Patrick Griffiths - An Introduction to English Semantics and Pragmatics

Title:
An Introduction to English Semantics and Pragmatics
Author:
Patrick Griffiths
Publisher:
Edinburgh University Press
Page:
206
Format:
PDF
Size:
795 Kb

I chose Edinburgh University for postgraduate studies because I wanted to learn semantics from John Lyons, one of whose books I had read. It turned out that he was not teaching semantics the year that I took the taught graduate course, but there were eventually seminars of his that I could attend, and I read more of his work. His influence can be traced in this book. It was Martin Atkinson, a fellow research assistant on an Edinburgh University Linguistics Department project, who first explained to me how the study of meaning can be split between semantics and pragmatics. Semantics is concerned with the resources (vocabulary and a system for calculating phrase-, clause- and sentence-meanings) provided by a language, and pragmatics is concerned with how those resources are put to use in communication. My grasp got firmer when I began to teach semantics and pragmatics myself at York University (UK), and later at the University of the South Pacific, York St John and Beppu University (Japan). Finding examples that communicate a point but which cannot easily be dismissed or misunderstood by students is a valuable discipline, especially when one tries to figure out, in relation to particular theoretical notions, what it takes to be a good example.

I am grateful that Heinz Giegerich, general editor of this series, came up with the idea of introductory textbooks offering compact descriptions of English unobtrusively grounded in defensible theory – it is an approach congenial to my ways of teaching and learning. My contribution to the series aims to present a reasonably detailed first look at the main features of the meaning system of English and the pragmatics of using that system. I owe thanks to Anthony Warner for encouraging me to write the book. In lunchtime conversations that I used to have with him at York University, he several times straightened out muddled ideas of mine regarding meaning. Beppu University provided me with an environment conducive to writing. Professor Kenji Ueda, Head of the English Language and Literature Department, encouraged me and also kindly authorised the purchase of some of the books that I needed to consult.

Pragmatics deals with inferences that listeners and readers make, or that – when speaking or writing – they invite others to make. These inferences are often conscious, so pragmatics tends to be easier to understand than semantics, because the latter is about abstract potential meanings that are often best described by means of notations drawn from logic and set theory. Linguistic meaning cannot usefully be studied by someone who knows only about pragmatics, however. A view widely shared among linguists is that semantics and pragmatics are essential components that work together in a full description of meaning.

In this book, I attempt to integrate semantics with pragmatics, but I hold back a detailed exposition of pragmatics until near the end (Chapter 8), with a detailed illustration of it in the closing chapter (Chapter 9). But Chapter 1 has a brief introduction to pragmatics and it is mentioned in all chapters – sometimes there is rather more than a mention: for instance, Chapter 5 introduces presupposition and puts the notion to work. The pragmatics is Gricean, supplemented by Austin- Searle speech acts, and making use in a couple of places of ideas from Relevance Theory.

The point of the early concentration on semantics is to encourage readers to grapple with semantics before they have seen pragmatics as a possible “soft option”. Chapter 1 introduces entailment as the foundation of semantics, together with compositionality and scope, the latter seeing some service in Chapters 2 and 7. Chapters 2 and 3 show how lexical sense relations are based on entailment. Throughout, but particularly in Chapter 4 (on verbs and situation types), the text presents not just analyses of meanings, but the evidence and reasoning that motivates them. Exercises at the end of each chapter, with suggested solutions at the end of the book, are intended for consolidation and to encourage further exploration. Chapter 5 is a short account of figurative elaborations of meaning, mainly through a non-technical retelling of Josef Stern’s theory of metaphor. Chapter 6 treats the basics of English tense and aspect. Chapter 7, on the inter-related topics of modality, scope and quantification, is the semantic summit of the book, including a short introduction to Generalised Quantifier Theory.

Theoretical concepts and technical terms are introduced to the extent needed for making essential points in the description of meaning in English. Though the book is a self-standing introduction to English semantics and pragmatics, I hope that readers will be interested enough to want to learn more. For any who have the opportunity to do additional reading, the terminology introduced here should suffice for them to make headway with a range of intermediate-level books about semantics and pragmatics. At the end of each chapter there is a section of recommendations for further reading. Bold printed items in the index point to places in the text where technical terms are explained – not just when they first come up, but also to any subsequent elaborations. Sarah Edwards, Commissioning Editor at Edinburgh University Press, provided clear guidance and responded efficiently to queries. She earned even greater gratitude from me for her forbearance in the face of my repeated failures to deliver chapters on time. Norman Macleod, as a member of the Editorial Board, scrutinised first drafts of all the chapters and read a revised version of the whole book too. Norman made very concise suggestions for improvements and alerted me to a number of subtleties in English meaning and usage. It was he who reminded me that a reversing dog is not followed by its tail (see Chapter 2). Heinz Giegerich kindly read a near-final version of the whole text. I thank James Dale, the Managing Desk Editor, and Sarah Burnett, the Copy Editor, for quality control on the text. Near the end, Andrew Merrison, doing it simply as a favour for a fellow linguist, read the book and passed on a list of inconsistencies, mistypings and questionable punctuations, many of which have now been eliminated. Sole responsibility for the published wording and content lies with me, however. “Slow food”, with time lavished on it in the growing, preparation and savouring, tastes better. It took me a long time to write this book.

Unfortunately, not all of it was composed in a measured and reflective way. Some was done in haste because other jobs and projects demanded attention. I hope that there are enough considered bits to make it an interesting read and that the “fast food” intrusions will not be too offputting. Janet Griffiths, my spouse, supported me throughout and was the person most available for verification (or a headshake) of my intuitions about meaning. She checked drafts of several of the chapters and diagnosed confusing wording in quite a few places. I thank her with all my heart. Jane Griffiths visited around the time that I finished a second version of Chapter 5. She read it and offered comments that I appreciated.

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