Unit 1: Definitions and Background

Overview

Syntax, The pragmatics

Semantics and wastebasket
Pragmatics
Regularity
 1. Syntax, Semantics and Pragmatics
What is Syntax?
• Syntax is the study of relationship between linguistic forms,
how they are arranged in a sequence and which sequence is
well-formed. It takes place without any attention to the
reference or users of it (the form).
Example:" much like English i too" Using normal rules of
syntax,our first example sentence means nothing. But
rearrange those exact words in a new order and they make
perfect syntactical sense: "i like English too much"
 Semantics
•Semantics is the study of meaning context free. It says how
words literary are connected to things. Semantic analysis
makes relationship between descriptions and status of affair in
the world. Regardless of how produce that regards.
• The relationships between verbal descriptions and states of
affairs in the word as accurate ( true) or not.
• on the other hand, is the study of the meaning of
sentences.For instance, there's a world of difference in these
two sentence ’’ I chased Linh’’ and “Linh chased me “ In the
former, I ran to catch him.In the later, Linh ran to catch me
 pragmatics
• pragmatics is the study of the relationships between linguistic
forms and the users of those forms.
• In this three – part distinction, only pragmatics allows humans
into the analysis
• The advantage of study language via pragmatics is that one can
talk about people’s intended meanings, their assumptions their
purposes or goal, and the kinds of actions that they are
performing when they speak.
• All these very human concepts are extremely difficult to analyze
in a consistent and objective way.
 EX:
Two friends having conversation may imply some things and
infer some others without providing any clear linguistic
evidence that we can point to as the explicit source of 'the
meaning' of what was communicated. Example [1] just such a
problematic case. I heard the speakers, I knew what they said,
but I had no idea what was communicated.
[1] Her: So-did you? Him: Hey-who wouldn't?
 2.Regularity
in using language, People tend to behave to a certain extent in
regular ways.
This is because they are members of social groups and follow
general patterns of behavior expected within the groups.
Most people within a linguistic community have similar basic
experiences of the world of and share lot non-linguistic knowledge.
For example : ‘’ I found an old bike. The chain was rusted and the
res flat’’.
would be pragmatically odd to say :
I found an old bike. A bike has a chain. The chain was rusted. A
ke aslo has tyres. The tyres were flat’.
 3. The pragmatics wastebasket
• For a long period of time, there has been a very strong
interest in formal system of language analysis based on
logic and mathematics.
• The emphasis has been on discovering some of the abstract
principles that lie at the very core of language.
• universal features of language was in focus.
• Linguists tended to push any notes they had on everyday
language use to the edges.
• Many of those notes ended up in the wastebasket.
• That overflowing wastebasket has become the source of
much of what is discussed in Pragmatics.
• The contents of that wastebasket were not originally
organized under a single category.
• They were defined as the stuff that wasn't easily handled
within the formal analysis.
Example
• Semantics is also concerned with the truth-conditions of
propositions expressed in sentences.
• If p involves some action and q involves another action,
we have an overwhelming tendency to interpret the
conjunction and , not as logical &, but as the sequential
expression ‘and then’
• The more two speakers have in corn-mon, the less
language they’ll need to use to identify familiar things.