Re: Pragmatics vs semantics
From: Neeraj Mathur (neemathur_at_hotmail.com)
Date: 03/16/05
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Date: Wed, 16 Mar 2005 18:58:45 -0000
<voiceimitator@gmail.com> wrote in message
news:1110919626.290109.166910@o13g2000cwo.googlegroups.com...
> Hi, a clueless question. What exactly is the difference between
> pragmatics and semantics? Is the former a subset of the latter?
>
> What gave rise to this question was a message from John Lawler. He
> remarked:
>
> "In addition, the past progressive with such mental verbs tends to be
> used for a more polite version of the present active, which
> participates in the following set of requests for payment, in
> decreasing order of politeness (sentences marked with * are about
> equivalent in politeness):
>
> I was wondering whether you could pay me now.
> I was wondering whether you can pay me now. *
> I'm wondering whether you could pay me now. *
> I'm wondering whether you can pay me now.
> I wonder whether you could pay me now. *
> I wonder whether you can pay me now. *
> Can you pay me now?
> Pay me now.
>
> So this is not completely a grammatical question; pragmatics is
> important as well."
>
> Well, the first thought that came to mind was, Isn't politeness part of
> the semantics of the progressive tense?
Traditionally, no. The word 'semantics' refers to the meaning of a sentence
only. 'Pragmatics' refers to the choice that a speaker makes about how to
express a single semantic meaning. So, in terms of their basic meaning, all
of the above sentences have one basic meaning and cover one basic situation,
that in which the speaker wants the addressee to pay him immediately. They
all differ in 'politeness' only, and politeness is a pragmatic issue.
Another way to think of it is with translation. While theoretically, any
sentence from one language should be able to be translated into another
language, pragmatic differences are defined within each language separately.
So all of the above sentences could essentially be translated into another
language with one single sentence. There is no real way to preserve the
exact politeness in the target language. So, if language one has five
pragmatic levels of politeness to express one single semantic meaning, but
language two has seven levels, the translator would not be able to directly
convert one to the other, but rather consider why a certain politeness level
was chosen and what level similar conditions would demand in the target
language.
Does that make sense?
Neeraj Mathur
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