lingwistyka

2.6 C a u s e

Gruber/Mc Cawley (decomposition, the representation of the semantic structure of a verb may take the form of VERBAL FRAME] eg. X kill Y can be decomposed into: cause (x) become not alive (y) [X cau.sed Y to become not ałive]

Consider also: inferential, implicational hierarchies. [kill::die, persuade::intend, convince::believe)_

9. Meaning and Gramrnar

(a)    lexical meaning (content words)

(b)    grammatical meaning (function words)

Grammaticality/Acceptability (Chomsky) "colorless green ideas sleep furiousty"

is fully grammatical but unacceptable, as selectional restrictions are violated;

sleep: V + [NP[+animate]-] Consider also: *John is pregnant.

9.1 Meaning and grammatical categories

gender: masculine/feminine, number: singular/plural, person: lst, 2nd, 3^rd, tense: present/past,

aspect: perfective/progressive, also: concrete/abstract, countable/uncountable, deńds (identifying an item in a

context)_

10. Meaning of sentences

Sentences are usually understood as basie syntactic units.

According to the traditional definition sentence expresses a 'complete thought’, which in tum can be called its PROPOSITIONAL CONTENT. Propositions must have truth value and cannot embrace non-assertive constructions such as questions and imperatives.

Consider: The preserd. king of France is bald.

Snów is white. WW2 ended in 1945.

Some semantic rules permit us to State under what conditions the sentence is tnie or false. These conditions are called TRUTH CONDITIONS (Tarski)._ _ _

Semantics (traditionally) was preoccupied with truth values.

Pragmatics is the generał study of how world knowledgę and the context influence the meaning of sentences and the way the native speaker interurets them.

L Consider: li's cold in here. (as truth value and as a conversational implicature [Grice])

2.    The same sentence can express different propositions in different contexts: eg. I will see him soon. (a broader conteret reąuired)

3.    Different sentences can express the same proposition

eg. Tom is rurming ip front of John/John is running behind Tom.

4.    CONDITIONALS pose special problems, as they do not express propositions about the world as we know it, but about POSSIBLE WORLDS. Similarly MENTAL SPACES (Fauconnier) and ALTERNATWE REALITIES (B. L. T.)

5.    Negation: He didnt run as fast as he could (p&~p)

6.    GIVEN & NEW & PROSODY (szpak dziobał bociana...)_

PROPOSITIONAL LOGIC covers logical relations between sentences and consists of (a) syntax (vocahulary +. rules of formation and (b) semantics (truth conditions)

four ordinary language connectives: and, or, if...the, if, iff (and only if), also: negation, before, therefore, sińce, while etc.

PREDICATE LOGIC covers logical relations within a sentence:

John is a teacher

(this sentence is a predication; it predicates a property of being a teacher of John)

Q UANTIFEERS:

Universal Quanti£er (aUL, every, for everyone/everything holds that)

Existential Quantifiers (there is someone/something)

Semantic Constituents Arguments: logicalparticipants

Predicate: the relational element that links the arguments

Mary lik.es animals.

_(Argum.) (Predic.) (Argnm.)_

Entailment: John is reading a book, entails/includes that John is reading. Incompatibility: John is sitting, exctudes that John is standing.

Inference: John is a bachelor, infers that John is not married.

Presupposltion: Have you stopped beating your wife, presupposes that someone is ...

11. Meaning. of T e x t

Consider (a) How do you do? (2) Twenty-one.

Halliday & Hassan (1976): linguistic features (cohesion) and extralinguistic context (coherence)

(a) coreference, pro-forms and ellipsis (grammatical cohesion)

(1)    John was here. HE was łuingry. (grammatical cohesion)

(2)    (A) I like coffee. (B) So do I. (grammatical cohesion)

(3)    1 saw a cat. The animal was black. (lexical cohesion)

|b) I will not go to Paris tomorrow. The buses are on strike. (coherence)