DOCSLIB.ORG

Definite Descriptions Are Directly Referential

Total Page：16

File Type：pdf, Size：1020Kb

Download full-text PDF Read full-text
Definite Descriptions Are Directly Referential Definite Descriptions are Directly Referential Simon James Varey 2016 A thesis submitted in fulfilment of the requirements for the degree of Master of Philosophy Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences University of Sydney Abstract Amongst those who have analysed definite descriptions as referential, most have considered them to be indirectly referential. In contrast, I will argue that definite descriptions are directly referential, in the sense of Kaplan (1980). In other words, the informational contents of utterances of definite descriptions are identical to their referents. In this thesis, I will first present a semantic frame- work inspired primarily by Kaplan (1980) with additions from Russell (2008) and Salmon (1986). I will then present a semantic analysis of definite descriptions whereby they are directly referential expressions. This analysis will also concur with Lewis’ (1979) suggestion that the referents of definite description utterances are determined by comparative salience. I will argue that this analysis provides the most theoretically virtuous explanation of the various semantic properties of definite descriptions. I will also examine a series of problem cases for this anal- ysis and argue that they can be resolved through independently justified means. Firstly, I will discuss Frege’s Puzzle, as presented by Salmon (1986), as it relates to the directly referential analysis of definite descriptions, as well as the related problem of de dicto indirect speech and propositional attitude reports. I will suggest that Salmon’s approach to these problems in the case of proper names will also apply in the case of directly referential definite descriptions. Secondly, I will argue that Kripke’s (1977) analysis of the phenomena discussed by Donnellan (1966) is compatible with the directly referential analysis of definite descriptions. Thirdly, I will provide an ambiguous analysis of modal operators to account for de dicto modal claims. I will conclude by discussing possible links between this analysis and analyses of other singular terms.1 1First of all, I would like to thank my supervisor Nick Smith for his invaluable assistance in the creation of this thesis. Furthermore, I would like to thank Laura MacDonald and audiences at the University of Sydney and the 2013, 2014 and 2015 AAP, 2014 APPC and 2015 AAL conferences for their feedback. Finally, this thesis is dedicated to my father Doug, mother Sue, sister Katrina and partner Anastasia. Without their unending support this thesis could never have been created. 1 Contents I The General Framework 6 1 The Four Kinds of Meaning 6 1.1 The Roles of Meaning . .6 1.2 Contents, Bases and Constitutions . .8 1.2.1 Contents . .9 1.2.2 Bases . 10 1.2.3 Constitutions . 11 1.3 Expressions and their Uses . 13 1.4 A Note on Denoting . 17 1.4.1 A Type System for Denotata . 17 1.4.2 Denotation Gaps and Presupposition . 20 1.4.3 Non-Extensional Operators and Non-Standard Denotations . 22 1.4.4 Truth versus Acceptability . 24 2 Propositions and Content 25 2.1 What are Propositions? . 26 2.2 Samesaying and Indirect Speech . 27 2.3 What Can and Can’t Play the Role . 29 2.4 de re versus de dicto ............................ 33 2.5 Propositions are Eternal but Bases are not . 34 2.6 The Other Roles Propositions Play . 37 2.6.1 Propositional Attitudes . 37 2.6.2 Modality . 39 2.6.3 Information . 40 2.7 Contents are Total . 43 3 Constitutions and Characters 44 3.1 Constitutions . 44 3.1.1 Constitutions and Reference Determiners . 45 3.1.2 Incomplete Constitutions . 51 3.2 Characters . 53 II An Analysis of Definite Descriptions 55 4 Definite Descriptions are Referential Expressions 56 4.1 Referential or Quantificational? . 56 4.2 Arguments for the Quantificational Analysis . 57 4.3 Arguments for the Referential Analysis . 60 5 The Denotation of Definite Descriptions 62 5.1 Empty Uses . 62 5.2 The Uniqueness View . 64 5.2.1 History of the View . 64 2 5.2.2 The Context-Level Uniqueness View . 65 5.2.3 Problems with the Uniqueness View . 66 5.3 The Familiarity View . 69 5.4 The Salience View . 70 5.4.1 History of the View . 71 5.4.2 The Notion of Salience . 72 5.4.3 Evidence for the View . 74 5.4.4 Formal Representations of Salience . 76 6 The Rival Analyses 78 6.1 The Indirectly Referential Analysis . 78 6.1.1 The Analysis . 78 6.1.2 The History of the Analysis . 81 6.2 The Directly Referential Analysis . 82 6.2.1 The Analysis . 82 6.2.2 The History of the Analysis . 84 6.3 Hybrid Referential Analyses . 87 7 The Best Analysis 90 7.1 Arguments for the Salience Directly Referential Analysis . 90 7.1.1 Unified Analyses . 90 7.1.2 No Partial Contents . 92 7.1.3 Samesaying and the de re ..................... 92 7.1.4 The Context-level Salience View . 95 7.1.5 The Salience Directly Referential Analysis is the Best Analysis . 97 7.2 Arguments against the Salience Directly Referential Analysis . 98 7.2.1 Frege’s Puzzle . 98 7.2.2 de dicto Indirect Speech Reports . 105 7.2.3 Donnellan on Definite Descriptions . 109 7.2.4 de dicto Modal Claims . 114 7.2.5 Salmon on Definite Descriptions . 117 A A Formal System of Contents and Constitutions 122 A.1 A Type System for Content and Constitutions . 122 A.1.1 Intensions, Colours and the Type System . 124 A.1.2 Non-extensional Operators, Non-standard Denotations and the Type System . 126 A.2 A Formal Definition of Contents . 127 A.2.1 The System . 127 A.2.2 A Recursive Definition of the ↓ Function . 129 A.2.3 The Different Kinds of Content . 130 A.2.4 Non-Extensional Operators and Non-Standard Denotations . 136 A.3 A Formal System of Constitutions . 136 A.3.1 The Different Kinds of Constitution . 138 A.3.2 Constitutions with Non-standard Denotations . 141 References 145 3 Introduction The main focus of this thesis is informational content.2 The informational content of an utterance of a sentence can loosely be understood as what that utterance says, or the claim that it makes. The informational content of an utterance of a subsentential expression can then be understood as what that utterance contributes to the infor- mational content expressed by the utterance of a sentence it is part of. The notion of informational content is very important philosophically for a number of reasons. In par- ticular, informational content plays a central role in analyses of indirect speech reports, propositional attitude reports and modal claims. In this thesis, I will be particularly concerned with the informational content of utterances of definite descriptions. I will claim that the informational contents of utter- ances of such expressions are identical to their referents. To use Kaplan’s (1980, p. 493) terminology, I will claim that definite descriptions are directly referential expressions. While there has been much debate over whether definite descriptions are referential or quantificational expressions, most of those who have held that definite descriptions are referential have gone on to claim, usually without much argument, that definite de- scriptions are indirectly referential.3 One major exception to this is Donnellan (1966), who claimed that some, but not all, utterances of definite descriptions were directly ref- erential. Contrary to all these figures, I will make the original claim that all utterances of definite descriptions are directly referential. I will present this claim, that definite descriptions are directly referential, in the form of a semantic analysis of definite descriptions: a theory which assigns each definite description a meaning.4 These meanings will, relative to the context of an utterance of a definite description, determine the informational content (and referent) of that utterance. The reason I present this claim in the form of a semantic analysis, rather than any direct assignment of informational contents, is that (as I discuss in Chapter 2) different utterances of the same definite description may have different informational contents (and referents), while all utterances of the same definite description will have the same meaning. Such an analysis will also answer the question: in virtue of what do utterances of definite descriptions have the informational contents they do? This thesis has two parts. In the first part, I will present a general semantic frame- work within which I will discuss and evaluate my analysis and rival analyses of definite descriptions. This framework will be based primarily on Kaplan’s (1980) Logic of Demonstratives with extensions and revisions from Russell (2008), Salmon (1986) and myself. In the second part I will present my salience directly referential analysis of definite descriptions and argue that it is the correct analysis of definite descriptions. 2Cf. Salmon (1986, p. 1): “The topic of this book is the nature of the cognitive information content of declarative sentences”. Unlike Salmon, I will not describe informational content as ‘cognitive’, as (to my ears) ‘cognitive content’ sounds like narrow mental content and (as I discuss in Chapter 2) the informational contents Salmon and I intend to discuss are wide mental contents. I will use the terms ‘informational content’, ‘information’ and ‘content’ roughly synonymously throughout this thesis (as I elaborate in Chapter 2). 3For example: Frege (1892), Kaplan (1980), Salmon (1986), Russell (2008). Salmon (1986, p. 20-21) does provide an argument for this conclusion, which I will examine in Chapter 7. 4More specifically, this semantic analysis will assign each definite description a constitution (a kind of meaning I will introduce in Chapter 1). In Chapter 3, I discuss why such a theory should be called a semantic analysis.
Load more

Recommended publications
  • Change Sentences Direct Into Indirect Speech
    Change Sentences Direct Into Indirect Speech WhichcarburiseFlickering Trevor soEdie binaurally. misrepresent mutiny punitively Main so and quarterly while huffing Abbey that Traver Lazaro always unswearing finalize cutinises her his his Rawlplugs?harpsichordists chronometers oppugnsginger distractingly, disserving all.he Lost his bike Indirect speech They show we simply going to running Direct speech They declare that. Reported Speech in English Grammar. What such a Jussive subjunctive Latin? Reported Speech Indirect Speech in English Summary. Ulysses asked the field is important to us consent, into direct speech change sentences indirect quote the benefits of speech rules in. Grammar Basics Direct and Indirect Speech Hitbullseye. Do not enclosed inside for change into past perfect as they do not track your team sports he was and what are transformed into the. 1 The Latin subjunctive is another mood of hypothetical verbal activity including ideas of uncertainty potential will shadow and refuse like. Direct to indirect speech General rules English Grammar. The subjunctive mainly expresses doubt or potential and what could have been whatever the indicative declares this happened or that happened the infantry is called 'jussive' which revenue from 'iubere' to command bid. Direct and Indirect Speech Verb Tense Changes with Rules. In the direct sentence the actual words of the speaker are quoted This is called Direct. Objective by the end leave the lesson the students should have able detect change where direct speech sentence into reported speech correctly Prerequisite match each. In direct speech the original words of stay are narrated no friend is made. Reported Speech English Grammar English Grammar Online.
    [Show full text]
  • CHAPTER 3: the Role of Tense-Aspect in Discourse Management
    CHAPTER 3: The Role of Tense-Aspect in Discourse Management 3.0 Introduction Tense-aspect plays an important discourse management role in the construction and organization of mental spaces (and meaning) built in the ongoing process of discourse interpretation. The purpose of this chapter is to lay out in a systematic way the components of the model of tense-aspect proposed here and to give an overview of how tense-aspect functions, in conjunction with a set of Discourse Organization Principles, to constrain the mental space configurations built during the interpretation of ongoing discourse. This chapter lays the theoretical foundation for the detailed analysis of language specific tense markers, of tense in embedded clauses, and of tense in discourse- narrative, treated in subsequent chapters. In this chapter, I will propose a model which is an extension of the approach and ideas of Fauconnier (1985, 1986a, 1986b, 1990, 1991, to appear) and Dinsmore (1991). The model, which is the basis for the account of tense presented in this dissertation, consists of: • the mental space format (space partitioning, cognitive links between elements in different spaces, etc...) and the general mental space principles of access, optimization, spreading, and matching, as proposed in Fauconnier (1985) and updated in more recent work. 67 68 •a set of conceptual, discourse primitives: {BASE, FOCUS, EVENT, and V- POINT}, which are distributed over the hierarchical configuration of spaces built as the discourse interpretation process unfolds. •a set of Discourse Organization Principles which operate on these conceptual primitives, determining the types of space configurations which are possible. •a distinction between the FACT and PREDICTION status assigned to spaces.
    [Show full text]
  • PARASITIC MIRATIVITY of ENGLISH USE in COLIN TREVORROWS MOVIE “JURASSIC WORLD” Thesis Submitted in Partial Fulfillment of Th
    PARASITIC MIRATIVITY OF ENGLISH USE IN COLIN TREVORROWS MOVIE “JURASSIC WORLD” Thesis Submitted in Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for the Degree of Sarjana Humaniora in English and Literature Department of Faculty of Adab and Humanities of UIN Alauddin Makassar By MUJI RETNO Reg. No. 40300111080 ENGLISH AND LITERATURE DEPARTMENT ADAB AND HUMANITIES FACULTY ALAUDDIN STATE ISLAMIC UNIVERSITY MAKASSAR 2016 PARASITIC MIRATIVITY OF ENGLISH USE IN COLIN TREVORROW’S MOVIE “JURASSIC WORLD” Thesis Submitted in Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for the Degree of Sarjana Humaniora in English and Literature Department of Faculty of Adab and Humanities of UIN Alauddin Makassar By MUJI RETNO Reg. No. 40300111080 ENGLISH AND LITERATURE DEPARTMENT ADAB AND HUMANITIES FACULTY ALAUDDIN STATE ISLAMIC UNIVERSITY MAKASSAR 2016 i MOTTO “EDUCATION IS WHAT REMAINS AFTER ONE HAS FORGOTTEN WHAT ONE HAS LEARNED IN SCHOOL.” (Albert Eistein) “EDUCATION IS A PROGRESSIVE DISCOVERY OF OUR OWN IGNORENCE.” (Charlie Chaplin) “EVERY THE LAST STEP INEVITABLY HAS THE FIRST STEP” (Muji Retno) ii ACKNOWLEDGE All praises to Allah who has blessed, guided and given the health to the researcherduring writing this thesis. Then, the researcherr would like to send invocation and peace to Prophet Muhammad SAW peace be upon him, who has guided the people from the bad condition to the better life. The researcher realizes that in writing and finishing this thesis, there are many people that have provided their suggestion, advice, help and motivation. Therefore, the researcher would like to express thanks and highest appreciation to all of them. For the first, the researcher gives special gratitude to her parents, Masir Hadis and Jumariah Yaha who have given their loves, cares, supports and prayers in every single time.
    [Show full text]
  • ELC 231: Introduction to Language and Linguistics Semantics & Pragmatics: Ambiguity and Meaning As USE Vs TRUTH
    1 Introduction 2 Speech Acts 3 Gricean Maxims References r, e, b, f b, f, g, a V’ V’ PP [watch a movie]V’ [with a superhero]PP V NP with a superhero watch a movie ELC 231: Introduction to Language and Linguistics Semantics & Pragmatics: Ambiguity and Meaning as USE vs TRUTH Dr. Meagan Louie M. Louie ELC 231: Language and Linguistics 1 / 112 1 Introduction 1.1 Compositionality and Structural Ambiguity 2 Speech Acts 1.2 Meaning as USE 3 Gricean Maxims 1.3 Investigating USE-CONDITIONS References Core Subdomains Linguistics: The study of Language Phonetics Phonology Morphology Syntax Semantics Pragmatics M. Louie ELC 231: Language and Linguistics 2 / 112 1 Introduction 1.1 Compositionality and Structural Ambiguity 2 Speech Acts 1.2 Meaning as USE 3 Gricean Maxims 1.3 Investigating USE-CONDITIONS References Core Subdomains: Last Week - Syntax and Semantics Linguistics: The study of Language Phonetics Phonology Morphology Syntax Semantics Pragmatics M. Louie ELC 231: Language and Linguistics 3 / 112 1 Introduction 1.1 Compositionality and Structural Ambiguity 2 Speech Acts 1.2 Meaning as USE 3 Gricean Maxims 1.3 Investigating USE-CONDITIONS References Core Subdomains: This Week - Semantics and Pragmatics Linguistics: The study of Language Phonetics Phonology Morphology Syntax Semantics Pragmatics M. Louie ELC 231: Language and Linguistics 4 / 112 1 Introduction 1.1 Compositionality and Structural Ambiguity 2 Speech Acts 1.2 Meaning as USE 3 Gricean Maxims 1.3 Investigating USE-CONDITIONS References Core Subdomains: Semantics • Semantics: The study of MEANING in language 1 Review: Meaning as Truth and reference 2 REVIEW: Compositionality 3 A Semantic Interpretation System for Language (i) The Model/Ontology (ii) Lexical Entries (iii) Compositional Rules (i.e., how to semantically interpret PSRs) M.
    [Show full text]
  • Tagalog Pala: an Unsurprising Case of Mirativity
    Tagalog pala: an unsurprising case of mirativity Scott AnderBois Brown University Similar to many descriptions of miratives cross-linguistically, Schachter & Otanes(1972)’s clas- sic descriptive grammar of Tagalog describes the second position particle pala as “expressing mild surprise at new information, or an unexpected event or situation.” Drawing on recent work on mi- rativity in other languages, however, we show that this characterization needs to be refined in two ways. First, we show that while pala can be used in cases of surprise, pala itself merely encodes the speaker’s sudden revelation with the counterexpectational nature of surprise arising pragmatically or from other aspects of the sentence such as other particles and focus. Second, we present data from imperatives and interrogatives, arguing that this revelation need not concern ‘information’ per se, but rather the illocutionay update the sentence encodes. Finally, we explore the interactions between pala and other elements which express mirativity in some way and/or interact with the mirativity pala expresses. 1. Introduction Like many languages of the Philippines, Tagalog has a prominent set of discourse particles which express a variety of different evidential, attitudinal, illocutionary, and discourse-related meanings. Morphosyntactically, these particles have long been known to be second-position clitics, with a number of authors having explored fine-grained details of their distribution, rela- tive order, and the interaction of this with different types of sentences (e.g. Schachter & Otanes (1972), Billings & Konopasky(2003) Anderson(2005), Billings(2005) Kaufman(2010)). With a few recent exceptions, however, comparatively little has been said about the semantics/prag- matics of these different elements beyond Schachter & Otanes(1972)’s pioneering work (which is quite detailed given their broad scope of their work).
    [Show full text]
  • The Logic of Indirect Speech
    PERSPECTIVE The logic of indirect speech Steven Pinker*†, Martin A. Nowak‡, and James J. Lee* *Department of Psychology, and ‡Program for Evolutionary Dynamics, Departments of Mathematics and Organismic and Evolutionary Biology, Harvard University, Cambridge, MA 02138 Edited by Jeremy Nathans, Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine, Baltimore, MD, and approved December 11, 2007 (received for review July 31, 2007) When people speak, they often insinuate their intent indirectly rather than stating it as a bald proposition. Examples include sexual come-ons, veiled threats, polite requests, and concealed bribes. We propose a three-part theory of indirect speech, based on the idea that human communication involves a mixture of cooperation and conflict. First, indirect requests allow for plausible deniability, in which a cooperative listener can accept the request, but an uncooperative one cannot react adversarially to it. This intuition is sup- ported by a game-theoretic model that predicts the costs and benefits to a speaker of direct and indirect requests. Second, language has two functions: to convey information and to negotiate the type of relationship holding between speaker and hearer (in particu- lar, dominance, communality, or reciprocity). The emotional costs of a mismatch in the assumed relationship type can create a need for plausible deniability and, thereby, select for indirectness even when there are no tangible costs. Third, people perceive language as a digital medium, which allows a sentence to generate common knowledge, to propagate a message with high fidelity, and to serve as a reference point in coordination games. This feature makes an indirect request qualitatively different from a direct one even when the speaker and listener can infer each other’s intentions with high confidence.
    [Show full text]
  • Direct Speech and Indirect Speech Grammar in the Real World
    UNIT Direct Speech and Indirect Speech 17 Human Motivation 1 Grammar in the Real World A What makes people work hard at their jobs? Read the article about ACADEMIC employee motivation. What type of reward is particularly effective in WRITING motivating workers? Argumentative ✓ writing using B Comprehension Check Complete the chart. Check ( ) whether graphs and tables each reward is external or internal. for support External Reward Internal Reward 1 Pay raise 2 Feeling successful 3 Freedom to work independently 4 Good salary 5 Good grades C Notice Find similar sentences in the article and complete the sentences below. 1 Lionel Messi , “Money is not a motivating factor… My motivation comes from playing the game I love.” 2 Daniel Pink, the author of a book on motivation, an audience once that Google was a great example of a company that supported autonomy. 3 Pink the audience that Google News and Gmail had been created during this free time. Each sentence tells what someone says. Which sentence gives the actual words of the speaker? How do you know? 248 Direct Speech and Indirect Speech WORKPLACE MOTIVATION Motivation is the desire to do something. Soccer Some studies on workplace motivation have star Lionel Messi said, “Money is not a motivating 25 focused on autonomy, which is the freedom to work factor… My motivation comes from playing the game I independently. This is an important internal reward. love.” Messi meant that he enjoys playing soccer more Daniel Pink, the author of a book on motivation, told 5 than making millions of dollars. Can that be true? What an audience once that Google was a good example other factors are important in motivating people? of a company that supported autonomy.
    [Show full text]
  • Corpus Study of Tense, Aspect, and Modality in Diglossic Speech in Cairene Arabic
    CORPUS STUDY OF TENSE, ASPECT, AND MODALITY IN DIGLOSSIC SPEECH IN CAIRENE ARABIC BY OLA AHMED MOSHREF DISSERTATION Submitted in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy in Linguistics in the Graduate College of the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, 2012 Urbana, Illinois Doctoral Committee: Professor Elabbas Benmamoun, Chair Professor Eyamba Bokamba Professor Rakesh M. Bhatt Assistant Professor Marina Terkourafi ABSTRACT Morpho-syntactic features of Modern Standard Arabic mix intricately with those of Egyptian Colloquial Arabic in ordinary speech. I study the lexical, phonological and syntactic features of verb phrase morphemes and constituents in different tenses, aspects, moods. A corpus of over 3000 phrases was collected from religious, political/economic and sports interviews on four Egyptian satellite TV channels. The computational analysis of the data shows that systematic and content morphemes from both varieties of Arabic combine in principled ways. Syntactic considerations play a critical role with regard to the frequency and direction of code-switching between the negative marker, subject, or complement on one hand and the verb on the other. Morph-syntactic constraints regulate different types of discourse but more formal topics may exhibit more mixing between Colloquial aspect or future markers and Standard verbs. ii To the One Arab Dream that will come true inshaa’ Allah! عربية أنا.. أميت دمها خري الدماء.. كما يقول أيب الشاعر العراقي: بدر شاكر السياب Arab I am.. My nation’s blood is the finest.. As my father says Iraqi Poet: Badr Shaker Elsayyab iii ACKNOWLEDGMENTS I’m sincerely thankful to my advisor Prof. Elabbas Benmamoun, who during the six years of my study at UIUC was always kind, caring and supportive on the personal and academic levels.
    [Show full text]
  • Delimiting Reported Discourse: Cross-Modal Criteria
    Linguistic Typology 2019; 23(1): 221–228 Josep Quer Delimiting reported discourse: Cross-modal criteria https://doi.org/10.1515/lingty-2019-0011 The target article “Reported speech as a dedicated syntactic domain: Typological arguments and observations” by Spronck and Nikitina constitutes an ambitious attempt at defining the core properties of reported speech constructions from a typological point of view. Even though the amount of descriptive work in sign languages is still limited when compared to spoken languages, there exists a significant amount of research on this topic. It would have been particularly interesting to incorporate those results into the empirical basis on which the proposal is built. This could also have influenced the choice of label for the phenomenon discussed in their Section 1.2: a more encompassing choice of label such as “reported discourse” might have included automatically both languages in the oral-auditory modality and in the visual-gestural modality, and the reference to other types of reported discourse, such as thought, might have been more transparent. However, beyond the terminological choices, what is particularly interesting from the proposed typological approach is that the evidence provided by sign languages in the domain of linguistic reports provides further support for some of the claims made in the article. From early on, sign language research identified that in linguistic reports a strategy was used whereby the signer adopts the “role” of the reported illocu- tionary agent (for an overview, see Lillo-Martin 2012). This strategy is known as “role shift”, and descriptively it is flagged by the following general character- istics for the sign languages described so far: (i) Marking: a.
    [Show full text]
  • Two Types of Convention in Indirect Speech Acts
    H ILLINGI S UNIVERSITY OF ILLINOIS AT URBANA-CHAMPAIGN PRODUCTION NOTE University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign Library Large-scale Digitization Project, 2007. /C~Z T E C H R N E Technical Report No. 52 I T'!O TYPES OF CONVENTION IN C 0 INDIRECT SPEECH ACTS A R J. L. Morgan L IT University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign S July 1977 Center for the Study of Reading THEC-LISRARY O T .!E OCT 7 797 UNIVLt, i•, . ' AT UP" ' AIGN UNIVERSITY OF ILLINOIS AT URBANA-CHAMPAIGN BOLT BERANEK AND NEWMAN INC. 1005 West Nevada Street 50 Moulton Street Urbana, Illinois 61801 Cambridge, Massachusetts 02138 Technical Report No. 52 T'0 TYPES OF CONVENTION IN INDIRECT SPEECH ACTS J. L. Morgan University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign July 1977 University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign Bolt Beranek and Newman Inc. 1005 West Nevada Street 50 Moulton Street Urbana, Illinois 61801 Cambridge, Massachusetts 02138 The research reported herein was supported in part by the National Institute of Education under Contract No. MS-NIE-C-400-76-Ol16 and Grant No. HEW-NIE-G-74/-0007. Indirect Speech Acts 1 Introduction In this paper I want to take up the problem of "indirect speech acts", as exemplified by the infamous case, "can you pass the salt?", with the goal of reaching an understanding of its apparently paradoxical nature. In con- sidering the competing analyses of Gordon and Lakoff (1975), Sadock (1974) and Searle (1975), my initial inclination was to reject Searle's discussion as missing the point, in favor of one of the other two.
    [Show full text]
  • Indirect Speech Acts of Utterances in the Intervention Movie
    INDIRECT SPEECH ACTS OF UTTERANCES IN THE INTERVENTION MOVIE A Thesis Submitted to Faculty of Adab and Humanities In Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for The Degree of Strata One (S1) ILHAM LEO MAULANA 1113026000075 ENGLISH LETTERS DEPARTMENT FACULTY OF ADAB AND HUMANITIES STATE ISLAMIC UNIVERSITY SYARIF HIDAYATULLAH JAKARTA 2018 ABSTRACT Ilham Leo Maulana, Indirect Speech Acts of Utterances in the Intervention Movie. A Thesis: English Letters Department. Faculty of Adab and Humanities, State Islamic University Syarif Hidayatullah of Jakarta, 2018. This research focuses to find the type of indirect speech acts and to know the function of each type of indirect speech acts that writer has found on the data. It is a qualitative research that used George Yule indirect speech acts theory (1996) as the main theory. After analyzing the data, the writer found 46 utterances which are identified as indirect speech acts. In conducting this research the writer watch the movie, read the script, identified the data. Then, the writer classified the data into indirect speech acts. There are two types of indirect speech acts they are directive speech acts and commissive speech acts. On the directive speech acts the writer found 32 (69.6%) indirect requesting acts which are realized in twelve declarative sentences and twenty interrogative sentences and 11 (23.9%) indirect questioning acts which are realized in declarative sentences. On the other hand, in commissive speech acts the writer found 3 (6.5%) indirect offering acts which are realized in one declarative sentence and two imperative sentences. The dominant type of indirect speech acts is directive speech acts.
    [Show full text]
  • Direct and Indirect Speech Acts in English Major Bachelor’S Thesis
    MASARYK UNIVERSITY IN BRNO FACULTY OF ARTS DEPARTMENT OF ENGLISH AND AMERICAN STUDIES Direct and Indirect Speech Acts in English Major Bachelor’s Thesis Veronika Justová Supervisor: Mgr. Jan Chovanec, Ph.D. Brno 2006 1 I hereby declare that I have worked on this Bachelor Thesis independently, using only primary and secondary sources listed in the bibliography. th 20 April 2006 in Brno: 2 I wish to express many thanks to my supervisor, Mgr. Jan Chovanec, Ph.D., for his kind and valuable advice, help and support. 3 CONTENTS INTRODUCTION.......................................................................................................5 1. LANGUAGE, SPEECH ACTS AND PERFORMATIVES...................................6 1.1. EXPLICIT AND IMPLICIT PERFORMATIVES .............................................................7 1.2. FELICITY CONDITIONS .........................................................................................9 2. THE LOCUTIONARY, ILLOCUTIONARY AND PERLOCUTIONARY ACTS ...................................................................................................................................11 2.1. LOCUTIONARY ACTS .........................................................................................12 2.2. ILLOCUTIONARY ACTS .......................................................................................13 2.3. PERLOCUTIONARY ACTS ....................................................................................17 3. INDIRECTNESS...................................................................................................17
    [Show full text]