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Construction of utterance meaning

D1ai1II in Thai: How a Tenseless Language May Communicate Past Time Kasia Jaszczolt and Jiranthara Srioutai University of Cambridge Third International Conference in Contrastive Semantics and Pragmatics, Shanghai, 16-18 September 2005. Construction of utterance meaning.

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Construction of utterance meaning

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  1. D1ai1II in Thai: How a Tenseless Language May Communicate Past TimeKasia Jaszczolt and Jiranthara SrioutaiUniversity of CambridgeThirdInternational Conference in Contrastive Semantics and Pragmatics,Shanghai, 16-18 September 2005

  2. Construction of utterance meaning

  3. Construction of utterance meaning • Sources of utterance meaning

  4. Construction of utterance meaning • Sources of utterance meaning • Merger representations

  5. Construction of utterance meaning • Sources of utterance meaning • Merger representations • Application of merger representations to expressions of futurity

  6. D1ai1II in Thai: past tense or modal marker?

  7. D1ai1II in Thai: past tense or modal marker? • D1ai1II and word order

  8. D1ai1II in Thai: past tense or modal marker? • D1ai1II and word order • Unified account of d1ai1II as a modal marker (pastness carried by the default interpretation of the modal marker)

  9. D1ai1II in Thai: past tense or modal marker? • D1ai1II and word order • Unified account of d1ai1II as a modal marker (pastness carried by the default interpretation of the modal marker) • The need for pragmatics-rich representations for languages with optional marking of temporality

  10. John isn’t good enough. • Everybody went to London. • I haven’t eaten.

  11. Truth-conditional pragmatics (Recanati 2003, 2004): truth value is predicated of an utterance – what is said by the speaker. Problem: degree of the contextual contribution (quasi-contextualism and contextualism)

  12. Default Semantics (Jaszczolt 2005) Sources of utterance meaning: • word meaning and sentence structure • conscious pragmatic inference • cognitive defaults • social-cultural defaults

  13. Stage I combination of word meaning combination of word meaning and sentence structure and sentence structure compositional Compositional merger representation merger representation conscious pragmatic inference conscious pragmatic inference 1 1 social - - cultural defaults cultural defaults 1 1 cognitive defaults cognitive defaults Stage II · · social social - - cultural defaults cultural defaults 2 2 · · co co nscious pragmatic inference nscious pragmatic inference 2 2 Fig. 1

  14. Default Semantics uses an adapted and extended language of DRT and applies it to the output of the merger of these sources of meaning.

  15. (1) Mary will go to the opera tomorrow night. (regular future) (2) Mary is going to the opera tomorrow night. (futurative progressive) (3) Mary goes to the opera tomorrow night. ( ‘tenseless future’, Dowty 1979)

  16. Other modal uses of will: (4) Mary will be in the opera now. (epistemic necessity) (5) Mary will sometimes go to the opera in her tracksuit. (dispositional necessity)

  17. Acc – modal operator, ‘it is (rationally) acceptable that’ (Grice 2001)

  18. Acc ￂp ‘it is acceptable that it is the case that p’

  19. Stage I combination of word meaning and sentence structure compositional merger representation conscious pragmatic inference 1 social - cultural defaults 1 cognitive defaults Stage II · social - cultural defaults 2 · co nscious pragmatic inference 2 Fig. 1

  20. Possible uses of d1ai1II (1) m3ae:r3i:I d1ai1II c1otm3a:y l3ae:wII Mary get letter already Mary already got the letter.

  21. Possible uses of d1ai1II (2) K1r3eml3in d1ai1II c1ap ng3u: Gremlin d1ai1II catch snake (i) Gremlin was able to catch a snake (had a chance to and did catch). (ii) Gremlin had an opportunity to catch a snake (might not have caught).

  22. Possible uses of d1ai1II (3) k1r3eml3in c1ap ng3u: d1ai1II Gremlin catch snake d1ai1II (i) Gremlin was able to catch a snake (had ability to and did catch). (ii) Gremlin can catch a snake (deontic or dynamic possibility).

  23. Possible uses of d1ai1II (4) k1r3eml3in m3ai1I d1ai1II c1ap ng3u: Gremlin not d1ai1II catch snake (i) Gremlin was not able to catch a snake (did not try to catch). (ii) Gremlin did nothave the opportunity to catch a snake.

  24. Possible uses of d1ai1II (5) k1r3eml3in c1ap ng3u: m3ai1I d1ai1II Gremlin catch snake not d1ai1II (i) Gremlin was not able to catch a snake (tried but failed to catch). (ii) Gremlin cannot catch a snake (deontic or dynamic possibility).

  25. Previous treatments of d1ai1II Supanvanich (1973) and Kanchanawan (1978): D1ai1II in the verb-initial position = past-time marker. (2’) k1r3eml3in d1ai1II c1ap ng3u: Gremlin d1ai1II catch snake Gremlin caught a snake.

  26. Previous treatments of d1ai1II Kanchanawan (1978) and Maunsuwan (2002): D1ai1II in the verb-final position = modal marker similar to dynamic and deontic can in English. (3’) k1r3eml3in c1ap ng3u: d1ai1II Gremlin catch snake d1ai1II Gremlin can catch a snake.

  27. Reviews of previous treatments of d1ai1II • Supanvanich (1973): D1ai1II’s modal meanings unaccounted for. • Maunsuwan (2002): D1ai1II’s temporal meanings unaccounted for. • Kanchanawan (1978): most explanatorily adequate.

  28. Grice (1978) Modified Occam’s Razor: Senses (linguistic meanings) are not to be multiplied beyond necessity.

  29. Srioutai (2005): d1ai1II = a modal marker that comes by default with the past time interpretation

  30. In the verb-initial position: dynamic modality (2) K1r3eml3in d1ai1II c1ap ng3u: Gremlin d1ai1II catch snake (i) Gremlin was able to catch a snake (had a chance to and did catch). (ii) Gremlin had an opportunity to catch a snake (might not have caught).

  31. In the verb-final position: deontic or dynamic modality (3) k1r3eml3in c1ap ng3u: d1ai1II Gremlin catch snake d1ai1II (i) Gremlin was able to catch a snake (had ability to and did catch). (ii) Gremlin can catch a snake (deontic or dynamic possibility).

  32. Temporal defaults: more salientand no evidence of CPI 1 • (6) (a)A: k1r3eml3in c1ap ng3u: d1ai1II Gremlin catch snake d1ai1II (i) Gremlin can catch a snake (A’s intended meaning). (ii) Gremlin was able to catch a snake (B’s recovered meaning). (b) B: n3ai1 ng3u: where snake Where is the snake? • (c) A: k1r3eml3in m3ai1 d1ai1II c1ap ng3u: Gremlin not d1ai1II catch snake Gremlin did not have the opportunity to catch a snake. • (d) A: k1r3eml3in s2a:m3a:t c1ap ng3u: d1ai1II Gremlin can catch snake d1ai1II Gremlin can catch a snake.

  33. Merger representations The default meaning of d1ai1II • x t n e • [k1r3eml3in]CD (x) • [ACC∆ e]WS • ∆ = ├ • [t < n]WS, CD • e: [x c1ap ng3u:]WS

  34. Merger representations A non-default meaning of d1ai1II • x t n e • [k1r3eml3in]CD (x) • [ACC∆ e]WS • ∆ = ├ • [t = n]WS, CPI 1 • e: [x c1ap ng3u:]WS

  35. Conclusions • Pastness in Thai may but need not be carried by the modal marker d1ai1II. • In Thai, where neither tense nor aspect markers are obligatory, semantic analysis has to make use of default interpretations and results of CPI 1. • This can be well accounted for in the framework of Default Semantics.

  36. Select references Biber, D. et. al. (1999) Longman Grammar of Spoken and Written English. London: Longman. Diller, A. (1996) ‘Thai and Lao Writing.’ In: Peter T. Daniels and William Bright (eds.), The World’s Writing Systems. New York: Oxford University Press, pp.457-466. Grice, H.P. (1978) ‘Further notes on logic and conversation’. In: P. Cole (ed.) Syntax and Semantics, vol. 9, New York: Academic Press. Grice, P. (2001) Aspects of Reason. Ed. by R. Warner. Oxford: Clarendon Press.Grice, P. 2001. Aspects of Reason. Ed. By R. Warner. Oxford: Clarendon Press. Jaszczolt, K. M. 2003. ‘The modality of the future: A Default- Semantics account’. In P. Dekker and R. van Rooy (eds). Proceedings of the 14th Amsterdam Colloquium. ILLC, University of Amsterdam. 43-48.

  37. Select references (continued) Jaszczolt, K. M. 2005. Default Semantics: Foundations of a Compositional Theory of Acts of Communication. Oxford: OUP. Kamp, H. and U. Reyle. 1993. From Discourse to Logic. Dordrecht: Kluwer. Kamp, H., J. van Genabith & U. Reyle. forthcoming. ‘Discourse Representation Theory’. In: Handbook of Philosophical Logic. Kanchanawan, N. 1978. Expression for Time in Thai Verb and its application to Thai-English Machine Translation. Ph.D. Dissertation. The University of Texas at Austin. Muansuwan, N. 2002. Verb Complexes in Thai. Ph.D. Dissertation. University at Buffalo, State University of New York. Recanati, F. 2003. Literal Meaning. Cambridge: CUP. Scovel, T. S. 1970. A Grammar of Time in Thai. Ph.D. Dissertation. The University of Texas at Austin. Srioutai, J. 2005. ‘D1ai1II and kh3oe:y: Are they past time markers in Thai?’ [unpublished work] Supanvanich, I. 1973. Tenses in Thai. Master’s Thesis. Chulalongkorn University. [In Thai]

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