Week 5: syntax, semantics, and pragmatics

linguistic expression

a piece of language with a certain form, meaning, and syntactic properties

syntax

piece of linguistics that is broadly concerned with how expressions combine with one another to form larger expressions

grammaticality judgement

a reflection of speakers’ mental grammar, and not a test of their conscious knowledge of the prescriptive rules

Difference between syntax and semantics

syntax is merely concerned with word order, semantics is concerned with word definition and meaning

principle of compositionality

the meaning of a sentence depends on the meanings of the expressions it contains and on the way they are syntactically combined

lexical expressions

term used to describe meaningful words in a sentence

phrasal expressions

term for the consequence associated with combining lexical expressions; multi-word expressions

adjuncts

kinds of expressions whose occurrence in a sentence is purely optional (ex: Sally likes [small/fluffy/brown] dogs.)

agreement

Distinct expressions in a sentence may be required to have the same value for some grammatical feature, in which case we say that they agree with respect to that feature. [ex: *these girl came vs these girls came]

semantics

subfield of linguistics that studies meaning in language

lexical semantics

deals with the meanings of words and other lexical expressions, including the meaning relationships among them

compositional semantics

is concerned with phrasal meanings and how phrasal meanings are assembled

Sense of an expression

term interpreted as some kind of mental representation of its meaning, or perhaps some kind of concept

Reference

term for knowing a words relationship to the real world

proposition

A type of sentence that makes an assertion about certain entities in the world (ex: China is the most populous country in the world]

truth value

the crucial characteristic of a proposition is that it can be true or false

linguistic context

refers to what preceded a particular utterance in a discourse

situational context

an utterance interpretation is influenced by the situation it occurs in/from

social context

refers to the inclusion of information about the relationships between the people who are speaking and what their roles are

cooperative principle

sp the basic assumption underlying conversation is the understanding that what one says is intended to contribute to the purposes of the conversation

speech acts

the usage of language to commit an act of information, request, order, threat, warn, bet, advise, etc.

felicity conditions

a speech act uttered at a recipient that is able to do the action that was requested

In Glenda Mason’s lecture, what do clinicians assume about development expectations for age?

May assume underlying cognitive representation is adult like

In Glenda Mason’s lecture, what were the therapy factors clinicians need to consider?

1. hearing

2. language skills; often delay in development

3. multilingualism

4. oral-motor skills

5. ability to imitate

6. social-environmental context

According to Glenda, what are speech-language pathologists concerned with in speech therapy?

1. vowels

2. stress patterns

3. syllable number

4. syllable word structure

5. connected speech rate and rhythm

In Glenda’s lecture what are some tactics used in speech therapy?

1. fun, play based activities,

2. practice meaningful words in meaningful communication

3. caregivers as active partners

This sentence: “Colorless green ideas sleep furiously” is ___________ grammatical, but ____________ odd.

syntactically, semantically

What word was used differently, thus creating a different syntactic rule, that the prof didn’t know?

In the example, “Sally devoured,”

Arguments

term for linguistic expressions that are syntactically required by another linguistic expression; the sentence requires more words to make it grammatical

Example of an Argument?

“Sally told Polly she’s leaving.” or “Sally put the book on the desk”

Pragmatics

linguistic term for meaning of language in context

proposition

term for a claim expressed by an utterance

truth value

term for the ability of a proposition to be true or false

truth conditions

the conditions that need to hold truth in real world context

aphasia

a general term for a language disorder that affects communication caused by damage to the brain

context

term for whether an utterance is contextually appropriate and what it means

Context depends on these factors:

1. preceding linguistic context

2. the situational context

3. the social context

Why is context clinically relevant?

Relevant because there are challenges with pragmatic language associated with Autism Spectrum Disorder; additional focus on children with intellectual disabilities

What is “rules of conversation”?

Language interactions have internal “rules” that are descriptions of its structure and organization; culturally specific or cross cultural