6. Mixed type of composite sentences

Not every sentence we come across in a text or in oral speech is bound to be

either syndetic or asyndetic, either compound or complex, etc. Several or all of

these characteristics can be found in a sentence at the same time. It can contain

several clauses, some of them connected with each other syndetically, that is, by

conjunctions or connective words, while others are connected asyndetically, that is,

without any such words; some of the clauses are co-ordinated with each other,

while others are subordinate, so that another part of the whole sentence is complex,

etc. The amount of variations is probably unlimited. Such sentences are often

referred to as mixed sentences. Prof. Blokh uses the term complex-compound

sentence (or compound-complex sentence) to name a sentence that consists of

multiple independent clauses, at least one of which has at least one dependent

clause.

e.g. Though Lois was very jauntily attired in an expensively appropriate

travelling affair, she did not linger to pat out the dust which covered her clothes,

but started up the central walk with curious glances at either side. Her face was

very eager and expectant, yet she hadn’t at all that glorified expression that girls

wear when they arrive for a Senior Prom at Princeton or New Haven; still, as there

were no senior proms here, perhaps it didn’t matter. (F. S. Fitzgerald)

Lecture 15

Semantics and Pragmatics.

Expressed and Implied Meaning of the Utterance.

1. Semantics and pragmatics.

2. Presupposition and its types.

3. Implication and inference.

1. Semantics and Pragmatics

Describing the ways in which sentences are formed, many scholars make

reference to meaning and how sentences express it. In modern linguistics, meaning

is not treated as a unitary phenomenon. The analysis of meaning is treated as

divisible into two major domains. The first deals with the sense conventionally

assigned to sentences independently of the contexts in which they might be uttered.

This is the domain called semantics. The second deals with the way in which

utterances are interpreted in context, and the ways in which the utterance of a

particular sentence in a certain context may convey a message that is not actually

expressed in the sentence and in other contexts might not have been conveyed.

This is the domain called pragmatics.

Semantics is thus concerned with the meaning that is directly expressed, or

encoded, in sentences, while pragmatics deals with the principles that account for

the way utterances are actually interpreted in context. Pragmatics is concerned not

with the meaning of sentences as units of the language system but with the

interpretation of utterances in context. Utterances in context are often interpreted in

ways that cannot be accounted for simply in terms of the meaning of the sentence

uttered. A central principle in pragmatics, which drives a great deal of the utterance

interpretation process, is that the addressee of an utterance will expect it to be

relevant, and will normally interpret it on that basis.

One of the major problems concerning semantics and pragmatics is lack of

adequate definition. The definitions that have been offered do not delimit

pragmatics from semantics either clearly and neatly, or to everybody’s satisfaction.

G. Leech distinguishes between three possible ways of structuring this

relationship: semanticism (pragmatics inside semantics – Searle), pragmaticism

(semantics inside pragmatics – Austin) and complementarism (semantics and

pragmatics complement each other, but are otherwise independent areas of

research – Leech).