Q.1 How would you differentiate between semantic and pragmatic meaning of an utterance?

Give
suitable examples to explain your answer.

a)

SEMANTICS MEANINGS OF AN UTTERANCE.

A semantic is the grammatical object that each utterance. Correspond to semantics deals with sentence
meaning and pragmatics is importance meaning. Semantic is important because sentence carry some
meaning that is independent of the context in with they are uttered. And this meaning is purely
linguistic.

Semantics is the study of the meaning of linguistic expressions. The language can be a natural language,
such as English or Navajo, or an artificial language, like a computer programming language. Meaning in
natural languages is mainly studied by linguists. In fact, semantics is one of the main branches of
contemporary linguistics. Theoretical computer scientists and logicians think about artificial languages.
In some areas of computer science, these divisions are crossed. In machine translation, for instance,
computer scientists may want to relate natural language texts to abstract representations of their
meanings; to do this, they have to design artificial languages for representing meanings.

There are strong connections to philosophy. Earlier in this century, much work in semantics was done by
philosophers, and some important work is still done by philosophers.

Anyone who speaks a language has a truly amazing capacity to reason about the meanings of texts.
Take, for instance, the sentence

(S) I can't untie that knot with one hand.

Even though you have probably never seen this sentence, you can easily see things like the following:

The sentence is about the abilities of whoever spoke or wrote it. (Call this person the speaker.)

It's also about a knot, maybe one that the speaker is pointing at.

The sentence denies that the speaker has a certain ability. (This is the contribution of the word ‘can't’.)

Untying is a way of making something not tied.

The sentence doesn't mean that the knot has one hand; it has to do with how many hands are used to
do the untying.

The meaning of a sentence is not just an unordered heap of the meanings of its words. If that were true,
then ‘Cowboys ride horses’ and ‘Horses ride cowboys’ would mean the same thing. So we need to think
about arrangements of meanings.

Here is an arrangement that seems to bring out the relationships of the meanings in sentence (S).
The unit [Make [Not [Tied]] here corresponds to the act of untying; it contains a subunit corresponding
to the state of being untied. Larger units correspond to the act of untying-that-knot and to the act to-
untie-that-knot-with-one-hand. Then this act combines with Able to make a larger unit, corresponding
to the state of being-able-to-untie-that-knot-with-one-hand. This unit combines with I to make the
thought that I have this state -- that is, the thought that I-am-able-to-untie-that-knot-with-one-hand.
Finally, this combines with Not and we get the denial of that thought.

Defining "branches of linguistics" is a broad issue. I will discuss the relationship between semantics and
linguistic theory, and leave the other branches for others to answer.

The short answer is: Semantics plays a crucial role in understanding how language works.

The not-so-short answer (which undoubtedly omits a lot, sorry in advance) is:

Semantics has always been at the heart of linguistic inquiry, even if it wasn't explicitly so. For instance,
Americanist anthropologists didn't officially do semantics. Bloomfield notably opined that semantics
was too poorly understood at the time (1930's) to rely upon it for adequate description. Instead, he laid
out a program of focusing on phonology, morphology, and a bit of syntax--- a program found in many
reference grammars to this day.

That said, the work done in descriptive morphology involved figuring out the meanings and use
conditions of all these morphemes they were discovering--- evidentiality, alienable/inalienable
possession, out-of-control marking, obviation, switch-reference, all sorts of aspect and motion markers,
etc. That is, they really were doing ordinary truth-conditional semantics (and pragmatics), albeit without
a theory of semantics to serve as a guide. And they did not explicitly ask or answer questions of
semantics.

In generative linguistics, semantics has come to have a very important role, both in studies of theory and
of acquisition. Chomsky famously pointed out that the syntax and semantics were distinct, and they are
still held to be two separate "modules" of the grammar. As Chomsky focused on the syntax, he set aside
any issues of semantics.

But semantics came back anyways. The return of semantics into generative grammar takes three
paths.

Early on, some generativists tried to build a generative theory of semantics. Essentially, they said that
deep structure was semantically driven, and not a precursor syntactic representation as Chomsky held.
This led to some less-than-cordial disputes that the old-timers refer to as the "linguistics wars".
Eventually, 'generative semantics' ran out of steam but led to cognitive linguistics (see below), and their
basic idea that the semantics underlies the syntax is revived in most functionalist theories.
The second path involved incorporating aspects of semantics into the syntax in a limited way. The most
notable of these is the use of thematic (or theta) roles. Theta roles encode a predicate's argument
structure; for instance, a verb like put requires three arguments-- an agent (who puts), a theme (that
gets put), and a location (the end point of the putting). Syntacticians still use theta roles rather
regularly, although semanticists generally don't.

The third path has proven more lasting. It involves formal compositional semantics, which came out of
philosophy of language. In the '70's, semanticists trained in linguistics linked Montague's semantic
grammar to Chomskyan syntax. This link was strengthened in the '80's and '90's, and an updated
version (Heim and Kratzer 1998 is the usual ref) is now widely accepted in this framework.

Indeed, a major area of inquiry in generative theory concerns the ways in which the syntax and
semantics interact (their interface). Semantic discoveries have thus revealed many new facts about the
nature of syntax (for instance, you don't need theta roles, except maybe for external arguments)... and
vice versa. Also, having a working semantics has allowed the rise of a Minimalist syntax, since many
complications can now be derived by having the semantics do it (either directly or at LF).

Now that this semantic theory has matured, it is being used to investigate many understudied
languages, with very interesting results that shed light on how languages are structured, the nature of
linguistic universals, and the way that context is encoded semantically.
Outside of generative linguistics, semantics plays a fundamental role in building syntactic structure. For
instance, Relational Grammar is built off the notion that syntactic structures are derived from semantic
(argument) relations. Cognitive linguistics relies heavily on semantics, notably lexical semantics, to draw
links between language and other aspects of cognition. Functionalist theories vary a bit, but all of them
involve the semantics directly in building structure. In Role and Reference Grammar, for instance, the
syntax is mapped one-to-one with the semantic representation.

(b)

PRAGMATIC MEANING OF AN UTTERANCE.

 Pragmatic is a subfield of linguistics and semiotics that studies the ways in which context
contributes to meaning… in this respect, pragmatics explain how language user are able to
overcome apparent ambiguity, since meaning relies on the manner, place, time, and etc. of an
utterance.
 Pragmatics is concerned with the use of language in social contexts and the… those utterance
are what give the sound their true meaning.
 Pragmatics is concerned with the use of language in social context… Illustration by clear Cohen.
 Pragmatics is the study of how words are used, or the study of signs and symbols. An example of
pragmatics is how the same word can have different meanings in different settings. An example
of pragmatics is the study of how people react to different symbols.
Differences between Semantics and Pragmatics

The theory of signs by Morris (1938) clearly highlighted the differences between these branches of study
by describing how we can deal with the meaning of signs from a semantic dimension or a pragmatic
dimension. Based on this logical view, we can grasp meanings of words from two different dimensions.
The semantic dimension refers to the study of the relations of words to which they refer whereas the
pragmatic dimension refers to the study of the relationship between words, the interlocutors and the
context.
Although Bach (1999) stated that viewing the differences between semantics and pragmatics through
their implementation is easier than to describing them in plain words, certain evidences highlight the
differences between semantics and pragmatics. First of all, one of them is highlighted by the process of
determining meaning. Semanticists adopt a narrow scope because they deal with only text and analyze
the meaning of words and how they are combined to constitute meaningful sentences. In contrast,
pragmaticists’ work adopts a wider scope beyond the text itself; indeed, they consider the facts
surrounding the utterance such as the contextual factors, knowledge of the world surrounding the
context of the message, the speaker’s intended meaning and the hearer’s inferences in order to
interpret that utterance (Bianchi, 2004). Consequently, the meaning of an utterance is context-
independent in semantics but it is context-dependent in pragmatics. In addition, certain words and
expressions cannot be understood unless they are put in a context. For example, the English use of
sentence “it hit me” has many different meaning when used in everyday conversation. It could mean “it
came into violent contact with the speaker” or “it became apparent to the speaker.” Either way, the
determination of the correct meaning of this sentence requires knowledge of the context in which it is
used.

Q.2 How would you define the term ‘reference’? Explain the difference between ‘anaphoric’ and
‘cataphoric’ references with relevant examples.

REFERENCE

noun

 The action of mentioning or alluding to someone.

At that sentence he made reference to the enormous power of the mass media.

 The use of a source of information in order to ascertain something.

(Popular work of reference)

Verb

 Provide (a book of article) with citations of courses of information.

“Each chapter is reference”
  Mention or refer to.
“The media reference our association in almost 40 articles”

Term reference define the purpose and structure of e project, committee ,meeting ,negotiation,
or any similar collection of people who have agreed to work together to accomplish a shared goal.
Term of reference (TOR) define the purpose and structure of a project. Reference to someone or
something is the act of talking about them or mentioning them. A reference is a particular
example of this. He made no reference to any agreement.

The distinction between sense and reference was an innovation of the German philosopher and

mathematician GottlobFrege in 1892, reflecting the two ways he believed a singular term may
have meaning. The reference (or "referent", German: Bedeutung)) of a proper name is the object it
means or indicates (bedeuten), its sense is what the name expresses. The reference of a sentence is
its truth value, its sense is the thought that it expresses. Frege justified the distinction in a number of
ways.

Sense is something possessed by a name, whether or not it has a reference. For example, the name
"Odysseus" is intelligible, and therefore has a sense, even though there is no individual object (its
reference) to which the name corresponds.

The sense of different names is different, even when their reference is the same. Frege argued that if an
identity statement such as "Hesperus is the same planet as Phosphorus" is to be informative, the proper
names flanking the identity sign must have a different meaning or sense. But clearly, if the statement is
true, they must have the same reference.[2] The sense is a 'mode of presentation', which serves to
illuminate only a single aspect of the referent

The reference of a word is the relation between the linguistic expression and the entity in the real world
to which it refers. In contrast to reference, sense is defined as its relations to other expressions in the
language system. Thus, there are words that have a sense, but no referents in the real world. Other
words may differ in sense, but not necessarily in reference, and vice versa.

The class of entities to which an expression can be applied is usually called its extension. Consequently,
the referent of a word is always a member of the class of entities that constitutes its extension. The
word's intension, on the other hand, is defined as the set of semantic properties which define it.

The term denotation (that is also frequently used in the sense of an extensional reference) refers to the
constant, abstract, and basic meaning of a linguistic expression. Secondary meanings or associations the
expression evokes are called connotations.

To sum up, the terms reference, extension, and denotation relate to extra-linguistic reality, while the
terms sense, intension, and connotation presuppose a language-internal definition of meaning.

ANAPHORIC REFERENCE
  Anaphoric reference means that a word in a text refers back to other ideas in the text for its
meaning. It can be compared with cataphoric reference, which means a word refers to ideas
later in the text.
 In English grammar, anaphoric is the use of a pronoun or other linguistic unit to refer back to
other word or phrase. Adjective: anaphoric also called anaphoric reference or backwards
anaphoric. The word that gets its meaning from a preceding word or phrase is called anaphoric.
 Anaphoric is the repetition of a certain word or phrase at the beginning of successive lines of
writing or speech. It can be used in novels and short stories, but its most commonly seen in
poetry, essay, and formal speeches.
Sana is so stressed out about her assignment, she is talking about it on facebook.

Here she is an anaphoric reference because it refers to the noun Sana that was.

CATAPHORIC REFERENCE

Cataphoric reference means that a word in a text refers to another later in the text and you
need to look forward to understand. It can be compared with anaphoric reference, which means
a word refers back to another word for its meaning example.
When she arrived, Sana was surprised to find her apartment door open.

Here the pronoun she is a ca

DIFFERENCE BETWEEN CATAPHORIC AND ANAPHORIC REFERENCE

Cataphoric reference means that a word in a text refers to another later in the text and we need to look
forward to understand.

Anaphoric reference which means a word refers back to another word for its meaning.

Q.3- Discuss in detail Grice’s Cooperative Principal? Which of its maxims do you
think is the most

commonly flouted in everyday conversations? Give suitable reasons to justify

your answer.

The Grice’s cooperative principle:

The Grice’s cooperative principle refers to the concept of the philosopher Grice about the
cooperation between speakers in using the maxims. The cooperative principle makes our
contribution such as it is required, at the stage at which it occurs, by the accepted purpose or
direction of the talk exchange in which we are engaged. Levinson (1985) states that the Gricean
cooperative principle is construed as a theory of communication; it has the interesting
consequence that it gives an account of how communication might be achieved in the absence
of any conventional means for expressing the intended message. A corollary is that it provides
an account of how more can be communicated, in his rather strict sense of non-naturally
meant, than what is actually said.

In sorting out the different conversations can be very complex. There are, however, four
maxims that can be regarded as general principles in all conversations, those are:

(1) The Maxim of Quantity:

The maxim of quality, try to make your contribution as informative as is required, in the other
words, do not make your contribution more or less informative than is required;

Example of violation:

A: What time is it?

B: It's two a'clock, in fact it's four pass two, and now it's Sunday.

(2) The Maxim of Quality:

The maxim of quality, try to make your contribution one that is true. At this point, to make your
utterances understandable, you have to avoid saying something that you believe to be false or
lack adequate evidence;

Example of violation:

A: What is the Capital City of Indonesia?

B: I believe it's Bogor, or maybe Jakarta, Indonesia has wide territory.

(3) The Maxim of Relevance:

The maxim of relevance, try to make your contributions relevant. It means you have to say
some information which is related to the topic;

Example of violation:

Mom: Have you done your homework?

Son: My bicycle is broken mom.

(4)The Maxim of Manner:

The maxim of manner, try to make your utterance as clear, as brief, and as orderly as one can in
what one says, and avoid obscurity and ambiguity.
Example of violation:

" It’s the taste" (ads of Coca cola)

Implicature:
The concept of implicature was first introduced by Grice (1975) as the answer to the meaning
concern which is unable to be covered by the ordinary semantics. It is insufficient to use
semantics to uncover the meaning of utterances. The inappropriateness of understanding of
meaning of utterances much influences the achievement of the communication purpose. The
purpose of communication is in order the massage the speaker wants to convey is accepted
appropriately by the hearer. To understand precisely what is meant by the speaker in uttering
the utterances in a conversation, it is very important to understand the concept of implicature.

In conversation, the utterances produced by either the speaker or hearer has explicit and
implicit meaning. Explicit meaning can be understood both by predicting the semantic meaning
of the words within the conversation and by understanding the syntactic structure of the
language used in the conversation. In the other hand, to understand the implicit meaning in a
conversation, the rules of semantics and syntactic of the language is insufficient. Therefore, the
concept of implicature was introduced. According to Brown and Yule (1983) implicature is used
to calculate what is suggested and meant by the speaker as a different thing from what he
actually said explicitly.

Furthermore, Grice (1975) states that there are two kinds of implicature, those are:
conventional implicature and conversational implicature. The difference between them is that
the former depends on something other than what is truth-conditional in the conversational
use, or meaning, of particular form of expression, whereas the latter derives from a set of more
general principles which regulate the proper conduct of conversation.

In order to have complete understanding about the difference between conventional and
conversational implicature, pay attention to the following are examples:

(i) Mary got pregnant and John was pleased

(ii) Mary got pregnant but John was pleased.

The difference between the two utterances above is in the conjunction ‘and’ and ‘but’. In (i),
the conjunction used is ‘and’, thus it means that the Mary’s pregnancy makes John happy or
pleased. In the other hand, in (ii), the conjunction used is ‘but ‘, which shows contradiction,
thus, it can mean that Mary’s pregnancy makes John unhappy or not pleased. By understanding
the different meaning between conjunction ‘and’ and ‘but’ well, therefore, the meaning of the
utterances in (i) and (ii) are clearly understood since the meaning of them is exactly the same
with the meaning of structure of the utterances. The above case is called conventional
implicature, it is resulted from the understanding of an utterance based on the structures form
of the utterance.

Conversational implicature, on the other hand, has more various meanings since understanding
the meaning of the utterance much depend on the context in which the utterance occurs. The
conversational implicature arises as a result of the cooperative principle violence. A
conversational implicature is, therefore, something which is implied in conversation, that is,
something which is left implicit in actual language use. The example of conversational
implicature as follows:

A: Has John arrived?

B: There is a red car in the garage.

B’s answer for A’s question has an implicature that John usually drives a red car; B has seen that
there is a red car, which John usually drives, in the garage. Therefore, B concludes that John has
arrived.

Flouting:
The infringement of maxims which involves exploitation, that is, a procedure by which a maxim
is flouted for the purpose of getting a conversational implicature, is usually carried out by
means of indirect, contradictory utterances, or figure of speech such as irony, metaphor,
overstatement, understatement, tautology, and hyperbole. Grundy (2000) states that
whenever a maxim is flouted there must be an implicature to save the utterance from simply
appearing to be a faulty contribution to a conversation. Consider these four sentences
examples taken from the previous post, Grice's Cooperative Principle:

(1) A: What time is it?

B: It's two a'clock, in fact it's four pass two, and now it's Sunday.

Explanation:

Maxim of quantity and its implicature occur when the speaker or the writer conveys messages
that are not as informative as they are required or the information is too much and
unnecessary. B flouts the maxim of quantity, since he gives too much information to A, while
too much information can distract the listener. However, it is not very difficult to recover the
implicature that B wants to show to A that he is a kind of "on time" person.

(2) A: What is the Capital City of Indonesia?

 B: I believe it's Bogor, or maybe Jakarta, Indonesia has wide territory.

Explanation:

Maxim of quality and its implicature occur when your contribution one that is untrue or lack
adequate evidence. B flouts the maxim of quality since he gives insincere answer for A's
question. The implicature of this flouting maxim would be that B doesn't know exactly about
Capital City of Indonesia.

(3) Mom: Have you done your homework?

Son: My bicycle is broken mom.

Explanation:

Maxim of relevance and its implicature arise when the speaker deviates from the particular
topic being asked and discussed. The answer of the son is not answering the mother’s question.
The son tries to direct his mother’s concern away from the question which he does not like.

(4) It’s the taste

Explanation:

Maxims of manner and its implicature occur when the utterances are not brief, ambiguous, and
obscure. Advertisements often flout the maxim of manner. The statement flouts maxim of
manner because it is obscure. The utterances triggers an inference process in which the
addressee looks for the likeliest that is relevant in the context that obtain – that the taste is
good for people who favor Coca cola and bad for those who dislike it

Q.4 Discuss in detail the conventions of turn taking. Do you think that an everyday conversation
adheres to the conventional norms of turn taking? (15)

Introduction:

Turn-taking is a type of organization in conversation and discourse where participants speak

one at a time in alternating turns. In practice, it involves processes for constructing
contributions, responding to previous comments, and transitioning to a different speaker, using
a variety of linguistic and non-linguistic cues.

While the structure is generally universal, turn-taking conventions vary by culture and
community. Conventions vary in many ways, such as how turns are distributed, how transitions
are signaled, or how much overlapping is acceptable.
In many contexts, conversation turns are a valuable means to participate in social life and have
been subject to competition. It is often thought that turn-taking strategies differ by gender;
consequently, turn-taking has been a topic of intense examination in gender studies. While
early studies supported gendered stereotypes, such as men interrupting more than women and
women talking more than men, recent research has found mixed evidence of gender-specific
conversational strategies, and few overarching patterns have emerged.

Contents

1. Organization

1.1 Timing

1.2 Overlap

1.3 Eye contact

2.Cultural variation

3.Gender

Organization:

This section is missing information about theories other than Conversation Analysis. Please
expand the section to include this information. Further details may exist on the talk page.

In conversation analysis, turn-taking organization describes the sets of practices speakers use to
construct and allocate turns.[1] The organization of turn-taking was first explored as a part of
conversation analysis by Harvey Sacks with Emanuel Schegloff and Gail Jefferson in the late
1960s/early 1970s, and their model is still generally accepted in the field.[6]

The Turn-taking component contains the main content of the utterance and is built from
various unit types (Turn-Construction Units, or TCUs). The end of a TCU is a point where the
turn may end and a new speaker may begin, known as a transition-relevant point or TRP.

The Turn allocation component comprises techniques that select the next speaker. There are
two types of techniques: those where the current speaker selects the next speaker, and those
where the next speaker selects themself.

Rules govern turn construction and give options to designate the next turn-taker in such a way
as to minimize gaps and overlap. Once a Transition Relevance Place is reached, the following
rules are applied in order:

The current speaker selects the next speaker and transfers the turn to them; or
One of the non-speakers self-selects, with the first person to speak claiming the next turn; or

No one self-selects, and the current speaker continues until the next TRP or the conversation
ends

This order of steps serves to maintain two important elements of conversation: one person
speaking at a time and minimized space between when one person stops talking and another
begins. Because the system is not optimized for fairness or efficiency, and because turn-taking
is not reliant on a set number or type of participants,[8] there are many variations in how turn-
taking occurs.

Timing

Another cue associated with turn-taking is that of timing. Within turn-taking, timing may cue
the hearer to know that they have a turn to speak or make an utterance. Due to the very nature
of turn-taking and that it is dependent on the context, timing varies within a turn and may be
subjective within the conversation. Vocal patterns, such as pitch, specific to the individual also
cue the hearer to know how the timing will play out in turn-taking.

Deborah Tannen also shows timing differences in relation to turn-taking. For a particular study,
she used a recording of a conversation between a group of her friends at dinner. The group
included men and women from across the United States of mixed ethnicities. She concluded
that while the amount of space left between speakers may differ, it differs most dramatically
between people from different regions. For instance, New Yorkers tend to overlap in
conversation, while Californians tend to leave more space between turns and sentences.[11]

Overlap

When more than one person is engaging in a conversation, there is potential for overlapping or
interruption while both or many parties are speaking at the same time. Overlapping in turn-
taking can be problematic for the people involved. There are four types of overlap including
terminal overlaps, continuers, conditional access to the turn, and chordal. Terminal overlaps
occur when a speaker assumes the other speaker has or is about to finish their turn and begins
to speak, thus creating overlap.

Transitional overlap occurs when a speaker enters the conversation at the possible point of
completion (i.e. transition relevance place). This occurs frequently when speakers participate in
the conversation enthusiastically and exchange speeches with continuity.

Recognitional overlap occurs when a speaker anticipates the possible remainder of an

unfinished sentence, and attempts to finish it for the current speaker. In other words, the
overlap arises because the current speaker tries to finish the sentence, when simultaneously
the other speaker "think aloud" to reflect his understanding of the ongoing speech.

Progressionaloverlap occurs as a result of the speech fluency of the previous speaker when
another speaker self-selects to continue with the ongoing utterance. An example would be
when a speaker is retrieving an appropriate word to utter when other speakers make use of this
gap to start his/her turn.

Harvey Sacks, one of the first to study conversation, found a correlation between keeping only
one person speaking at a time and controlling the amount of silences between speakers.
Although there is no limit or specific requirement for the number of speakers in a given
conversation, the number of conversations will rise as the number of participants rise.

Eye contact

During a conversation, turn-taking may involve a cued gaze that prompts the listener that it is
their turn or that the speaker is finished talking. There are two gazes that have been identified
and associated with turn-taking. The two patterns associated with turn-taking are mutual-break
and mutual-hold. Mutual-break is when there is a pause in the conversation and both
participants use a momentary break with mutual gaze toward each other, breaking the gaze,
then continuing conversation again. This type is correlated with a perceived smoothness due to
a decrease in the taking of turns. Mutual-hold is when the speaker also takes a pause in the
conversation with mutual gaze, but then still holds the gaze as he/she starts to speak again.
Mutual-hold is associated with less successful turn-taking process, because there are more
turns taken, thus more turns required to complete.

Cultural variation

Turn-taking is developed and socialized from very early on – the first instances being the
interactions between parent and child – but it can still be thought of as a learned skill, rather
than an innate attribute. Conversational turn-taking is greatly affected by culture. For instance,
in Japanese culture social structure and norms of interaction are reflected in the negotiation of
turns in Japanese discourse, specifically with the use of backchannel, or reactive tokens
(aizuchi). Japanese speakers make use of backchannel far more than American English speakers.
In recorded conversations between pairs of same-sex college-age friends, Maynard (1990)
found that English-speaking students used backchannel expressions such as uh-huh or right,
mainly at grammatical completion points. Less frequently, the English speakers moved their
head or laughed while the other speaker paused or after an utterance was completed.[19]

B: Yeah I think I know what you mean./

(A:1 Yeah)[20]

In contrast, the Japanese speakers often produced backchannel expressions such as un or sō

while their partner was speaking. They also tended to mark the end of their own utterances
with sentence-final particles, and produced vertical head movements near the end of their
partner's utterances.

(Translation: B: From your parent's view, if the child does... [LAUGH]

(A: Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah)

A: But nowadays parents don't

(B: I see)

A: say those things.)[21]

This demonstrates culturally different floor management strategies. The form of backchannels
was similar: both Japanese and American subjects used brief utterances and head movements
to signal involvement. The Japanese interlocutors, however, produced backchannels earlier and
more often throughout conversation, while the Americans limited their responses mainly to
pauses between turns.[19]

Additionally, turn-taking can vary in aspects such as time, overlap, and perception of silence in
different cultures, but can have universal similarities as well. Stivers et al. (2009) cross-
examined ten various indigenous languages across the globe to see if there were any similar
underlying foundation in turn-taking. In analyzing these languages, it was discovered that all ten
languages had the same avoidance of wanting to overlap in conversation and wanting to
minimize the silence between turn-taking. However, depending on the culture, there was
variation in the amount of time taken between turns. Stivers claims that their evidence from
examining these languages suggests that there is an underlying universal aspect to turn-taking.

Gender

Research has shown that gender is one of many factors that influence the turn-taking strategies
between conversation participants. Studies of turn-taking in male-female interactions have
yielded mixed results about the exact role of gender in predicting conversational patterns. Such
analyses of turn-taking have analyzed conversations in various contexts ranging from verbal
exchange between two romantic partners to scripted dialogue in American sitcoms. Rates of
interruption are a widely researched area of turn-taking that has elicited various results that
conflict with one another, reflecting inconsistencies across studies of gender and turn-taking.

Conclusion:
Language show that turn-taking is systematic and universal across languages and cultures. His
research concludes that there is more to turn-taking than simply hearing a pause. As other
researchers have shown, eye gaze is an important signal for participants of a conversation to
pay attention to. Usually, whoever is speaking will shift their gaze away from the other
participants involved in the conversation. When they are finished or about to be finished
speaking the speaker will revert their gaze back to the participant that will speak next.[17]

Q5 Define and differentiate between the following: (20)

a) Cohesion and coherence

b) Illocutionary and perlocutionary speech acts
c) Presupposition and implicature
d) Proposition and sentence

Coherence:
Coherence means the connection of ideas at the idea level, and cohesion means the connection
of ideas at the sentence level. Basically, coherence refers to the “rhetorical” aspects of your
writing, which include developing and supporting your argument (e.g. thesis statement
development), synthesizing and integrating readings, organizing and clarifying ideas. The
cohesion of writing focuses on the “grammatical” aspects of writing.

One of the practical tools that can help improve the coherence of your writing is to use a
concept map. The concept map is also known as “reverse outline” since you make an outline of
your paper after you have finished the main ideas of your paper. Write down the main idea of
each paragraph—which is called a topic sentence—on a blank piece of paper.

Cohesion:
Cohesion is also a very important aspect of academic writing, because it immediately affects
the tone of your writing. Although some instructors may say that you will not lose points
because of grammatical errors in your paper, you may lose points if the tone of your writing is
sloppy or too casual (a diary-type of writing or choppy sentences will make the tone of your
writing too casual for academic writing). But cohesive writing does not mean just
“grammatically correct” sentences; cohesive writing refers to the connection of your ideas both
at the sentence level and at the paragraph level.

Cohesion and Coherence:

Cohesion and Coherence is when the link between sentences, words and phrases are visible, or
easily understandable. E.g. Cara loves to cook dinner for her husband Carl. The dinner that she
likes cooking the most is lasagna. Lasagna is a very popular dish in Italy. Italians are also known
for their heavy accents. Accents can tell you where in the world people come from. There are
over 7 billion people on earth.

In this example we can see the clear link between each sentence, even though there is no set
topic/theme in the paragraph. This is cohesion. Cohesion can be evident without coherence.

Coherence is when the theme or the main idea of the essay or writing piece is understandable.

E.g. There are different types of nouns in the English language. There are proper nouns which
are the names of people or places, such as Tamara or North Korea. There are abstract nouns
which are used to describe things that aren’t physical, such as emotions. There are collective
nouns which are used to describe groups of things, such as a flock of birds.

Coherence: connection, something which sticks together; unified.

Cohesion: connecting; the process of being stuck together; unifying.

b) An illocutionary act:
An illocutionary act is an utterance in speech or writing that tries to achieve its intended goal
directly. So, for instance, if you are cold and you would like a window in the room closed, you
might turn to someone and say: "Would you please close the window?" The intended goal of
the utterance is perfectly captured by the content of the utterance.

Perlocutionary:
An indirect (perlocutionary) speech act tries to achieve an intended goal indirectly. So, for
instance, if you are cold and you would like a window in the room closed, you might turn to
someone and say: "Gee, aren't you freezing? I'm so cold." The utterance relies on the other
person working through a chain of reasoning in their own head to get to the intended goal; as
often as not it depends on secondary (non-verbal) understandings like cultural mores or implicit
communications. In either case, the intended goal of the utterance is largely unrelated to its
explicit content.

Illocutionary VS Perlocutionary
Indirect (perlocutionary) speech acts are a particular problem in social theory, because they
often mask unpleasant goals behind otherwise innocuous statements.
  All indirect speech acts have an illocutionary meaning, but not all illocutionary are
indirect speech acts. while the illocutionary is basically the action you do by producing
some utterance (a locution). This can of course be anything from a greeting to an
invitation.

A lot of the time, as theory would have it, we do not explicitly convey the action we want to
perform. So when I say “can you help me”, I am asking a question (direct speech act) but also
requesting help (indirect speech act). Both are illocutions.

There are two ways of looking at indirect speech acts. One is that the utterance has some
conventional relation to the action it does; so I ask if you're able to help, and you being able is
one of the conditions for helping. I could also ask if you want to help, or I can point out that I
need help. All pre-conditions for the act of helping.

An illocutionary act is part of a triad of ways of understanding speech. The illocutionary act is
the general concept of what has been done -- a request, for example. Anillocutionary act is the
actual uttering of a sentence.

An indirect speech act is more of a roundabout way of saying something -- "Would you like to
go to the movies" can frequently actually mean "I want you to go to the movies with me.

c) Implicature and presupposition are terms that are used by linguists to describe some
of the less conventional semantics we use in our daily communication. Let's learn more about
implicature and presupposition.

Implicature
Implicature is when a speaker implies meaning without using direct language. For example:

 Toby is driving to his mother's house tonight.

The word driving implies driving a car.

drive

It is implied that Toby is driving a car, rather than a tractor, golf ball, or cattle.

There are two types of implicature: conversational and conventional.

Conversational implicature is when the speaker makes inferences through word meanings
and context. For example, 'I put aside some of my paycheck to save for a new car.' The use of
the word 'some' indicates that the speaker also used part of his or her paycheck for other
things.

Conventional implicature is when a speaker uses words such as 'but,' 'still,'

'although,' 'therefore,' and 'even' to establish a relevant relationship between two
clauses. Within the linguistics community, there is disparity on whether or not
conventional implicatures exist or if they are a type of presupposition. For now,
sentences such as the following are considered conventional implicatures: 'Sandy
is tired, but she is motivated.' This sentence implies that being tired generally
affects motivation, but not for Sandy.
(d)Proposition:

The term proposition has a broad use in contemporary philosophy. It is used to refer to some or all of
the following: the primary bearers of truth-value, the objects of belief and other "propositional
attitudes" (i.e., what is believed, doubted, etc.), the referents of that-clauses, and the meanings of
declarative sentences. Propositions are the sharable objects of attitudes and the primary bearers of
truth and falsity. This stipulation rules out certain candidates for propositions, including thought- and
utterance-tokens which are not sharable, and concrete events or facts, which cannot be false

In relation to the mind, propositions are discussed primarily as they fit into propositional attitudes.
Propositional attitudes are simply attitudes characteristic of folk psychology (belief, desire, etc.) that one
can take toward a proposition (e.g. 'it is raining,' 'snow is white,' etc.). In English, propositions usually
follow folk psychological attitudes by a "that clause" (e.g. "Jane believes that it is raining"). In philosophy
of mind and psychology, mental states are often taken to primarily consist in propositional attitudes.
The propositions are usually said to be the "mental content" of the attitude. For example, if Jane has a
mental state of believing that it is raining, her mental content is the proposition 'it is raining.'
Furthermore, since such mental states are about something (namely propositions), they are said to
be intentional mental states. Philosophical debates surrounding propositions as they relate to
propositional attitudes have also recently centered on whether they are internal or external to the agent
or whether they are mind-dependent or mind-independent entities (see the entry on internalism and
externalism in philosophy of mind).

Sentence: