the-relation-between-semantics-and-pragmatics.doc

外国语2010级6班 王丽红 201005140626the relation between semantics and pragmaticsIntroduction Language is the bridge connecting the man and the physical world .in other words, language is the reflection of mans knowledge about the objective world, by the language, we are able to express our ideas so as to communicate with others for kinds of purposes. And whether with body language or formal written or spoken language, the meaning is the core of the language.but meaning varies in the different situations or context even with the same syntactic form of a language.so what makes these differences ? Among the study of linguistics on the meaning, the are two main kinds study of meaning, semantics and pragmatics. The two are close but different in the study of meaning. Over the past years ,many linguists do many research on the study of the meaning and make attempt to take semantics ,instead of the syntax,s the prerequisite of the study of the linguistics . But the deeper the study ,the more they find the necessity of relating the semantics and the context, which produce the existing of pragmatics. So this paper is mainly dealing with the relation between the semantics and pragmatics.1.The definition of semantics and pragmatics.Semantics is the study of meaning, which focuses on the relation between signifiers, such as words, phrases, signs, and symbols, and what they stand for. Linguistic semantics is the study of meaning that is used to understand human expression through language. Other forms of semantics include the semantics of programming languages, formal logics, and semiotics.Pragmatics is the study of meaning, which focuses on the specified conversational context. In a given languages, linguistic pragmatics is the study of meaning that the transmission of meaning depends not only on structural and linguistic knowledge (e.g., grammer, lexicon, etc.) of the speaker and listener, but also on the context of the utterance, any preexisting knowledge about those involved, the inferred intent of the speaker, and other factors. In this respect, pragmatics explains how language users are able to overcome apparent ambiguity, since meaning relies on the manner, place, time etc. of an utterance.The inner relation between semantics and pragmatics.In conclusion, semantics is the level of linguistics which has been most affected by pragmatics, but the relation between semantics (in the sense of conceptual semantics) and pragmatics has remained a matter of fundamental disagreement. Three logically distinct positions in this debate can be distinguished (Leech, 1981). 1) Pragmatics should be subsumed under semantics. 2) Semantics should be subsumed under pragmatics. 3) Semantics and pragmatics are distinct and complementary fields of study. The reductionist approach, runs counter into the fact that there are linguistic phenomena such as entailment which are relatively uncontroversially semantic, and there are also linguistic phenomena such as conversational implication which are relatively uncontroversially pragmatic(Huang, 2007).The complementarist viewpoint is more widely accepted in which semantics and pragmatics is considered as two different components in language system. They are independent and complementary. It is on the basis of complementarism that there becomes the boundary between semantics and pragmatics.2,The difference between semantics and pragmatics.The difference can be divided in two ways .firstly, it is the relation between language and context. Semantics is the study of meaning isolating from the context,is purely the linguistic meaning ,which just concerns the language only while pragmatics is the study of meaning related to language users, to conversational context. We can include that semantics concerns the relation between the symbols and reference,and pragmatics deals with the relation between symbols and users. For example, when A say,-you are a fool .B say what does fool means? And C say what do you mean by a fool? In this case ,b actually want to know the literary(conceptual) meaning of the word FOOL. And c want to know the situational meaning of a fool.to a extent , we can say ,pragmatics not only conclude the linguistic meaning but extra meaning implied by the speech users.Second,according to Huangs criticism on the distinction between semantics and pragmatics.The distinction between semantics and pragmatics has been formulated in a variety of different ways. Of these formulations, three, according to Bach (1999a, 2004), are particularly influential. They are (i) truth-conditional versus non-truth-conditional meaning, (ii) conventional versus non-conventional meaning, and (iii) context independence versus context dependence (Huang, 2007).1) Truth-conditional versus non-truth-conditional meaningAccording to this formulation, semantics deals with truth-conditional meaning, or words-world relations , semantics is just the linguistic meaning ,it do mot denote anything ; pragmatics has to do with non-truth-conditional meaning. But the meaning in pragmatics often implied in a indirect way.-the conversational implicatures ,meaning implied by the speakers under a particular circumstance.so it violates the manner of quantity in cooperative principles. It is the non conditional meaning.2) Conventional versus non-conventional meaningOn this view, semantics studies the conventional aspects of meaning; pragmatics concerns the non conventional aspects of meaning. Consequently, while a semantic interpretation, being conventional in nature, can not be cancelled, a pragmatic inference, which is non-conventional in nature, can but, as pointed out by Bach, among others, this way of invoking the semantics-pragmatics division runs into trouble with the fact that there are linguistic expressions that whose conventional meaning is closely associated with use. 3) Context independence and context dependenceSemantics is concerned with isolated word meaning and sentence meaning, meanings predictable from linguistics knowledge alone.and pragmatics deals with the relation between the language and context that are basic to a