Comments of any kind are of course more than welcome. Various versions of inquisitive semantics have been developed in recent years mainly in work such as groenendijk and roelofsen 2009, ciardelli 2010, ciardelli et al. Inquisitive semantics oxford surveys in semantics and. This paper discusses the extension of propositional inquisitive semantics ciardelli and roelofsen, 2009a, groenendijk and roelofsen, 2009 to the first order setting. Our first aim in this paper is to provide a stable characterization of the distinction between semantics and pragmatics, one that theorists across a. The disciplines of semantics and pragmatics have roots in philosophy, but the research programs initiated largely by montague s 1974 theory of nat ural language semantics, austin s. Semantics, pragmatics, and the role of semantic content. Semantics and pragmatics of cantonese polar questions. Firstorder inquisitive semantics oxford scholarship. Twentieth century semantics, especially in the period 19602000. Pdf there is an ageold tradition in linguistics and philosophy to identify the meaning of a entence with its truthconditions. A different way of approaching pragmatics would be to think of it as the study of the way in which hearers are able to draw conclusions on. A multidimensional semantics for polar questions by morgan mameni b. The indepth studies discuss the effects of focus, questions and givenness in unalternative semantics, as well as the role of scalar particles, questionanswer pairs and prosody from the perspective of questions under discussion.
Mey and many others see the rise of pragmatics and its growing popularity and influence ever since the 1970s at least in part as a reaction to the development of american structural linguistics that. What is semantics very broadly, semantics is the study of meaning word meaning sentence meaning. This is a question similar to the question about the semanticspragmatics divide, but i have a more specific interest. I first propose an explanation of the tense restrictions based on the pragmatics of questions and partial answers. Inquisitive semantics ivano ciardelli, jeroen groenendijk, and floris roelofsen oxford surveys in semantics and pragmatics. We will consider this by looking at the work of grice 1975 and an adaption of his maxims for this semantics by groenendijk and roelofsen 2009.
Inquisitive semantics oxford surveys in semantics and pragmatics ciardelli, ivano, groenendijk, jeroen, roelofsen, floris on. Inquisitive semantics and pragmatics illc preprints and. Mission statement, papers, lecture notes, people, pictures, projects, and more. Inquisitive semantics provides a new formal notion of issues, which makes it possible to model various concepts that are crucial for the analysis of linguistic information exchange in a more refined and more principled way than has been possible in previous frameworks. In this book, we have distinguished between semantics, the study of word and sentence meaning in the abstract, and pragmatics, the study of utterances in context.
Im thinking of two different ways of conceiving of the way statements come to. Inquisitive semantics nasslli 2012 lecture notes ivano ciardelli university of bordeaux jeroen groenendijk university of amsterdam floris roelofsen university of amsterdam june 25, 2012 about this document these are lecture notes for a course on inquisitive semantics atnasslli 2012. A latex template for drawing inquisitive semantics diagrams can be downloaded here. Syntax, semantics, and pragmatics of contexts john f. Portal for research related to inquisitive semantics, inquisitive logic, and inquisitive pragmatics. On questions and presuppositions in typed inquisitive. Inquisitive semantics oxford surveys in semantics and pragmatics. Newest pragmatics questions linguistics stack exchange. Unrestricted inquisitive semantics ciardelli, 2009. 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. Sowa philosophy and computers and cognitive science state university of new york at binghamton abstract. Inquisitive semantics is a semantic framework that is based on a formal notion of meaning which, unlike the traditional truthconditional notion, captures both informative and inquisitive content.
First, it is needed to develop a formal theory of pragmatic reasoning. This is an open access title available under the terms of a cc byncnd 4. Mission statement, papers, lecture notes, people, pictures. Inquisitive semantics is a framework in logic and natural language semantics. The framework provides a foundation for the linguistic analysis of statements and questions. In inquisitive semantics, the semantic content of a sentence captures both the information that the sentence conveys and the issue that it raises. Since inquisitive semantics changes the notion of semantic content, pragmatics will change with it. There is an ageold tradition in linguistics and philosophy to identify. An introduction to english semantics and pragmatics on jstor. Pdf inquisitive semantics and pragmatics researchgate. Here is a tex file that can be used to create inquisitive semantics diagrams, and its pdf output.
The semantics of these connectives and quantifiers is given in terms of the algebraic operations on propositions identified in the previous chapter. A different way of approaching pragmatics would be to think of it as the study of. Jan 22, 2019 inquisitive semantics oxford surveys in semantics and pragmatics ciardelli, ivano, groenendijk, jeroen, roelofsen, floris on. On questions and presuppositions in typed inquisitive semantics.
Semantics is concerned with the resources vocabulary and a system for calculating phrase, clause and sentencemeanings provided by a language, and pragmatics is concerned with how those resources are put to use in communication. Weak negation in inquisitive semantics springerlink. In inquisitive semantics, questions may also be represented. The uses of linguistic forms on which their semantics depends, and which therefore constitute the pragmatic basis for their semantics, are their past uses. The finer grain of unrestricted inquisitive semantics provides sufficient foothold for a gricean pragmatics to derive the relevant patterns and more.
In the semiotic trichotomy developed by morris, carnap, and peirce in the 1930s, syntax addresses the formal relations of signs to one another, semantics the relation of signs to. The fact that sentences containing and often convey. Schwarzs main research interests are in formal semantics and pragmatics of natural language, as well as their relationship to each other, in particular with respect to the role of context in interpretation. Semantics and pragmatics chapter 19, keith allan introduction semantics is the study and representation of the meaning of every kind of constituent and expression from morph to discourse in human languages, and also of the meaning relationships among them. The semantics comes with a new logicalpragmatical notion which judges and compares the compliance of responses to an initiative in inquisitive dialogue. But of course, pragmatics is not merely concerned with past uses. Inquisitive semantics is a new logical framework for the. Semantics and pragmatics 8410 page 6 concerns the speakers state of mind.
Florian schwarz and robin clark lead penns research in formal semantics, mathematical linguistics, and computational semantics. This thesis will be an introduction to inquisitive semantics. Chiara repetti ludlow, haoru zhang, hugo lucitante, scott anderbois, and chelsea sanker. The framework allows for a unified analysis of statements and questions, as well as linguistic elements that interact with both statements and. Inquisitive pragmatics ignorance, possibility and exhaustivity matthijs westera institute for logic, language and computation university of amsterdam workshop on questions and inquisitive semantics university of gothenburg, 2012, december 17th. Introduction to semantics semantics and pragmatics 3. Inquisitive pragmatics ignorance, possibility and exhaustivity. The notion of context is indispensable in discussions of meaning, but the word context has often been used in conflicting senses.
Inquisitive semantics is a new semantic framework mainly intended for. Introduces a new formal notion of meaning, suitable. Invited contribution to descriptive and theoretical studies of discourse particles in asian languages yukinori takubo, hiroki nomoto and elin mccready eds, routledge. Assignment 2 was posted on 219 and was d ue on friday 410 before class. Pragmatics is the study of the contextdependent aspects of meaning which are systematically abstracted away from in the construction of logical form. Inquisitive semantics and legal discourse martin aher university of osnabruck introduction many authors in argumentation theory and linguistics have recognized the importance of studying the language of law, albeit few researchers have investigated the semantics and pragmatics of law within precise logical frameworks. When a sentence is uttered in a certain discourse context,it 1for more recent and ongoing work on inquisitive semantics we refer to. In particular, weak negation is added to the standard propositional language of inquisitive semantics, and it is shown that, although we lose some general semantic properties of the original framework, such an enrichment enables us to model some previously inexpressible speech acts such as weak denial and.
Grading the grade will be based on two homework assignments each counting for 20% and a final paper 60% assignments a latex template for drawing inquisitive semantics diagrams can be downloaded here. Pdf this paper starts with an informal introduction to inquisitive semantics. Assignment 1 was posted on 39 and was d ue on tuesday 179 at midnight. Similarities and differences between semantics and pragmatics.
A firstorder inquisitive semantics ivano ciardelli. What is semantics very broadly, semantics is the study of meaning word meaning sentence meaning layers of linguistic analysis 1. This paper introduces and explores a conservative extension of inquisitive logic. The journal of pragmatics also encourages work that uses attested language data to explore the relationship between pragmatics and neighbouring research areas such as semantics, discourse analysis, conversation analysis and ethnomethodology, interactional linguistics, sociolinguistics. One area of usage in which pragmatics plays a substantial part is in the interpretation of figurative language. Likewise, if traditional semantics had to create extra rules to handle alternatives, in inquisitive semantics alternatives are built in, so there is no need for a separate compositional mechanism. After that, we present a formal definition of the semantics, and. In inquisitive semantics, the semantic content of a sentence is not. Introduces a new formal notion of meaning, suitable for both questions and statements. Whenquestions and tense in inquisitive semantics tellings. In addition, we will look at how pragmatics can be handled in inquisitive semantics. It is free to read at oxford scholarship online and offered as a free pdf download from oup and.
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