The pragmatic aspects of the sentence

The pragmatic aspects of the sentence

THE MINISTRY OF EDUCATION AND SCIENCE, YOUTH AND SPORTS OF UKRAINE

NATIONAL TECHNICAL UNIVERSITY OF UKRAINE

“KYIV POLYTECHNIC INSTITUTE”

 

THE DEPARTMENT OF THEORY, PRACTICE AND TRANSLATION OF ENGLISH LANGUAGE

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

TERM PAPER

 

In Theoretical Grammar

“The pragmatic aspects of the sentence”

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Performed by

Shynkaruk B.V. LE - 91

 

 

                                                                

                                                                                     Supervised by

                                                                    Associate Professor,

                                                          Taranenko L. I.

 

 

 

 

 

 

Kyiv 2012

 

Contents

 

 

• Introduction………………………………………………………………….3
• Chapter 1. Theoretical aspects of pragmatics……………………………….4

1.1. Semantic Values and Pragmatic Values…………………………………..4

1.2. The pragmatic aspect of the sentence……………………………………..9

• Chapter 2. Pragmatics of the sentence……………………………………..13

2.1. Interpreting a sentence…………………………………………………..13

2.2. Gricean Conversational Maxims………………………………………...17

• Conclusion………………………………………………………………….21
• List of references……………...……………………………………………22

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Introduction

 

 

Object: the realization of sentence in modern English

Subject: the pragmatic specificity of the sentence actualization in modern English 
Aim: to define the pragmatic peculiarities of the sentence by analyzing its  different pragmatic types 
Tasks: - to analyze theoretical aspects of pragmatics

          - to define the type of pragmatic

           - to define the pragmatic peculiarities of the sentence

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

I.Theoretical aspects of pragmatics

 

Pragmatics is a subfield of linguistics which studies the ways in which context contributes to meaning. Pragmatics encompasses speech act theory, conversational implicature, talk in interaction and other approaches to language behavior in philosophy, sociology, and linguistics and anthropology. Unlike semantics, which examines meaning that is conventional or "coded" in a given language, pragmatics studies how the transmission of meaning depends not only on structural and linguistic knowledge of the speaker and listener, but also on the context of the utterance, any preexisting knowledge about those involved, the inferred intent of the speaker, and other factors. In this respect, pragmatics explains how language users are able to overcome apparentambiguity, since meaning relies on the manner, place, time etc. of an utterance. [Mey, Jacob L. (1993) Pragmatics: An Introduction.]

1.1. Semantic Values and Pragmatic Values

The distinction between semantics and pragmatics has received a lot of bad press in recent years. It has been claimed to be faulty, confused, or even nonexistent. However, these claims are based on misconceptions of what the distinction is and of what it takes to show there to be something wrong with it. As I see it, the semantic-pragmatic distinction fundamentally concerns two types of information associated with an utterance of a sentence. Semantic information is encoded in the sentence; pragmatic information is generated by, or at least made relevant by, the act of uttering the sentence. This explains the oddity of such pragmatic contradictions as "I am not speaking" and "It is raining but I don't believe it." In "The Semantics-Pragmatics Distinction: What It Is and Why It Matters" [Bach 1999a], I develop this conception of the distinction and contrast it with alternatives. Here I will to try clarify that conception by showing how it avoids certain objections. Space will not permit going into much detail on the various linguistic data and theoretical considerations that have been thought to undermine the semantic-pragmatic distinction in one way or another.

 

        Historically, this distinction has been formulated in various ways. These formulations have fallen into three main types, depending on which other distinction the semantic-pragmatic distinction was thought to correspond to:

 

        +     linguistic (conventional) meaning vs. use

        +     truth-conditional vs. non-truth-conditional meaning

        +     context independence vs. context dependence

 

None of these distinctions does the job. The trouble with the first one is that there are expressions whose literal meanings are related to use. The second distinction is unhelpful because some expressions have meanings that do not contribute to truth-conditional contents. And the third distinction overlooks the fact that there are two kinds of context. This last point deserves elaboration.

 

        It is a platitude that what a sentence means generally doesn't determine what a speaker means in uttering it. The gap between linguistic meaning and speaker meaning is said to be filled by "context": what the speaker means somehow "depends on context," or at least "context makes it clear" what the speaker means. But there are two quite different sorts of context, and they play quite different roles. What might be called "wide context" concerns any contextual information that is relevant to determining (in the sense of ascertaining) the speaker's intention. "Narrow context" concerns information specifically relevant to determining (in the sense of providing) the semantic values of context-sensitive expressions (and morphemes of tense and aspect). Wide context does not literally determine anything. It is the body of mutually evident information that the speaker exploits to make his communicative intention evident and that his audience relies upon, taking him to intend them to do so, to identify that intention.

 

        Another source of confusion is the phrase "utterance interpretation." Strictly speaking, sentences (and subsentential expressions), i.e. types not tokens, have semantic properties. Utterances of sentences have pragmatic properties. Also, the term "interpretation" is ambiguous. It can mean either the formal, compositional determination by the grammar of a language of the meaning of a sentence or the psychological process whereby a person understands a sentence or an utterance of a sentence. Using the phrase "utterance interpretation" indiscriminately for both tends to confound the issues.

       My conception of the semantic-pragmatic distinction involves certain asssumptions about semantics and a certain view of communication. I take the semantics of a sentence to be a projection of its syntax. That is, semantic structure is interpreted syntactic structure. Contents of sentences are determined compositionally; they are a function of the contents of the sentence's constituents and their syntactic relations. This leaves open the possibility that some sentences do not express complete propositions and that some sentences are typically used to convey something more specific than what is predictable from their compositionally determined contents. Also, insofar as sentences are tensed and contain indexicals, their semantic contents are relative to contexts (in the narrow sense). Accordingly, the following distinctions should be recognized:

 

+         between a sentence and an utterance of a sentence

+         between what a sentence means and what it is used to communicate

+         between what a sentence expresses relative to a context and what a speaker expresses (communicates) by uttering the sentence in a context

+         between the grammatical determination of what a sentence means and the speaker's inferential determination of what a speaker means (in uttering the sentence)

 

As for communication, when a speaker utters a sentence in order to convey something, the content of the sentence provides the basis for his audience's inference to what he is conveying and what attitudes he is expressing, e.g., belief in the case of assertion and desire in the case of requesting. In fact, as Bach and Harnish [1979, ch. 3] argue, because types of communicative speech acts may be individuated by the types of attitudes they express, their contents are simply the contents of the attitudes they express. That is one reason why the notion of the content of an utterance of a sentence has no independent theoretical significance. There is just the content of the sentence the speaker is uttering, which, being semantic, is independent of the speaker's communicative intention, and the content of the speaker's communicative intention. When one hears an utterance, one needs to understand the sentence the speaker is uttering in order to figure out the communicative intention with which he is uttering it, but understanding the sentence is independent of context except insofar as there are elements in the sentence whose semantic value are context-relative. Recognizing the speaker's communicative intention is a matter of figuring out the content of that intention on the basis of contextual information in the broad sense.

 

        This information does not literally determine that content. In no case does the semantic content of the uttered sentence determine what the speaker is communicating or, indeed, that he is communicating anything. That he is attempting to communicate something, and what that is, is a matter of his communicative intention, if he has one. If he is speaking literally and means precisely what his words mean, even that is a matter of his communicative intention. Communicative intentions are reflexive in the sense discovered by Grice: a communicative intention is one whose fulfillment consists in its recognition by the audience, partly on the basis that it is intended to be recognized. The role of Grice's maxims, or presumptions as they might better be regarded [Bach and Harnish 1979, pp. 62-65], is to provide inference routes across any gap between what the sentence means and what the speaker aims to be communicating in uttering it.

 

        This Gricean view of linguistic communication (it is developed in detail in Bach and Harnish 1979) lends itself to a certain conception of the semantic-pragmatic distinction. This distinction can be drawn with respect to various items, such as ambiguities, contradictions, implications, presuppositions, interpretations, knowledge, processes, rules, and principles, and, of course, "semantics" and "pragmatics" are also names for the study of these phenomena. For me the distinction applies fundamentally to types of information. Semantic information is information encoded in what is utteredóstable linguistic features of the sentenceótogether with any extralinguistic information that contributes to the determination of the references of context-sensitive expressions. Pragmatic information is (extralinguistic) information that arises from an actual act of utterance, and is relevant to the hearer's determination of what the speaker is communicating.

 

        This way of characterizing pragmatic information generalizes Grice's point that what a speaker implicates in saying what he says is carried not by what he says but by his saying it and sometimes by his saying it in a certain way [1989, p. 39]. The act of producing the utterance exploits the information encoded but by its very performance creates new and otherwise invokes extralinguistic information. This extralinguistic information includes the fact that the speaker uttered that sentence and did so under certain mutually evident circumstances. This is context in the broad sense. Importantly, nonsemantic information is relevant to the hearer's inference to the speaker's intention only insofar as it can reasonably be taken as intended to be taken into account, and that requires the supposition that the speaker is producing the utterance with the intention that it be taken into account. There is no such constraint on contextual information of the semantic kind, which plays its role independently of the speaker's communicative intention. Contextual information in the narrow, semantic sense is limited to a short list of parameters associated with indexicals and tense, such as the identity of the speaker and the hearer and the time of an utterance. I may think I'm Babe Ruth and be convinced that it's 1928, but if I say, "I hit 60 home runs last year," I am still using "I" to refer to myself and "last year" to refer to the year 1999.

1.2.The pragmatic aspect of the sentence

Pragmatics of translation is a wide notion which covers not only pragmatic meaning of a word, but some problems connected with various levels of understanding by speech acts communicants of certain meanings or messages,  depending on linguistic or paralinguistic factors [Leech, G.],  that is, background knowledge. A well-known linguist Konissarov points out that pragmatic aspect of translation should be considered from three points. One of them is conveying pragmatic meaning of words [Cresswell, M.J., (1973)]. This point chiefly pertains to the translation of national realia and equivalent lacking words that is, various names.

The term pragmatic meaning of a word is not yet fully investigated. But some linguists point out that the pragmatic component of the word meaning, which is realized in various kinds of emotive and stylistic connotations, is individually-occasional or collectively used meanings [Grice, H.P., (1967)]. They reflect the conditions of a language unit use, the conditions such as situation and  place of communication, subject and purpose of communication; social, ethnic, and individual peculiarities  of communicants, their attitude towards one another   [Bar-Hillel, Y.] Irrespective of the fact whether pragmatic aspects are singled out into a certain type of a word meaning or whether it is considered among other components of its meaning, pragmatic meaning, which is fixed in a word, plays an important role and its retention ensures complete communicative adequacy of translation to the original.

Pragmatics as a linguistic term means the analysis of language in terms of the situational context, within which utterances are made, including the knowledge and beliefs of the speaker and the relation between speaker and listener [Kaplan, D.]  Pragmatic information is actualized in translating the equivalent–lacking lexical units, first of all personal names, geographical names, national realia by way of transcription and transliteration.  But in some cases, while translating the names of states, boroughs, counties and provinces explication of their implicit information is needed. For example: Georgia – штат Джорджія (США) (In case the context indicates that the author writes or speaks about the USA)

Alberta – провінція Альберта (Канада)

Surrey – графство Сурей (Англія).

The communicative situation at translating names having different meanings should be also taken into consideration. Thus, the word LINCOLN may be used in the following phrases: 1) He is from Lincoln only last year – Він закінчив коледж Лінкольна (в Оксфорді) тільки минулого року. 2) He participated in Lincoln while a student – Коли він був студентом, він брав участь у скачках “Лінкольн”. 3) He owns Lincoln breeds – Він є володарем лінкольнської породи довгошерстих вівців.

As a rule, personal names are translated be means of transcription or transliteration (or both combined). But when a proper name acquires the connotation as an important pragmatic factor, it should be translated on a communicative but not on a semantic level. For example: MIDAS – 1) Багата людина; 2) Людина, яка постійно примножує багатство.

As to the meaning of national realia it is more often than not rendered by means of transcription or transliteration, but very often explication of their national meaning is also necessary. Thus, kulish, borsh are rendered by way of descriptive translation – thick meal cooked with grain. The same with the English national realia Class list – список випускників університету, які отримали ступінь бакалавра з відзнакою; Classman – випускник університету, який отримав ступінь бакалавра з відзнакою.

While translating the names of national holidays the pragmatic approach is also required. For example, Easter Monday translated word-for-word does not give any notion of this holiday. Its interpretation as перший понеділок після Пасхи is more understandable for the Ukrainian recipient.

Some additions in the translation help to make it more accurate and exact.

For example, It was Friday and soon they’d go out to get drunk.

In the Russian translation by Kudriavtseva and Ozers’ka the sentence is 

      Была пятница, день получки. Вскоре эти люди выйдут на улицу и напьются.  For making this information explicit it was necessary to add not only день получки but to explain that in Great Britain the people receive payment weekly, on Friday.

There are cases when generalization is used for replacing the proper name, usually of shops, clubs, colleges, schools etc.

For example: I could see my mother going in Warren’s Sports and Games – 

Я бачив, як моя  мама заходила у спортивний магазин.

In some cases the word which designates national realia is not important in the semantic structure of the text. Then the translator may employ the method of omission.

For example: There were pills and medicines all over the place and everything smelled like Vicks Nose Drops. 

Vicks is the name of pharmaceutical firm which products are not sold in Ukraine and they are unknown for the Ukrainians. So, in translation it may be omitted.

Sociolinguistic aspect of the theory of translation includes the consideration of translation as socially determined communicative process, social norm of translation and viewing translation as the reflection of a social world. The objects of description are various kinds of socially conditioned pragmatic relations, which determine the essence of translation as communicative act: pragmatics of source text, which determines  its functional type; pragmatics of target text, oriented to a different culture [Grice, P., (1989)]; orientation of the translator for meeting the requirements of the society, that is, social norm of translation; pragmatics of the language units of both source and target languages, the pragmatics, which is connected with stratification and situational varieties of lexicon.

The importance of socio linguistic factors for reaching adequacy of translation can’t be underestimated. It may be illustrated by possible translations of the personal pronoun you, which may be translated as ти and ви. Pragmatic approach to the analysis of the situation will show the translator the right way.

To sum up the above said, it is necessary to stress the importance of the translator’s background knowledge. That is, profound knowledge of history, culture, mode of life of the country, the language of which he studies and is supposed to know for being a good translator.

Translating process reveals double pragmatic orientation. On one hand, it is realized within inner lingual communication and thus being oriented to the original. On the other hand, translation is a concrete speech act which is pragmatically oriented to a certain recipient. Pragmatic task of the translation aims at ensuring maximal equivalency with the original. Pragmatic aspect of the translation is very important especially in translation of nationally-biased units of lexicon.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

II.Pragmatics of the sentence

 

The sentence is the immediate integral unit of speech built up of words according to a definite syntactic pattern and distinguished by a contextually relevant communicative purpose. Any coherent connection of words having an informative destination is effected within the framework of the sentence. Therefore the sentence is the main object of syntax as part of the grammatical theory.

2.1.Interpreting a sentence.

A great part of the achievements made in contemporary logic comes from the investigations of the language of mathematics and has the result of work by

mathematicians or, more precisely, mathematically-educated logicians. As a

consequence the first-order predicate language is often considered as a good

first approximation of natural language. Moreover, the properties of this formal language are, in a sense, projected on natural language causing the

illusion that some typical natural language phenomena are paradoxical. We

will mention below two apparent influential paradoxes (in fact typical natu-

ral language phenomena): intentionality and indexicality. Their recognition

and explanation were milestones along the hard path from classical logic to

natural language.

According to the contemporary paradigm of logic, the meaning of a sen-

tence is its truth value. Thus to get the meaning of a sentence it suffices to