Part 3 Sentence-meaning 131
5 Meaningful and meaningless sentences 131 5.0 Introduction 131 5.1 Grammaticality, acceptability and meaningfulness 132 5.2 The meaningfulness of sentences 134 5.3 Corrigibility and translatability 138 5.4 Verifiability and verificationism 140 5.5 Propositions and prepositional content 141 5.6 Non-factual significance and emotivism 144 5.7 Truth-conditions 146 5.8 Tautologies and contradictions 149 6 Sentence-meaning and propositional content 153 6.0 Introduction 153 6.1 Thematic meaning ; 154 6.2 Simple and composite sentences 157 6.3 Truth-functionality (1): conjunction and disjunction 162 6.4 Truth-functionality (2): implication 167 6.5 Truth-functionality (3): negation 169 6.6 Sentence-type, clause-type and mood 176 6.7 The meaning of interrogative and declarative sentences 182 6.8 Other kinds of non-declaratives: imperatives, Contents ix 7 The formalization of sentence-meaning 199 7.0 Introduction 199 7.1 Formal semantics and linguistic semantics 200 isomorphism, and saving the appearances 204 7.3 Deep structure and semantic representations 209 7.4 Projection-rules and selection-restrictions 215 7.5 Montague grammar 221 7.6 Possible worlds 226 Part 4 Utterance-meaning 234 8 Speech acts and illocutionary force 234 8.0 Introduction 234 8.1 Utterances 235 8.2 Locutionary acts 240 8.3 Illocutionary force 247 8.4 Statements, questions and directives 253 9 Text and discourse; context and co -text 258 9.0 Introduction 258 9.1 Text-sentences 259 9.2 What is a text? And what is text? 262 9.3 Utterance-meaning and context 265 9.4 Implication and conventional implicatures 271 9.5 Conversational implicatures 277 10 The subjectivity of utterance 293 10.0Introduction 293 10.1Reference 294 10.2Indexicality and deixis 302 10.3The grammatical category of tense 312 10.4The grammatical category of aspect 320 10.5Modality, modal expressions and mood 327 10.6Subjectivity and locutionary agency 336 Suggestions for further reading 343 Bibliography 347 Index 360 Preface
This book started life as a second edition of Language, Meaning and Context (1981) and, regrettably, in several places has been announced as forthcoming under that title. It now appears with a completely different title because, in the event, it has turned out to be a very different book. It is much longer; it deals with several topics that were not dealt with at all in the earlier book; and, above all, it is written at a different level and in a different style. Many of these differences derive from the fact that Linguistic Semantics (LS), unlike its predecessor (LMC), is intended to be used as a textbook for courses in semantics given in departments of linguistics (and related disciplines) in colleges and universities. Although LMC was not conceived as a textbook, it was quite widely used as such, until it went out of print some years ago. I hope that LS, being written especially for students of linguistics, will prove to be much more satisfactory for this purpose. In revising the original text, apart from taking account of such recent developments as seemed to me to be relevant to what is presented as an introduction to the subject, I have found myself obliged to add several new sections and to rewrite or expand others. I have, however, kept to the same general plan; as before, I have divided the book into four parts and ten chapters (amending the chapter titles when it appeared to be appropriate to do so); as far as possible, I have used the same examples to illustrate the same points, even though the points being made may now be formulated somewhat differently; much of the original text is still here (albeit with minor stylistic changes); and, finally, I have maintained (and explained in greater detail) the nota- xi
xii Preface tional conventions used in LMC (which were first used in my two-volume Semantics, 1977). It should be possible therefore for those who are familiar with LMC, especially instructors and lecturers who have used it for their own courses, to find their way through LS without difficulty. Much has happened in linguistic semantics in the last decade, or so. Apart from anything else, the term 'linguistic semantics' is now more commonly used than it was when I employed it in the Preface to LMC; and this implies that it is now more widely recognized than it was at one time that there are several legitimately different kinds of semantics, each of which has its own disciplinary orientation or focus: linguistic, philosophical, anthropological, psychological, literary, etc. Recognition of this fact does not of course imply that the boundaries between these different kinds of semantics are impermeable or eternal or that everyone engaged in semantics will agree as to where the interdisciplinary boundaries should currently be drawn. My own view is essentially the same as it was when I wrote LMC ( and Semantics). For me, semantics is by definition the study of meaning; and linguistic semantics is the study of meaning in so far as it is systematically encoded in the vocabulary and grammar of (so-called) natural languages. This definition of linguistic semantics, as far as it goes, is relatively uncontroversial. But it is also almost wholly uninformative unless and until one goes on to say, first, what one means by 'meaning' and, second, what exactly is meant by 'encoded' in this context. As I explain in greater detail in Chapter 1, I take a rather broader view of meaning than many linguists do. It follows that I include within the subject-matter of semantics - and therefore, if it is systematically encoded in the structure of natural languages, within the subject-matter of linguistic semantics -much that many linguists who take a more restrictive view of meaning than I do would exclude. In particular, I include much that they would deal with, not within semantics, but within what has come to be called pragmatics. Those who draw a terminological distinction between 'semantics' and 'pragmatics' and take a narrower view of mean-
Preface xiii ing than I do will see this book as an introduction to what they think of as the broader, combined, field of linguistic semantics-and-pragmatics, and I have no objection to their tacitly retitling it accordingly. As far as the major substantive issues that are involved in drawing the distinction between semantics and pragmatics are concerned, these have to be discussed anyway, regardless of how broadly or narrowly one defines the term 'meaning' and in whatever way one maps out the field of linguistic semantics. Such issues, which include the distinction between meaning and use, between prepositional (or representational) and non-propositional meaning, between competence and performance, between sentences and utterances, are fully discussed in the present book. I think it is true to say that there is now more agreement among linguists than there used to be about the relevance of the distinctions that I have mentioned and greater sophistication in drawing them. But there is as yet no consensus about the relative importance of particular topics. I have described this book as an introductory textbook and have deliberately used the term 'Introduction' in its subtitle. This does not mean that I expect everything in it to be immediately comprehensible to those who come to it without any previous background in linguistics and with no previous knowledge of semantics. It is introductory in the sense that my Introduction to Theoretical Linguistics (1968) was introductory: although it presupposes no previous specialized knowledge of its subject-matter, i.t is based on the assumption that those who use it, with or without an instructor, will have read, or will read in conjunction-with it, some of the other works referred to in 'Suggestions for further reading'. I realize that some sections of the book, especially in the later chapters, will be quite demanding, even for students with some previous knowledge of linguistics, unless they also have, or are prepared to acquire, some knowledge of the relevant parts of logic and of the philosophy of language. But I would argue that no-one can hope to understand modern linguistic semantics without some knowledge of its philosophical underpinnings. I have tried to make everything as clear as possible in context and to give, non-technically, xiv Preface
as much of the philosophical background as is necessary for the purpose in hand. My treatment of what I call linguistic semantics (which others, as I have explained, might refer to as a combination of linguistic semantics and pragmatics) is necessarily selective. It is also somewhat personal. In choosing the topics that I have chosen and in allotting to each of them the space that I have allotted to them, I have relied upon my own evaluation of their intrinsic or relative long-term importance, rather than upon the consensus of my colleagues (even where there is such a consensus). I have deliberately included several topics which are not dealt with at all, or in my view are dealt with unsatisfactorily, in otherwise comparable works. Students who use this book in class with an instructor will of course have the benefit of the instructor's commentary and criticism. However, in the interests of those who are reading the book without such guidance, I have tried to make it clear in the text itself when and in what respect I am presenting a non-standard view of a particular topic and why I think the standard view is defective, incomplete, or (as is frequently the case) imprecisely formulated. In saying this, however, I do not wish to exaggerate the differences between one view of linguistic semantics and another. Very often these differences are more apparent than real, and I shall be pleased if students using this book in conjunction with others come to the same conclusion. No-one embarking upon the study of linguistic semantics these days can afford to be ignorant of at least the rudiments of formal semantics. One of my principal aims in writing this book, as it was in writing its predecessor, has been, on the one hand, to show how formal semantics, conceived as the analysis of a central part of the meaning of sentences - their prepositional content - can be integrated within the broader field of linguistic semantics and, on the other, to demonstrate that formal, truth-conditional, semantics, as currently practised, fails to handle satisfactorily the non-propositional meaning that is also encoded, whether lexically or grammatically, in the sentences of particular natural languages. There are now available, as there were not when I wrote LMC, good textbooks of formal
Preface xv semantics (which I mention in 'Suggestions for further reading'): I trust that my own book will be seen as complementary to these and, at certain points, will serve as an introduction to them. It is far less technical as far as the formalization of semantics is concerned. But at times I have provided rather more of the historical and philosophical context than they do. It is because I have had the particular purpose of relating the content of this book to formal semantics that I have given proportionately more space to sentence-semantics and to utterance-semantics than I have to lexical semantics. It is only recently that linguists have been seriously concerned with the contribution that is made by grammatical structure to the meaning of sentences (and utterances), whereas this concern has always been central in formal semantics. There are aspects of lexical semantics that I do not deal with at all in the present book. These can be followed up in the other works to which readers are referred in 'Suggestions for further reading'. What I have tried to do is to show how lexical and non-lexical meaning fit together and are interdependent. I should now say something about terminology. When it comes to the introduction of technical terms, non-specialists are often put off by what they see, initially, as esoteric and unnecessary jargon. Admittedly, specialists in any field of study are often guilty of using the jargon of their trade in contexts where it is inappropriate - in contexts where preciseness of reference is unimportant and where the esoteric jargon serves only to mystify those who are not familiar with it. There are other contexts, however, where the use of specialized terminology is essential if misunderstanding is to be avoided. It is very difficult to write clearly and unambiguously about language in non-technical language and without a certain amount of formalism; and most authors who attempt to do so fail badly. What look, at first sight, like straightforward, plain-English, statements, when examined critically, usually turn out to be riddled with ambiguities or to be uninterpretable. The issues with which we shall be concerned, even at the level at which they are presented in this book, are inevitably rather technical in places; and there is a certain amount of specialized ter-
xvi Preface
minology to be mastered. I have done my best to avoid the unnecessary use of specialized terms, but whenever clarity of exposition and precision are in conflict with the treacherous pseudo-simplicity of so-called plain English, I have almost always sacrificed the latter to the former. I have also systematically avoided the use of many devices -such as near-synonyms for the sake of variety - which students are often taught to cultivate as hallmarks of a lively and attractive style and which are often deliberately exploited by writers of introductory textbooks in all subjects. Semanticists, more than most, must train themselves to identify and to control the ambiguities, the vagueness and the indeterminacy of everyday language. One way of doing so is by being deliberately and resolutely pedantic in one's use of terms and, as we shall see later, in one's use of particular notational conventions. I am very grateful to Jean Aitchison for the help she gave me with the earlier book,(LMC), as general editor of the series in which it appeared, and for the comments she made on the pre-final draft of the present book. I am similarly indebted to Rodney Huddleston for His invaluable critical comments on several points of detail, Since I have not always taken their advice (and may yet come to regret that I have not), they are not to be blamed for any errors, infelicities or inconsistencies that remain in the final text. As always, I am greatly indebted to the editors that I have worked with at Cambridge University Press for their highly professional guidance at all stages (and for their patience), in this case to Marion Smith, who commissioned the book for the Press, and to Judith Ayling who, several years later, saw it through to completion. I owe a special debt of gratitude to Julia Harding, who has once again acted as my copy editor, and has dealt cheerfully and competently with a difficult and messy typescript, eliminating many inconsistencies and errors. December 1994 John Lyons Trinity Hall, Cambridge Symbols and typographical conventions & conjunction V disjunction —> implication => entailment Û symmetrical entailment B equivalence operator ~ negation operator (x) or" x) universal quantifier (E) or$) existential quantifier N or } necessity M or à possibility to temporal zero-point SMALL CAPITALS For sense-components and other more abstract elements, or correlates, of meaning. Italics 1. For forms (as distinct from lexemes or expressions) in their orthographic representation. 2. For certain mathematical and logical symbols, according to standard conventions. 'Single quotation-marks' 1. For lexemes and expressions. 2. For the citation of sentences (i.e. system-sentences). 3. For book titles. "Double quotation-marks" 1. For meanings. 2. For propositions. 3. For quotations from other authors.
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