Historical Overview of Pragmatics: The Interface between Pragmatics, Semantics and Discourse Analysis

Advertisements

By Umeh, AI; Nuhu, O; Nimram, MD; Lagan, BS; Azi, NJ; Nimram, DN (2024). Greener Journal of Languages and Literature Research, 9(1): 1-7.

Greener Journal of Languages and Literature Research

ISSN: 2384-6402

Vol. 9(1), pp. 1-7, 2024

Copyright ©2024, the copyright of this article is retained by the author(s)

https://gjournals.org/GJLLR

Article’s title & authors

Historical Overview of Pragmatics: The Interface between Pragmatics, Semantics and Discourse Analysis

Umeh, Ann Ifeoma1; Nuhu, Obins2; Nimram, Mary Daniel1*; Lagan, Blessing Saina’an3; Azi, Nuhu Joseph3; Nimram, Daniel Nanlir 1

1 Department of English, University of Jos, Nigeria

2 Department of General Studies, School of Agricultural Technology, Saamaru-Kataf Campus, Nuhu Bamalli Polythecnic Zaria, Nigeria.

3 Department of English and Literary Studies, Plateau State University, Bokkos, Nigeria.

ABSTRACT

This paper highlights the historical overview of pragmatics. Pragmatics is the systematic study of meaning by virtue or dependent on, the use of language. It is the study of the context-dependent aspects of meaning which is systematically abstracted away from the construction of logical form. This study is a review article which discusses the historical development of pragmatics as an aspect of the study of language including the scope, subject matter or object of study. The paper also investigates the interface between pragmatics, semantics and discourse analysis.

ARTICLE’S INFO

Article No.: 010924003

Type: Review

Full Text: PDF, PHP, HTML, EPUB, MP3

Accepted: 10/01/2024

Published: 30/01/2024

*Corresponding Author

Dr. Mary D. Nimram

E-mail: marynimram@ gmail.com

Keywords: Deixis, presupposition, indexicals, speech acts, locutionary.
       

INTRODUCTION

According to Huang (2007): “Pragmatics is the systematic study of meaning by virtue or dependent on, the use of language” (p.2). Horn & Ward (2008) define Pragmatics as the study of the context-dependent aspects of “meaning” which is systematically abstracted away from the construction of “logical form”. The study of pragmatics is an interesting one. Pragmatics is interrelated to other fields like semantics, discourse analysis, among many others.

The aim of this research paper, which is a review article, is to discuss the historical development of pragmatics as an aspect of the study of language including the scope, subject matter or object of study. It also investigates the interface between pragmatics, semantics and discourse analysis.

History of Pragmatics

The ‘ancestry’ of pragmatics traces back to the works of philosophers like Charles Morris, Rudolf Carnap and Charles Peirce in the 1930s. The pragmatic interpretation of semiotics and verbal communication studies in Foundations of the Theory of Signs by Charles Morris (1938). According to Morris, pragmatics studies the relations of signs to interpreters, while semantics studies the relations of signs to the objects to which the signs are applicable, and syntactics studies the formal relations of signs to one another.

In the semiotic trichotomy developed by Morris, Carnap, and Peirce in the 1930s, syntax they say addresses the formal relations of signs to one another, semantics the relation of signs to what they denote, and pragmatics the relation of signs to their users and interpreters. The trichotomy posits an order of decree of abstractness for the three braches where syntax is the most abstract, pragmatics the least abstract and semantics is lying in between. Syntax provides input to semantics, and semantics provides input to pragmatics.

Linguists like Horn & Ward (2008) argue for a pragmatics module within the general theory of speaker/hearer competence (or even a pragmatic component in the grammar), while others like Sperber & Wilson (1986) argue that just like scientific reasoning—the paradigm case of a non-modular, ‘horizontal’ system—pragmatics cannot be a module, given the indeterminacy of the predictions it offers and the global knowledge it invokes.

Huang (p.2) took up Grice (1975) by elaborating the sense of pragmatism in his concern of conversational meanings, enlightened modern treatment of meaning by distinguishing two kinds of meaning, natural and non-natural. He suggested that pragmatics should centre on the more practical dimension of meaning, namely the conversational meaning which was later formulated in a variety of ways (Levinson, 1983 and Leech, 1983).

Practical concerns has also help to shift pragmaticians’ focus to explaining naturally occurring conversations which resulted in hallmark discoveries of the Cooperative Principle by Grice (1975) and the Politeness Principle by Leech (1983). Subsequently, Green (1989) explicitly defines pragmatics as natural language understanding, which was echoed by Blakemore (1990) in her Understanding Utterances: The Pragmatics of Natural Language and Grundy (1995) in his Doing Pragmatics. The impact of pragmatism has led to cross linguistic international studies of language use which resulted in, Sperber and Wilson’s (1986) relevance theory which convincingly explains how people comprehend and utter a communicative act, among other things.

The Anglo-American tradition of pragmatic study has been tremendously expanded and enriched with the involvement of researchers mainly from the continental countries such as the Netherlands, Denmark, Norway and Belgium. A symbol of this development was the establishment of the IPrA (the International Pragmatic Association) in Antwerp in 1987. In its Working Document, IPrA proposed to consider pragmatics as a theory of linguistic adaptation and look into language use from all dimensions (Verschueren, 1987). After this, pragmatics has been conceptualized as to include micro and macro components (Mey, 1993). 
Throughout its development, pragmatics has been steered by the philosophical practice of pragmatism and evolving to maintain its independence as a linguistic subfield by keeping to its tract of being practical in treating the everyday concerned meaning.

Remarkably in the 1950s, two conflicting schools of thought came into existence within the analytic philosophy of language. These are the school of ideal language philosophy and the school of ordinary language philosophy. The ideal language philosophy school originated centrally by the philosophers Goltob Frege, Alfred Tarski and Berfrand Russel. This school primarily studies the logical systems of artificial languages. In the 1950s and 1960s, the followers of the school of ideal language philosophy namely Richard Montague, David Donaldson, and David Lewis applied partially its theory and methodology to natural language which led to the development of toony’s formal semantics. Contrastively, the school of ordinary language philosophy lays emphasis on natural language rather than the formal languages studied by logicians. The school of ordinary language philosophy as led by J.L Austin, H.P Grice, Peter Strawson, John Searle, and Ludwig Wittgen flourished at Oxford in the 1950s and 1960s. The emergence of the theory of speech acts as developed by Austin, and Grices’ theory of conversational implicative was within the tradition of ordinary philosophy. The school of ideal language philosophy and the ordinary language philosophy became the landmarks of the development of a systematic, philosophically inspired pragmatics theory of language use.

In the late 1960s and early 1970s, a campaign was launched by some of Noam Chomsky’s disaffected pupils in genoetire semantics. These pupils namely Jerry Katz, J.R Ross and George Lakoff who challenge their teacher’s treatment of language as an abstract, mental device divorced from the uses and functions of language. A great deal of important research was done in the 1970s by linguists such as Lawrence Horn, Charles Fillmore, and Gerald Gazdar to bring some order into the content of ‘’the pragmatic wastebasket’’ as advised by Bar Hillel (1940s). This research emanates from the search (by the pupils) for the means to undermine Chomsky’s position. The generative semanticists who were attracted to the philosophical work by Austin namely Grice, Strawson and Searle, helped employ what the philosopher Yehoshun Bar-Hillel called the ‘’pragmatic wastebasket’’. Steren Levinson pragmatics which was written in 1983 systematised the field and marked pragmatics as a linguistic discipline in its own right. From then, the field has continued to expand and flourished. In the last two decades, we have witnessed new developments such as Lawrence Horn’s and Stephen Levinson’s new-Gricean theories, Dan Sperber’s and Deirdre Wilson’s relevance theory and important work by philosophers such as Jay Atlas, Kent Bach, and Francis Recanah. The editors of a more recently published, The Handbook of Pragmatics by Horn and Ward (2004) assert that: work in pragmatic theory has extended from the attempt to rescue the syntax and semantics from their own unnecessary complexities to other domains of linguistic inquiry, ranging from historical linguistics to the lexicon, from language acquisition to computational linguistics, from international structure to cognitive science.

Huang (p.4) affirms strongly that “one thing is now certain: the future of pragmatics is bright’’.

Pragmatics School for Thought

Anglo-American and European Continental, are according to Huang (2007) the two main schools of thought in contemporary pragmatics. In the former conception of linguistics and the philosophy of language, pragmatics is defined as ‘the systematic study of meaning by virtue of or dependent on language use’. Its central areas of inquiry are implicative, presupposition, speech acts and deixis. The component view of pragmatics stipulates that “pragmatics should be treated as a core component of a theory of language, on a par with phonetics, phonology, morphology, syntax, and semantics’’ (p.4). On the contrary, the anthropological linguistics, applied linguistics, and psycho-linguistics lie outside this set of core component. On their part, the continental traditionists defined pragmatics more broadly which encompasses much that goes under the domain of socio-linguistics, psycholinguistics, and discourse analysis. Pragmatics constitutes a general functional perspective on linguistic phenomena in relation to their usage in the form of behaviour. This perspective opines that pragmatics should be taken as presenting a functional perspective on every aspect of linguistic behaviour. Under this approach, pragmatics is generally conceived of as a theory of linguistic communication which includes the language of persuasion.

In summary, pragmatics started in the 1930s with philosophers like Morris, Carnap, and Pierce among others. Morris presented a threefold division of semiotics namely syntax which deals with relation between signs and their users interpreters. Analytic philosophy emerged in the 1950s and 1960s with ideal language philosophy by Montague Lewis, Davidson ordinary language philosophy with Austin, Grice, and Searle. The pragmatics turn in the late 1960s and 1970s with the generative semantics like Katz, Ross, Lakoff, works by Horn, Fillmore, Gadzar, Levison’s pragmatics and pragmatics wastebasket. The Anglo-American school sees pragmatics as a core component of a theory of language, on a par with phonology, syntax and semantics. The European continental school discusses pragmatics as constituting a general functional perspective on linguistic phenomena in relation to their usage in the form of behaviour. Others relevant in the historic development of pragmatics include the functionalists like Charles Fillmore, George Lackoff and Jerrold Sadock. The Neo-Grecians are Steren Lavision, Lawrence Horn and Yan Huang while the relevance theorists are Dan Sperba, Deirdre Wilson and Robyn Carston.

Scope of Pragmatics

Different scholars like Mey (2001), Huang (2007), Horn & Ward (2008) among others have different views as to the various domains or aspects pragmatics covers but there are central topics that cut across them all which are speech acts, reference, implicature, proposition, deixis and presupposition. Horn & Ward (2006) are of the view that the domain of pragmatics are: Implicature, Presupposition, Speech Acts, Reference, Deixis, Definiteness and Indefiniteness. According to Huang (p.2): “the central topics of inquiry of pragmatics include Implicature, Presupposition, Speech acts, and Deixis”. It is worthy of note that, a regimented account of language use facilitates a simpler and more elegant description of language structure. Those areas of context-dependent, yet rule-governed aspects of meaning include: deixis, speech acts, presupposition, reference, information structure, implicature and so on.

Speech Acts

The Speech act theory was foreshadowed by the Austian philosopher, Ludwig Wittgenstein’s view about Language-game but is usually attributed to the Oxford philosopher, J.L. Austin (1962) engaging a monograph, How to do Things with Words.

The identification and classification of speech acts was initiated by Wittgenstein, Austin, and Searle. Austin believes that every normal utterance has descriptive and effective aspects: that saying something is also doing something. This he calls performatives and he distinguishes them from assertions or statement-making utterances which he called constatives. In an explicit performative utterance (e.g. *I hereby promise to marry you*), the speaker does something, which is that he performs an act whose character is determined by her intention, rather than merely saying something. Austin (1962) regards performatives as problematic for truth-conditional theories of meaning, since they appear to be devoid of ordinary truth value.

Austin identifies three categories of acts: locutionary act (basic act of speaking or acts involved in the construction of speech), illocutionary act (purpose the speaker has in mind or acts done in speaking) and perlocutionary act (effect of an utterance on the hearer, or the consequence or by-product of speaking whether intended or not).

Searle’s typology of speech acts include: assertive or representatives, directives, commissives, expressive and declarations. For a speech act to be said to be felicitous, its felicity conditions must be fulfilled. These felicity conditions are the constitutive rules.

According to Stalnaker (p.383), if pragmatics is ‘the study of linguistic acts and the contexts in which they are performed, speech-act theory constitutes a central subdomain’. He says it has long been recognized that the propositional content of utterance U can be distinguished from its illocutionary force, the speaker’s intention in uttering U.

Implicatures

The idea or notion of Implicature was originated by H. P. Grice, an Oxford Philosopher. Horn (p.3) says: “Implicature is a component of speaker meaning that constitutes an aspect of what is meant in a speaker’s utterance without being part of what is said”. He views implicature as ‘the-meant-but-unsaid’. This means that what a speaker intends to communicate is characteristically far richer than what he directly expresses.

Gazdar (1979) offers implicatures as an alternative mechanism in which the potential presuppositions induced by sub-expressions are inherited as a default but are cancelled if they clash with propositions already entailed or implicated by the utterance or prior discourse context.

Presupposition

According to Horn (1996), the notion of presupposition dates back at least, as far as the medieval philosopher, Petrus Hispanus. Gottlob Frege, a German mathematician and logician is generally recognised as the first scholar in modern times who (re)introduced the philosophical study of presupposition. It can be informally defined as an inference or proposition whose truth is taken for granted in the utterance of a sentence. Presupposition is usually generated by the use of particular lexical items and/or linguistic constructions called presuppositional triggers. Some properties of presupposition include: constancy under negation (which stresses that a presupposition generated by the use of a lexical item or a syntactic structure remains the same when the sentence containing that lexical item or syntactic structure is negated), and defeasibility or canceallability (which posits that presuppositions can be cancelled by inconsistent conversational implicatures or can disappear in the face of inconsistency with background assumptions or real-world knowledge).

In semantic or logic, Presupposition is a necessary condition on the truth or falsity of statements but a pragmatic presupposition is a restriction on the common ground, the set of propositions constituting the current context. Its failure or non-satisfaction results not in truth-value gaps or non-bivalence but in the inappropriateness of a given utterance in a given context.

Deixis

Deixis is directly concerned with the relationship between the structure of a language and the context in which the language is used. It is derived from the Greek word meaning ‘to point out’ or ‘to show’. Traditionally, three basic categories are discussed in the linguistics and philosophy of language literature namely: person deixis (I, Me, You etc), place deixis (here, there etc) and time deixis (yesterday, tomorrow, next Thursday etc). Linguistic expressions employed typically as deictics or deictic expressions include: demonstratives, first and second-person pronouns, tense markers, adverbs of time and space and motion verbs. Other types of deixis include discourse and social deixis.

Levinson (1983) posits that the pragmatic subdomain of deixis or indexicality for example seeks to characterize the properties of shifters, indexicals, or token-reflexives, expressions like *I, you, here, there, now, then, hereby,* tense/aspect markers, etc) whose meanings are constant but those whose referents vary with the speaker, hearer, time and place of utterance,

style or register, or purpose of speech act.

Reference

Speech acts and presuppositions operate primarily on the propositional level while reference operates on the phrasal level. Reference is the use of a linguistic expression (typically an NP) to induce a hearer to access or create some entity in his mental model of the discourse. A discourse entity represents the referent of a linguistic expression, that is the actual individual (or event, property, relation, situation, etc) that the speaker has in mind and is saying something about.

In philosophy, there is a traditional view that reference is a direct “semantic” relationship between linguistic expressions and the real world objects they denote. Under this view, the form of a referring expression depends on the assumed information status of the referent, which in turn depends on the assumptions that a speaker makes regarding the hearer’s knowledge store as well as what the hearer is attending to in a given discourse context.

If every natural language provides its speakers with various ways of referring to discourse entities, there are two related issues in the pragmatic study of reference. They are:

(i) the referential options available to a speaker of a given language

(ii) the factors that guide a speaker on a given occasion to use one of these forms over another.

Proposition

Stalnaker (p.383), posits that Pragmatics seeks to ‘characterize the features of the speech context which help determine which proposition is expressed by a given sentence’.

The meaning of a sentence can be regarded as a function from a context (including time, place, and possible world) into a proposition, where a proposition is a function from a possible world into a truth value. Pragmatic aspects of meaning involve the interaction between an expression’s context of utterance and the interpretation of elements within that expression.

THE INTERFACE BETWEEN PRAGMATICS, SEMANTICS AND DISCOURSE ANALYSIS

Semantics and pragmatics are the two major subdivisions of linguistics which are concerned with the study of meaning. Even though they are related and have similarities, they have their distinct domains. Huang (p.210) posits two main theoretical positions regarding the relationship between semantics and pragmatics namely: reductionism and complementarism. The reductionists abolish the distinction between semantics and pragmatics. The reductionists are subdivided into those taking the view that pragmatics should be entirely reduced to semantics (semantic reductionism) and those holding the position that semantics is wholly included in pragmatics (pragmatic reduction). The complementarists are subdivided into radical semantics and radical pragmatics. Radical semanticist (philosophers in the ideal language tradition and semanticist in the 1970s) posit that much of the study of meaning should be attributed to semantics, while radical pragmatics assimilate as much of the study of meaning as possible to pragmatics. The complementarist sees semantics and pragmatics as complementary though distinct sub-disciplines of linguistics.

Lyons (1990) explains the dissimilarity between semantics and pragmatics in the following ways:

Meaning versus use

Conventional versus non-conventional meaning

Truth-conditional versus non-truth conditional meaning

Context independence versus context dependence

Literal versus non-literal meaning

Sentence versus utterance

Rule versus principle and

Competence versus performance

Other dichotomies include: type versus token, content versus, linguistic meaning versus speaker’s meaning, saying versus implicating, linguistically encoded versus non-linguistically encoded meaning, compositionality versus non-compositionality and intention dependence versus intention independence.

Three of these formulations according to Bach (1987), as quoted in Huang (212) are particularly influential: ‘they are truth-conditional versus non-truth conditional meaning, conventional versus non-conventional meaning and context independence versus context dependence’.

Truth-Conditional versus Non-Truth-Conditional Meaning

According to this formulation, Semantics deals with truth-conditional meaning while Pragmatics has to do with non-truth-conditional meaning. This is captured in a well-known Gazdarian formula in Gadzar (p.2), ‘Pragmatics = meaning – truth conditions’.

There are a number of problems against semantics-pragmatics division called the “carnapian approach”. This approach posits that there are linguistic forms that do not devote anything and therefore do not make any contribution to truth-conditional content. Examples include paradiginatic cases like good morning (greetings), conventional implicative like but and imperatives. More importantly, the linguistically coded meaning of a sentence does not always fully determine its truth conditions. Again, there is often pragmatic intrusion into the truth-conditional content of a sentence uttered.

Conventional versus Non-Conventional Meaning

The demarcation line between semantics and pragmatics has been defined in terms of conventional versus non-conventional meaning. Semantics studies the conventional aspect of meaning while pragmatics concerns the non-conventional aspects of meaning. A semantic interpretation which is conventional in nature cannot be cancelled while a pragmatic inference which is non-conventional in nature can be cancelled. They are linguistic expression that discuss deictic expressions whose conventional meaning is closely associated with use. For example, besides, by the way, anyway, after all, and in conclusion which indicate that there is a relation between the utterance that contains them and some portion of the prior discourse. The only way to specify their semantic contribution is to specify how they are to be used.

According to Bach (p.71):

A further point to note is that the conventionality of a linguistic phenomenon may be a matter of more or less rather than a matter of yes or no. For example, of the three types of implicative identified by Grice, conventional implicature is the most conventional, hence the most ‘semantic’ and the least ‘pragmatic’. Particularised conversational implicature is the least conventional, hence the least ‘semantic’ and the most ‘pragmatic’ with generalised conversational implicature lying somewhere in between. Simply put, the three types of implicature forms a semantics-pragmatics continuum whose borderline is difficult to demarcate. It is therefore clear that there is no neat correlation between the semantics-pragmatics distinction and the conventional-non-conventional meaning distinction. All the semantics-pragmatics distinction is also grounded in the meaning-use distinction.

A particular linguistic phenomenon can sometimes be categorised as part of the domain of either semantic or pragmatics, depending on how the semantics-pragmatics distinction is defined. This is the case with conventional implicature. If semantics is taken to be concerned with those aspects of meaning that affect truth conditions, then the investigation of conventional implicature falls on the pragmatic side of the divide rather than on the semantic side since conventional implicature does not make any contribution to truth conditions. On the other hand, if pragmatic is seen as dealing with those inferences that are non-conventional, hence cancellable, then conventional implicature falls within the province of semantics but outside that of pragmatics, since it cannot be defeated.

Context independence versus context dependence

This theory in the attempt to distinct semantics and pragmatics holds that if a linguistic phenomenon is invariant with respect to context, then it is the concern of semantics. On the other hand, if a linguistic phenomenon is sensitive to context, then it is a topic within pragmatics. This characterisation however rests on a mistaken assumption that context has no role to play in semantic. On the contrary, deictics and demonstratives (pure indexicals) such as ‘I, here and now’ are on the semantic side which holds that content varies with context. Bach postulates two types of context as quoted in Huang (p.215) namely: narrow context and broad context which is semantic in nature and denotes any contextual information that is relevant to the determination of the content of, or the assignment of the semantic values to variables such as those concerning who speaks to whom, when, and where. Broad context which is pragmatic in nature is taken to be any contextual information that is relevant to the working out of what the speaker overtly intends to mean. It is also relevant to the successful and felicitous performance of speech acts, given that semantics-pragmatics distinction cannot correspond to the context independence-dependence distinction.

Pragmatics and Discourse Analysis

To discuss the relationship between pragmatics and discourse, the term discourse will be examined first.

Stubbs (p.1) defines discourse analysis in three ways:

a. Concerned with language use beyond the boundaries of a sentence/utterance

b. concerned with the interrelationships between language and society and

c. concerned with the interactive or dialogic properties of everyday communication.

He sees discourse analysis as ambiguous which could also refer to the linguistic analysis of naturally occurring connected speech or written discourse. It is an attempt to study the organisation of language above the sentence or clause but larger linguistic units such as conventional exchanges or written texts.

Gee (p.1) as cited by Dewey (1933) argues that discourse analysis is a study of “how the details of language get recruited ‘on site’ to ‘pull off’ specific social activities and social identities”.

Apparently, “discourse” is a form of linguistic entity, not a name labelling an academic subject of inquiry in itself, in contrast to names such as syntax, semantics and pragmatics. Any stretch of meaningful linguistic units produced for communication purposes can be described as a piece of discourse, or any stretch of meaningful linguistic units, when uttered, is a piece of discourse. Discourse therefore includes conversation (what is spoken) and text (what is written). There are, among others, conversation analysis (shortened as CA) and text linguistics. Discourse can be studied or analyzed from various perspectives, with different commitments and purposes.

Johnstone (2001) according to Dewey (1933) takes discourse analysis/discourse studies as a number of different approaches rather than one unified subject. Therefore, DA can be discussed as possibly different subjects, as discourse analyses, encompassing different methods of DA: formal, computational, pragmatic, sociolinguistic, ethnographic, sociological, etc.

Pragmatics, as a study of utterance meaning or meaning in context, is unavoidably concerned with discourse, not with meaning in isolation, i.e. at word or sentence level. That is why pragmatics is often listed as one approach (a major approach) to discourse analysis, because pragmatic concepts are indispensable even in non-pragmatic approaches. Pragmatics offers the opportunity and possibility of describing and explaining discourse facts from a linguistic point of view and in a principled way.

Pragmatics, as well as pragmatics-oriented discourse analysis, is not to be seen as another component in linguistics, even though pragmaticians often consider themselves as linguists (sometimes also as philosophers, semanticists, sociologists, cognitive scientists, and psychologists). It is a subject involving interactions of linguistics and other cognitive and social systems. Consequently, pragmatics should rather be considered a multi-disciplinary area; a meeting point between linguistics, communication studies, psychology, logic, computation, philosophy, sociology, anthropology, artificial intelligence, machine translation, etc. Or it simply belongs to the new science of human cognition: cognitive science.

CONCLUSION

Pragmatics, according to Mey (2001) cannot be purely restricted to linguistic matters because others as agreed above see pragmatics from different perspectives including the whole of human language use. Other factors that have to do with the user (extra linguistic factor) must not be neglected. The users of language in their social context are paramount in pragmatics. Communication in society via the use of language is the leading agent in pragmatics. It is clear therefore that pragmatics studies the manner humans use their individual instinct, languages in communication. The contribution of discourse analysis is the application of critical thought to social situations. It can be applied to any text, any problem or situation. This concept (pragmatics) inter relates with other concepts like semantics (the study of meaning), syntax (the rules of the ordering of language), discourse analysis among others. They are therefore complementary to one another.

REFERENCES

Atlas, J. David. Philosophy Without Ambiguity. Oxford: Clarendon Press. (1989).

Austin, J. L. How To Do Things With Words. Oxford: Clarendon Press. (1962).

Bach, Kent. The Semantics-Pragmatics Distinction: What it is and why it matters. Oxford: Clarendon Press, (1987).

Bach, K. The Semantics-Pragmatics Distinction: What It Is and Why It Matters. (1999). In K. Turner (ed.) The Semantics/Pragmatics Interface from Different Points of View. Cole, Peter. Radical Pragmatics. New York: Academic Press. (1981).

Dewey, J. Experience and Education. New York:Macmillan, (1933).

Gazdar, Gerald. Pragmatics: Implicature, Presupposition and Logical Form. London: Academic Press, (1979).

Grice, P. Studies in the Way of Words. Cambridge, Mass: Harvard University Press, (1989).

Horn, Laurence. ‘Presupposition, Theme and Variations.’ Papers from the Parasession on Pragmatics and Grammatical Theory. Chicago Linguistic Society 22, 168-92. (1986).

Horn, LR; Ward, G. The Handbook of Pragmatics. USA: Blackwell Publishing, (2008).

Huang, Yan. Pragmatics. Oxford New York: Oxford University Press, (2007).

Katz, JJ. ‘Pragmatic presuppositions.’ In M. Munitz and P. Unger, eds., Semantics and Philosophy, 197-214. New York: New York University Press. (1974).

Kempson, R. Grammar and conversational principles. (1988). In Newmeyer, F. Linguistics: The Cambridge Survey. Vol. II. Cambridge, Eng.: Cambridge University Press,( 139-163).

Kuno, Susumu. Functional Syntax: Anaphora, Discourse, and Empathy. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. (1986).

Levinson, S. Pragmatics. Cambridge, Eng.: Cambridge University Press. (1983).

Lyons, John. Linguistics Semantics. Cambridge: CUP, (1990).

Mey, Jacob. Pragmatics: An Introduction 2nd edition. USA: Blackwell Publishing, (2006).

Schiffrin, D. Approaches to Discourse. Oxford: Blackwell Publishing, (1994).

Searle, John. Speech Acts. New York: Cambridge U. Press. (1969).

Searle, JR & Daniel Vanderveken. Foundations of Illocutionary Logic. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. (1985).

Sperber, D. & D. Wilson. Relevance: Communication and Cognition. Oxford: Blackwell Publishing, (1986).

Stalnaker, Robert. ‘Pragmatics.’ In Davidson D. & Harman G. Semantics of Natural Language, 380-97. Dordrecht: Reidel. (1972).

Ward, Gregory. The Semantics and Pragmatics of Preposing. New York: Garland. (1988).

Cite this Article: Umeh, AI; Nuhu, O; Nimram, MD; Lagan, BS; Azi, NJ; Nimram, DN (2024). Historical Overview of Pragmatics: The Interface between Pragmatics, Semantics and Discourse Analysis. Greener Journal of Language and Literature Research, 9(1): 1-7.

PDF VIEWER

Loader Loading...
EAD Logo Taking too long?

Reload Reload document
| Open Open in new tab

Download [387.03 KB]

.

 

Loading

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *