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What’s Pragmatics Doing Outside Constructions?

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Semantics and Pragmatics: Drawing a Line

Part of the book series: Logic, Argumentation & Reasoning ((LARI,volume 11))

Abstract

This chapter argues against a view according to which pragmatics, as opposed to semantics, is completely outside grammar. It suggests that, on the contrary, speakers strongly associate various pragmatic aspects of information with constructions. I here give an overview of a wide range of pragmatic phenomena as they have been dealt with in Construction Grammar, a linguistic framework which, as a matter of principle, accommodates pragmatic information in the description of stored form-function units. Such information includes Gricean maxims, information structure, illocutionary force and larger discourse structure. However, Construction Grammarians have been rather vague on what kind of (presumably) pragmatic data should and should not be included in a construction and whether or not, within a given construction, pragmatics and semantics constitute separate layers of information. I demonstrate a heuristic based on cross-linguistic or intra-linguistic comparison of functionally similar constructions (e.g. Can you…? and Are you able to…?) to decide whether we should explicitly specify ‘short-circuited’ usage information (e.g. the request use of Can you…?) that could in principle be obtained purely on the basis of sound reasoning. I also propose that semantics and pragmatics should be treated as distinct levels of functional information in constructions.

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Notes

  1. 1.

    http://www.mibba.com/Stories/Read/147313/In-Your-Eyes-I-Lost-My-Place/1/, accessed 3 October 2014.

  2. 2.

    https://www.fanfiction.net/s/2556576/3/Just-a-Girl, accessed 10 October 2014.

  3. 3.

    We pointed out above that morphosyntactically unpredictable properties do occur in the case of Can you X?, namely the possible preverbal please that this construction shares with other direct requests. However, this element is not always present, and when it’s not, a Can you X? sentence looks like any ordinary question.

  4. 4.

    A similar example occurs in an episode of the British sitcom Not Going Out:

    (i)

    Lee

    Anyway, er, it got me thinking. Why don’t we invite you two guys round for dinner?

     

    Toby [posh upstairs neighbour, reluctant to accept]

    Oh… That’s very kind.

     

    Lee

    Great. Well, I will see you tonight at seven o’clock.

     

    Toby

    It’s very short notice to arrange a sitter.

     

    Lee

    Well, I’ll let you bring the baby round, eh? The more, the merrier.

     

    Toby

    Right.

     

    Lee

    So how can you refuse?

     

    Toby

    I’m not sure, give me a minute.

  5. 5.

    A large collection of snowclones in English is maintained by O’Connor (2007). Cappelle (2013) lists a few snowclones in Dutch.

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Acknowledgements

I am grateful to Ilse Depraetere for her valuable input to the Simpsons examples discussed in Sect. 8.4. I benefited from discussions with Yukio Hirose, Masaru Kanetani and Naoaki Wada ensuing my presentation of a first sketchy version of this text at the University of Tsukuba. As I drafted this version in a room of the University of Tsukuba’s Guest House in which Charles Fillmore had previously stayed, I would like to believe I have been particularly inspired by some of his lasting legacy. Many thanks also to Friedemann Pulvermüller for giving me the opportunity to present the main points of this text at the Freie Universität Berlin in early 2015; I also thank the members of the audience there for their stimulating questions. Finally, I would like to thank Ilse Depraetere and Raphael Salkie for their patience with the slow progress of this contribution, and an anonymous reviewer for some constructive comments. Though the cited literature in this chapter was not meant to be exhaustive or even representative, I alone remain responsible for any major oversights or misrepresentations, as well as for any other shortcomings of my text.

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  1. CNRS, UMR 8163 – STL – Savoirs Textes Langage, Univ. Lille, F-59000, Lille, France

    Bert Cappelle

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  1. CNRS, UMR 8163 – STL – Savoirs Textes Langage, Univ. Lille, Lille, France

    Ilse Depraetere

  2. School of Humanities, University of Brighton, Falmer, Brighton, United Kingdom

    Raphael Salkie

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Cappelle, B. (2017). What’s Pragmatics Doing Outside Constructions?. In: Depraetere, I., Salkie, R. (eds) Semantics and Pragmatics: Drawing a Line. Logic, Argumentation & Reasoning, vol 11. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-32247-6_8

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