Discourse and grammatical description The notion of discourse. Development of a new approach to grammatical analysis. Теория дискурсивной прагматики.

When numerous attempts were made to classify discourse, it became clear that discourse is governed by some sort of competence, which may be viewed as linguistic and non-linguistic factors.

30s XX century: "Pragmatics", originally dealt with the time, place and communicative intention of the speaker. At that period of time Pragmatics was treated asa brunch of Semiotics comprising such spheres as Semantics, Syntax and Pragmatics (circumstances influencing meaning and form)

In the late 30s Pragmatic factors were not connected with the language representation.

In the 60s and 70s P developed into a relatively independent branch.

Among the topics that were discussed are the personalities of the speaker and the listener, their age, status ect. When these factors were listed and described, scholars soon realized that P is the branch of Linguistics that makes in possible to unite human cognition and communication.

It is here that the notion of shared knowledge of the communicant ... .

Scientists used to believe that knowledge was not connected with language. Mostly knowledge was discussed by philosophers, kn was treated as a cultural and psychological phenomenon.

However, linguists understood that kn is responsible for the success or failure of communication.

Понятие знаний оказалось заимствованием из других наук и не связывалось с лингвистикой. Первые попытки осознать, каким образом знание встраивается в коммуникативную деятельность, появились, когда появились машинные переводы. A blue heir lay in depression. Машина оперирует какой-то моделью грамматической и непосредственно лексическим наполнением слов и неспособна учесть ситуативную коннотацию.

WHen linguists acknowledged it that communication can only become successful if communicants share a certain background, when they are united by certain knowledge, they started analyzing possible representation and instances of knowledge that deal with the appearance of a particular utterance. We can resort to Paul Grise(?): the universal communication principles.

Linguists started to analyze individual words and expressions within longer texts trying to understand whether they have direct meaning, or there's connotation and hidden meaning. In the ling run it all resulted in a number of works dealing with universal communicative strategies.

Scholars focused on the grammatical and lexical instances that are responsible for the connectedness of discursive unites, that is the most important feature of any language product.

Communicative aspect: the intentional choice of words, appearances of occasional and new meanings, connotations etc

+

Cognitive aspect: application of general and particular knowledge, principles and restrictions of info-organizations

=

Pragmatics

To be successful, clearly understood, nits are supposed to be connected. The idea of connectedness may be viewed from 2 angles:

1) global connection

it is governed by the peculiarities of human cognition: to arrange information properly and distribute them properly

* Cognitive principles:

- the iconicity principle: correlation between temporal order in reality and sntense sequence. If we have to code 2 events, the 1st even we describe is the 1st even that occurs in objective reality. The 2nd even that follows the 1st one is described after the 1st even/Соблюдение объективной временной последовательности.

If we want to discuss smth, we are supposed to be governed by what we both know.

2) low concense

* Cohesion is understood as local connectedness that concerns the immedial lexical or grammatical organization of the utterance.

Cohesion doesnt exist as such: if you focus on cohesion only, you perform text analysis, if you want to introduce discursive analysis, you should take into account that is responsible for cohesion.

In Am linguistic understanding discourse as connected units of speech gave rise to referential theory of discourse connectedness. Those linguists who worked for the theory, spoke about D as referential field that comprises several continuities.

REPERENTIAL SPHERE OF DISCOURSE:

- Spatial continuity

- Temporal continuity

- Participants continuity

- Theme or action continuity

is never made explicit for he listener. WHat discourse is about is something we manage to understand from spatial, temporal and participants continuity.

INFORMATION DIVISION

The appearance of numerous theories of inf division was stimulated by the fact that grammarians analyzed written texts.

1) The Actual Division of the Sentence

Scholars analyzed simple sentences disconnected from any context and tried to establish the way we cod semantic information. They claimed that their analyses directly referred to all the sentences: for a particular context only one division is relevant.

Theme-rheme

2) The theory of communicative dynamism

Development of the previous theory: grammarians tried to work beyond simple sentences, taking into consideration 2 Sentences.

Theme-rheme

3) Discursive - Pragmatic approach to division

Analysis of composite sentences, tried to test their results of larger test

Given information - new info

4) Grounding theory

Resent development.

The 1st ideas were put forward by Charle Freezr(???): he stated that in the ENg Language there's a strong tendency to introduce some thematic information at the very beginning of a text, and this thematic info is further employed as some sort of a background against which we can develop.

This theory is a prominent invention, because it is responsible for a change in the understanding of the notion of information.

The first 3 theories tried to separate every language structure into 2 items, grounding theory linguists stated that info has a gradual nature and in every particular text there are Fore grounded info and Backgrounder info, which concerned both old info and not important info.

03.04 - MISSING

10.04

THE THEORY OF REFERENCE

Exploration into sphere of meaning.

We know that up to the XXth century the sphere of meaning remained highly subjective (in classical interpretation) and largely not scientific. The more precise scientific term of the previous century demanded an academic interpretation of the idea of meaning, existence of solid terms and their interpretations. Practically what linguists claim for was a solid notional base for the exploration of meaning.

Approximately in the 30s of the previous century the 1st reliable linguistic works appeared discriminate actual meanings of language units in natural languages. Approximately at the smae period of time within linguistics there shift a particular branch balancing(?) on the study of meaning. In both cases scholars used to employ the same term: SEMANTICS.

A bit later for the branch of science scholars decided to employ the term SEMASIOLOGY while the meaning of separate language units remained to be called SEMANTICS.

Для науки о значениях лингвисты предпочли термин СЕМАСИОЛОГИЯ, а для самого значения единиц сохранили слово СЕМАНТИКА.

СЕМАСИОЛОГИЯ возникла как реакция на попытку оценить те знаковые системы, кот возникли в истории человечества.

Именно в ХХ веке - всплеск интереса к знаковым системам: человек пришел к возможности формирования еще одной знаковой системы (компьютерный посредник). Мы выработали еще одну дочернюю систему знаков: система эмотикона. Идеология знаковых систем получила новый толчок с развитием кибернетики. Лингвистика в стороне не остается: лингвисты стали заниматься значением форм, которые они изучали до ХХ века.

The inner structure of Semasiology reflects the structure of language itself. We can speak about Semasiology of different language levels. In the sence we can say that all language science with the exception of phonological science are semantically loaded.

Grammatical semasiology:

• Morphological level:

- Meaning of parts of speech

- Meaning of morphological forms

• Syntax level:

- Grammatical meanings of syntectic units

- Pragmatic meaning (speaker-hearer interaction)

As Syntactic unit appear as a result of speaker-hearer interaction, it is more semantically loaded, because there's also a communicative intention of the speaker.

Само слово "значение" в англ.яз входит в противоречие с нашим пониманием. Мы знаем слово "значение" и слово "смысл". Значение нередко подвергается суженному интерпретированию: это словарное лексическое значение, кот. получается в рез-те комбинации осмысленных слов. Но в этой ситуации мы игнорируем, что вступая в предл, отдельные слова подвергаются влиянию этой сочетаемости с другими единицами. (Мальчик-Boy) нередко забываем о том, что при погружении в предложение, слово получает дополнительные приращения к лекс значению, кот формируют общий смысл (a boy is young representative of ... species: BOY как единичный объект, за которым стоит группа такого же рода).

Meaning - значение, Semantics - смысл.

Grammatical Semasiology developing as a branch possesses 2 related and separate theories:

- the theory of meaning

- the theory of reference

THEORY OF MEANING (Denotation)

To denote - значить

Deals with the in-language behavior of units. Shows what is denoted by a certain word and totally disregards the influence of the speaker, the communicative situation - disregards PRAMATICS.

Теория именования объектов. Рез-тат деятельности - толковые словари.

THE THEORY OF REFERENCE

To refer - относиться к объекту, ссылаться, иметь в виду.

Relatively new development. the subject-matter is the phenomenon if reference. By means of reference we show how, in what way on object of reality receives its name. This theory analyses speech facts and dealing with speech it takes into account all the major and minor PRAGMATIC factor influencing on appearance of a certain name in a context.

Теория референции - явление новое. Работы в этой теории возникли в 70х годах и сначала эта теория применялась только к сущ. По началу обсуждался только референтный потенциал конкретных исчисляемых сущ. Расширяясь, эта теория стала включать другие группы слов, словосочетания, предложения и тексты (например, в контексте интертекстуальности текстов такого же типа: сказочный дискурс - почему у совершенно разных народов совершенно одинаковые фольклорные традиции???).

NOUNS on the one hand can denote an object, and thus nouns get their meanings; pn the other hand nouns as names can refer to objects of reality thus getting respective reference. The 2 processes of naming and referring do not necessarily coincide.

SCOT:

- May friend is a Scot (just a person born in Scotland)

- The Scot who is my friend cant speak his native language (unique person)

- The Scot is a citizen of Scotland (abstract image of the nation)

Значение обрастает смыслами.

-My friend has a parrot. (the referent is a concrete and indefinite object)

- The parrot cannot talk. (the referent is known to the hearer)

- How long can the parrot live? (the referent is a whole class of objects possessive the necessary features)

Venus, the evening star, the morning start - 3 different names, 1 referent!

The difference is almost the same when we say "language as a system" and "language as speech".

The THEORY OF REFERENCE has received a very interesting practical application when grammatical sounds(?) came to be analyzed as sources of meaning.

The semantic aspect of reference in the sphere of articles concerns the category of definiteness and indefiniteness, which is realized by the definite and indefinite articles.

Definite article as element that perform references in utterance.

INVARIANT: definiteness

Definite article can perform different semantic functions.

• SF -1: Individualization

The actual meaning of this SF is that the object denoted by the combination ART+NOUN (descriptor) is related to a certain object of reality and at the same time this object of reality is related to other object and characteristics of the same situation of reality. The character of this relationship is not established by the article itself, but the article signals presence of some definite relations within a situation. These relations are not unlimited, vice versa they present an extremely limited group when we register these relations with the help of a language expression we reduce the sphere of reference of the chose name and we mark the result of the process with the help of the definite article. As a result, we form an expression that is terminologically referred to as a definite description.

Первичная и самая частотная функция - индивидуализация объекта: вычленение объекта из ряда подобных.

He saw the driver of the car.

When we perform a definite reference we registered relations between the components of noun-phrases as reflections of objective reality. These relations in term of language possibilities may be realized with the help of different structures.

Semantic content of PS: <-> Language means of expression:

relations held between minimal context of the

the components of a NP definite reference

- subject predicate - D + Ving

- partitive - D + clause

- equivalence - Q + D

- location - D + pN

etc etc

The definite reference may be implicitly established on the basis of presupposition.

Implied Pragmatic Conditions:

- associative anaphoric use (the dog barked. The sound ... )

- shared general knowledge (the sun shines brightly)

- immediate situation use (close the door)

- cataphoric

В качестве имплицированных средств мы рассматриваем те, что находятся за пределами дескрипции.

When we talk about the individualization of the referent, it is absolutely necessary to take into consideration the immediate pragmatic conditions of the object discussed and the ability of the speaker and the listener to take into account the ideas of existence of this object, its uniqueness and oneness.

PC(1-n) + Communicative Intention: existence, oneness, uniqueness = SF1

• SF -2: Class generalizaion

• SF - 3: Total generalization

24.04

Проблема использования яз знаков и их интерпретации породило семасеологию\семантика. Проблема денотации и соотнесения объекта и имени.

Сферы существования и использования языка. Идея денотации-именовпния это внутриязыковая деятельность, соотнесение языкового знака и объекта реальности.

Теория референции изучает способы понимания между коммуникантами, когда говорящий выбирает определенную форму высказывания.

Решающий фактор - позиция, фактор говорящего.Мы создаем имена независимо от внешних факторов, но в референции этот фактор ключевой. Говорящий осуществляет референцию.

The definite and indefinite reference compared.

• different semantic functions

- individualisation

- classification...

• Different size of minimum context

- definite description

- indefinite description

• Different communicative intention

- to present the referent as unique under circumstances

- to name, to oppose, to present a typical member class

Отличаются опред и неопред референция и по задаче, кот ставит говорящий.

Определенная -мы интерпретируем речь говорящего как попытку индивидуализировать объект, чтобы он стал единственно возможным.

Неопределенная - целый набор мелких частных задач. Отнести к классу, противопоставить предмет другому предмету итд...

Functional grammatical synonymy

synonymy is a type of semantic relations based on full or partial similarity of their meanings. In a broader sense synonymy is a manifestation of language variation.

A semantic relation between and among language units.

S became the focus of interest in the end of 19 century.

Topical issue is the problem of criteria.

Linguists employed different approaches interpreting S.

1) NOTIONAL SIMILARITY

expressions of one and the same deep structure.

The workers are building the house = the house is being built by workers.

2) SITUATIONAL SIMILARITY

John bought a dog from Peter. Pieter sold a dog to John.

3) POSITIONAL SIMILARITY

There - in the house - in that 5 storey building

4) EQUIVALENCE OF THE GRAMMATICAL MEANING

highly productive. It stresses the fact that the reason of S lies in language itself.

DIFFERENT LEVELS OF GRAMMATICAL SYNONYMY

• MORPHOLOGICAL S

Different grammatical firms display similarity of their denotational meanings.

Similar denotational meanings with different connotations.

I'm frank. I'm being frank.(The action is temporary in the second case )

• SYNTACTIC S

on the basis of similarity of syntactic functions in language units which are structurally and lexically different

When he opened the letter \ having opened the letter

• CROSS-LEVEL SYNONYMY

On coming back he started working. When he came back he started working. He came back and started working.

Разноуровневая синонимия.

В качеств критерия МС лингвисты предложили использовать понятие семантической функции, ..., которая присуща единицам не только разного уровня, но и может быть реализована с помощью широкого контекста и единиц неязыкового характера.

Идея семантической функции.

FUNCTIONAL GRAMMAR

the ideas of semantic function of different language and non language by the theory of functional semantic....

The purpose of using l and non-l signs.

This theory was worked out by the linguistic school (Bondarko). The principle notions of his theory: 2 types

• the level of mental content

Notional category

• language content

functional-semantic category

Semantic function

Functional-semantic field

He introduced the notion of semantic function and functional-semantic field.

Fictional semantic categories are viewer as development of notional categories by use of ...

Fsc are represents by units possessing the Plane of content.

Language interpretation of our perception of the world. Or meanings may be expressed by different l structions, which may belong to different levels of language and plane of expression.

Plane of content development of notional categories

Plane of expression language means of different levels

VARIANTS OF FSC - SEMANTIC FUNCTIONS

in particular cases we speak about the set of semantic functions as more specific fragments of broad categorical meaning.

• SF

categorical meaning implied in the actual meaning of:

- grammatical forms

- functional words

- syntactic structures

- lexico-grammatical classes of words

• the plane of content a SF has two aspects

a) potential - ability of a language unit to realise SF

B) teleological - purposeful use of a language unit

Functional semantic field: structure

R epresentation:

FSC as invariant meaning + SFs as invariant meanings

Plane of content

Plane of expression

Representation:

Language means rendering respective SFs

FSF is a bi-lateral unity where language and non-language means interact

Structural peculiarities

Fsf:

- monocentric

- polycentric

- overlap other fsfs

- may have different kinds of nucleus

Kinds:

- grammatical category

FSF of temporality: the category of tense

- grammatical form

FSF subject-object relations: possessive case

- grammatical class of words

FSF of definiteness-indefiniteness: article

- lexico-grammatical class of words

FSF of quality: adjective

- syntactic structure

FSF condition...: adverbial clause

Эта теория объяснила грамматическую синонимию