 26+, 279,37r, 378 Ayct , A. I ., zz7 Bech, K., z+t Brllm€r, T., 277 Bcr-HiUcl, Y., +, 18, 19, 2!, 58, 59, 60 B .t€i ,8., ri i , 226, 28r Brtcron, G., 2 Bcum.n, R., 279, 36e Bcrn, S., rn, 52 B€.ttic, G., 3o2 B..usr.nd., R. de, 286, 3r4 acevin, J. H.. z B.ca, 8., 7o Bernitcin, 8., !26, r74 Bi€rwi3ch, M., 6 B l .cl , M.,2 , r59 B oar, S . C ., 2o4, 2t7, 257,258n,262 Bolins.., D. L., 275 Br.dy, R-, 3o2
4r 6
Br.zil, D., xi, 2t?, 288, 296n, 3?4 B!oclu'.y, D., 8t, t62 Brown, P., riv, to, ao, 46, 70, E9, 93, r32, 162-3, r6s-6,267, 269n, '2rn, 27ln, 272-4, 363, 371, 376 27o, Brolxn, R., 28, 90, 92, 166 Bruncr, J., zz6, z8r B i i hl c r, K .,,f I, 46, 6l Bu*!, A. w., 5? Bu.lins, R., 69 Bu(erwonh, 8.. 302-3. 326 B utton, G.,3t5n Crrlins, C., I5o Crm.p, R., 2-s, Io, 20, 27r Chrmi.l, E., 22, 2tr, 33t C l !.y , N ., S ts n ' Chcrry, C., 2 Chomrky, N., xii, 4, ?, z,l, 33, 34, 36, 40' r83,2r9,25o, 374 Cl.rL, H., 225, 2E5, 375 C oh.n, L. J ., ra7, t49, rs r C oL, P ., x i i i , 37n, 166,2trn Comric, 8., .t2, 70, 78, 90, 92, I3o, 333 Corbctt, G., 92 Corum, C., 93, 374 Co'rlth$d, M., ti, 279, 286-8, 293, :9an' 296n, 3o4, 315n, 356n, 3?4 Crc3lwcll, M.,95, 257 Cry al, D,, 296n D rhl , O.,2i ,3on, s 8, ??! I35, I52n, r76n, 22,r,2?r, 3r4 Devidson, J., r:8, rtz Davilon, A., 256, 266 Dinnccn, D. A., riii, 168 Dirimat, N., 378 Dircn, R. M. w., 43, 72, t2, 93 Donncll.n, K. S., ra' 60,6I D orc ,I., r8I Do.r/ry, D. R., 2o7n Drc'.lcr, W., 286, 3I4
4 t7
Index oJ names D . € w, P., xiv,3 9 n , 2 8 2 ,2 9 4 n ,3 o o 3 , o 9 ,3 27, 3 3 3 - 4 , 3 j6 n , 3 4 5 - 6 , 3 5 6 n , t7 S,3 jj D u m m ct, M ., z4 z D u n ca n , S., 3 o z Durrnii, A., 89, 366 Edmondson, W., :88, z9z E r vin - T r ip p , S., 4 7 , 9 3 , 2 6 1 ,2 7 5 ,2 8 o , 2 9 7 ,3 o 2 ,3 5 8 ,3 7 1 - 5 F . nn , K. T ., t2 8 n Frn$el, D., 271, z8G-9, 294, 3Sz, 357, 369, 375 F€ldslcin, S., 3oa Fcr8uson, C. A., {6, {7, 9J, 366 Fillmor€, C. J., xi, riv, 47n, fi, st,6t-2, 6 4 - 7 , 6 s, 7 o , 7 3 - 6 , 7 8 tr , 8 3 - 6 , 8 9 , 9 t,9 4 , r a 2 , 2 2 6 F i r th , J. R., xii F i ske , D. W.,3 o 2 Fl€tch.r, P., 375 F o d o r , J. A., Z , 2 2 ,2 j, r 4 8 ,2 o 4 ,2 8 8 Fogelin, R., roon F o r m e n , D., z7 r Frrse., 8., 260 F r ce c, G., 1 6 g - to , r 7 3 4 , r 7 7 , r 7 g , r 8 t- 2 , z2 S,,,4 2 F r €i, H.,6 r ,8 r F r eu d , S.,4 F u r b cr s, M ., 2 2 7 n , r "8 n G r l € , R. M ., s? G r r6 n ke l, H., zq s G a rm e n , M .,::s G a rn € r , R. T ., r T Sn G . rvin , R. L ., 9 ' G a z d r r , G., xi. xiii, xiv,4 ,9 , r 2 , r 7 n , 2 4 n ,2 6 ,3 r , 3 4 ,3 6 n , 3 ? ,6 9 n , r o 5 n , r r sn , r 2 0 ! r 2 2 - 3 , r 2 5 D, r 2 6 , r Jo , r 3 2 , r 3 4 , r j6 , r 3 9 - 4 r , r 4 3 , r { S, 1 6 4 - 5 , r 8 6 , r 9 S, 2 o r , 2 0 3 - 5 , 2 o 9 , zr t' - - r z,.t4 - r 6 , zz4 , 2 4 2 , 2 1 5 , 2 so - r, 2 5 2 n , 2 5 S,2 6 0 , 2 6 r - t,2 6 j,2 j2 , 2 ? 3 n ,2 7 + ,2 1 6 - 7 ,3 7 2 n G . ach , P. T ., 8 6 Gccrtz, C., 42, 9o, 9z G e iss,M ., r 4 5 G i l mm , A.,2 8 , q o , q u , 1 6 6 G i vo n , T .,4 o ,3 7 3 Godard, D., 343 Goffman, 8., 44, 72, 3o4, 356n G o ld m cn - Eislcr ,F ., 3 0 r n , J2 6 G o o d win , C., ? 2 , 2 8 9 n , 2 9 6 n ,2 9 7 ,3 o r n , 3 o 2 ,3 3 7 ,3 5 1 n ,3 o 4 ,3 7 5 Goody, 8., z8o C o o d y, 1 ., a 6
4r 8
Indcx Gordon,8.,226 Gordon, D ., 3i ,266-7,271-3, 275 Grahsm, K., 2z8n cr€cn, G., ri ,36n,26I,26e, 37zn Crccnbium, S., 242n Gri ce, H . P ., t6-r8, 24, 26, 27, 36,4s, 88,96, roo-4, rosn, ro8n, ro9, rrr-r9, rzon, r2F9, r32, r34, r39n, r4?, 156 8, 16r, r88n,2o7,2r8, 222--3,48,2!.r,27o, 273, 282, 292, 3s4' 364' 367' 374 C ri mths, P ., 28I 2
Jrfr6,J., roz
J.kobovnz, L.A ,126 J.kobloo, R., 4I, 46, 333n J.m6, D ., ' 63 JcffGrlon, c., 28an, 29sn, 2e8-9' 30r ' 3o3, 3r5n, 3t8, !2r, t24' 319-42' 355,360,365, !69' 375 tohn., C., xi, 296n, 374 Johnson, M., ri9 Joshi, A. K., 377 llpp, T., zlg, lzz ,uns, C ., a
Crossman, R. E., 40 Gump.rz, ,. J., xi v, 23,2s,39n,27s, 28t, !74-5,377 C undcl , J. K ., x, 88, 8qn, zzs
K rl i sh, D ., 4 K .phn, D . , i { ,6t K .rttuncn, L., 86, I t6, t 27, rJ t, r8t ' t85' r87-8 , r93, 195-8,2o2, 2o7-ro,2r2,
H aas, M. R ., 42, 9r Haimoff, E., 30r H al l i day, M. A . K ., a2,282 H al vorsen,P ., r25n, r78', r82 H ambl i n, C . L.,2an,277 H an€h€i , M., 24r H arada, S . I., 7o, 9o, 9:, r3o H .r., R . M., zaz,27s H arni sh, R . M., ro8n, 146, r4?,24r H arri s,2., r9n H rvi l and, J.8., xi v, eo, e3 H avi l and, S . E ., 22s, 285 H a*ki ns, J. A .,6rD ,83 H cad, B ., ez H cath, J., 43, ?r Hcd.nius, L, 86, 2a7 H ei n?i mi ki ,O., '82, '87 H cny, F., 86
K63per, C., 376 K .tz, l . t., j , a, 2o, 22, 27, 3o, !3, t48, r84, 2 o3, 2o4, 24I, 25o, 288 K ccnsn, D . L., x i , 43, 62,63^,6?n,77n' 8r, 82 , 88, 96, t76-7, tgs , 2t7 K.cnan, E. O. (3.. .lso Ochs, E ), r' r2rn, 282, 3r3, 366 K cmpl on, R . M., 8, 33, t27, r28, 2or, 2o+,2r7, 2,-5,247^
H crrsi mchuk, E .,39n H eri nscr, J. T.,266,27r, j s6n H €ti tage,J., xi v, r29,287,294n, j rrn, 353,350n H.rzberser, H. O., 2o2n H i l pi nen, R .,277 H i n., R .,3o2 H i nti kk., K . J. J., r35, 27s H orn, L. R ., 37, j 8, I r5n, r3r, rj 4, r39n, r4o-r, r63, r64n, r95,20r Horn€, E. C., e2 H ouse, J. 376 Huddlcston, R., ?8 H udson, R . A ., 26r H ul l , R . D ., 2?4 }'ynes, D .,2s,12,73, 27g, 37s 6
L.bov, W., 29, 27$ 286-t, 294, 32+, ts2, 35?' 309, 375 Lrkoff, G., x i v , 37, r 16, I59, 164-5, I7o, t8],2s o1, 26r, 266 7, 27r-3, 215, 373' 371 L.kofi , R ., ri v ,7a,78,8' ,s 8,' 62, z s s , 27l ' Lsins, R. D., 2 Lambcrt, W. E., 28, 92 L.n8rndocn, D. T., rto, rgt, zo3, 2rz l,cach, E. R., tsgn l,..ch, G. N., 46, 73, 79, 2o3, 242n, 260,
In8rrm, D ., 69 Irvi nc, J. T., 46, 9r, 366 ,ackon, D . D ., 2
Ki€f.r, F., 6, 12" K i pcrsky, C ., t8r, 373 K i p.rsky, P ., I8r,373 K l €i n, E ., x i , ri i i ,37, r30,272 K roch,4., r22, t47 K uhn, T. S ., rJ 9 Kuno, S., 90
L.m'hon, E. J., 242 L.vin, S., 148-9, 226 Lcvi nl on, s . C ., x , ro,2t,2s ,4o,16, r22, 69-10 , 1!, 84 9,92-3, ' 2t^, r25, r3r-r, r36, r1?, t62-6, r82, 2o6, 2r6-t7, 2.2o,267, 269n,27o-5, z7v-8 t,2w , t63, !68, t?1,376 Lc$i s, D ., r4n, r6n, 58, t t3n, z 5r-2,
of names
Li , c . N ., 88 Libcrmrn, M., 2r r, 269, 37{ Li .b, H .-H ..3 LiShtfooi, D., ri, 37 r,ckc, ,., r Lon8rc r€, R . E .,42,88, 163,z t6' 288 Luc $, E . D .,378 Luc., R. D., 44 Luc y , P ., J 75 Ly c .n. W . C ., z o4,2r7,257' 256n, .o2 Ly on., J -, x i i i , ri v , In, o, I2! 19,20' 23' 2s , 13, 4t, 5,r, 5E ' 64 4' 69' 73' 77-9' 8on.8' ,81, 85-7,94, I48' r84' rgtn' 272, 275, 2+r-3l 2'tf]., 255, "58n, 2t9n,333n Mc c .w l €y , J .,37, I4s Mertin, J. N., 2o2n, to4 Mlrtin, R. M., 3 M.tihcl{s, P. H., xiv Merri n, M., 39n, 3o4, 34?' 356n' 35? r' 36r, 369 Mi l l c r, G. A ., I5 r, I53-5, t57' roo' 30rn Mi nl k y , M., 28t Mitchcll, T. F., 28on Mirchcll-Kcrn.n, C.' 4? Miitwoch, A., 256, 25an' 262' 267 Mo€rm.n, M., 369 Mont.8uc, R., 4, 5, 5E, 59, 94' 95, 2o7' 208 Moorc , G.8., roo, r05,235 Moorc , T., r50 Mors .n, J . L., ri i i , r4n, t6o, r6s n' 166 MorrL, C W ., t-s , ro Murphy, J P., xiii Ncwmcycr, F. J., a, 36n N unbc .s ,C .D ,?4 O'Connor, J D , 296n Och., E., xii, 23, 4?, 89' 295' 366' 375 Oh, C .-K ., ri i i , 168 Ohm.nn, R ., 226 Ortony , A ., I47, I55 z 8r' Ow eD . M. L., i i v , 88, t29, ' 62' 284n, 3I4n, 3t5n, 334, 166 P i s s mor., r.,22?n Peircc, C. S-, I, s7 P ete.., S ., r16, t27, t3r, 196' 2oo' 2o7-to, 2r2, 214, 2t6- 17 Pcrdff, ,. S., 2E6 P om.r.ntz , 4., 286, 334, 337 ' 9 Polrsl, P., r5o Powcr, R., .1s, 286 Prince, E. F., r82, 2o5. 36{. P ri or, A . N ., ?7
4r9
r
Index, oJ 4amcs Psathes,G., zsz, zc+n Pullum, C., xiii, t64 Purnrm.H., 22o,3r3 Quinc, w. V. O., 60 Quirk,R., rrzn R.iffr, H.,.r{ Ra*ls, r., 2j8 R.ichcnb.ch,H,, 7? Rciscnbcr8,S. H., e' Rob.rt., C., :?9, 3?7 Rogcrs,4., riii, 2s9 Ror!, J. R., ri, 3a, 3?, ao, 89, 165,2{?-8, 267 Ro lte n , L .,6 8 Ru :r cll,8 ., r ? o - 3 , r ? 4 , r 7 sn , r 9 4 n ,2 42 Ruthcrford, W. E., 2s7 Ryave, A. L., 324
V
Sack!, H., Zo, 286, 292, 294n, 297, 198-9, 3 0 2 - 3 , 3 o 9 , 3 r 3 - r 6 , 3 r 8 , 3 2 r - s, 3 29, 339-4r, 35{-S, j64, 367, J75 Sldock, ,. M., xi, riv, ao,'.2, rr9-zo, r 2 2 , r 4 4 ! 1 6 5 ,? o 5 t 2 2 6 ,2 + 2 - 3 , 2 + 7, .+tso, 252-3, 255-6,259, 26r, 26j, 266-7, 269, .73, .7S, 373 Sag, l. A., .69, 37+, 377 S.mucls, M. L., 166 Srn, L.. 4o Saussurc, F. de, t4n S.vin , H.8 ., r e r , z' z Saywrrd, C., l Sch.8lofi, E.4., 26, 39n, 7 t, 72, 28s-6, 294n, 297-rr 3or, 303-4, 306, 3o9-r3, 3r8,3zo-2, 32j-9, 339, l4o-.5, l+E, 353n, 35{, 3S6n, 359, t6 s,3 6 7 ,3 7 s Schcnkcin, J., xiii, zt7, zean S ch icfr e lin ,B. B., r ii, a 1 ,3 r 4 ,3 6 6 ,3 1 5 Schiffcr, S. R., ftn, q, rr3n,21r,213, 242 Schmerling, S. F., ro8n, z7a Schncll., H., 86 Scon, D., s8 Scarlc, J. R., 6, 8n, r4n, r7n, rS, 36, 40, 4 2 , 6 0 , 1 5 5 - 6 , r 5 8 , 1 6 0 ,2 2 6 ,2 3 3 , 237-a5, 261, 2?3, 367-8 SGlla B,\tr ., r ? 4 , r 8 r Sh€rzer, J., .?9, 369 Silv.rltein, M., rn Sinclair, 4., 3s8, 36r-2, 36e Sinclair, J. M., 2?9, 286, 288 S m ith , N. V..8 , r 6 n ,8 8 ,9 8 , r r 3 n , r 2 6 Srcw, C., 47, r8z
420
S oi m€!, S .,2r5 S p.rbcr, D ., to6n, ro9n, r r2, r 16, r r8n, f26n, rj ?-.'8, t6o, tE 3,2t7,2tt2o, 371, 376 St.ln.kcr, R. C., zo, 2?, 3{, s9, 2o{, .o5, Stcniu!, E., 246 Strewron, P. F., zo, e4, 36, 60, r72-s, t77-t, tE t,21t1,282 Svartvik, J., z42n T.mbi.h, s. J., 226 Trnncn, D ., z8r T.nr, C., 60, 62, 64 Tcr..rki, 1\., 3o9, 32,t, 349-sr, 3s3, 3ss, 356 Thomson, R. H., 2r Thomplon, S. A., 88 Trcvr.rh.n, C .,3ol Trim, J., riv Trubctzloy, N. S.,:l:n Trudgill, P., 29, 6Sn Tuckcr, G. R., 28, 9r Turnct, R., z8o, 295, 368 U l l mrn, S ., r66 ' Uycno, T. Y., 7o Vanc., T. J., {o Vrn Dijk, T. A., 23, 2an, 25, r49, 286, 292 Vrn Fraesscn, B. C., 176 V:n Vrlin, R. D., 22J Verschu€rcn, J. F., riii, j68 W.lct, R., 62 Wrlc.lky, r., 32{ W.lkcr, R., ror W.ll, R-, riii, 2o7n W.ltcrs, ,., 3?6 WrttoD, R., 70. J64 Wcbber, B. L., 327 wcin.cich, U., r49 Whir€hcd, A. N., 2{2 Wi l }!, Y ., rso Willon, D., riv, 8, 3,a.88, 96, 98, ro6n, rogn, t 12, r 16, r r8n, t26-7, rS 7-8, 160, rt2-1, t89, r94-S ,2or,203-4, 2to, zr7, zr9,22o, 371, 376 Wiatgcnsacin,L., 227, 228n, 28o Woonon, A., 282, 3o7, 334-s Wundcrlich, D., 2 Zritky,
A., xi, 1., 42,7r, gz, r1S, 2$-r
