1. Chapter 7 Semantics and Pragmatics

2. Language processing studies tend to focus on:
Syntax
Semantics
Pragmatics
Pronouns, reference resolution, discourse models …

3. Semantics and Pragmatics
High-level Linguistics
Semantics: the study of meaning that can be determined from a sentence, phrase or word.
Pragmatics: the study of meaning, as it depends on context (speaker, situation)

4. Semantics Same event - different sentences
John broke the window with a hammer.
John broke the window with the crack.
The hammer broke the window.
The window broke.

5. Same event - different syntactic frames
John broke the window with a hammer.
SUBJ VERB OBJ MODIFIER
John broke the window with the crack.
The hammer broke the window.
SUBJ VERB OBJ
The window broke.
SUBJ VERB

6. Entities
Named Entity Tagging: Identify all the proper names in a text Sally went to see Up in the Air at the local theater. Coreference Resolution: Identify all references (aka ‘mentions’) of people, places and things in text, and determine which mentions are ‘co-referential’. John stuck his foot in his mouth.

7. Rationale for studying pragmatics
Cognitive and social factors that affect the use of language in communication include
attention,
memory,
sensitivity to and production of emotional expression,
the ability to grasp the situation as a whole,
Selectively attend to what is important,
adapt to changes, including reasonable treatment of the other participants
The role of pragmatic factors in compensation for and rehabilitation from specific disorders of language and communication.
e.g.: A person with aphasia may, be a skilled user of gestures and facial expressions as well as interaction management, and thereby enhance his/her communicative and social possibilities.

8. Theories of language use
Whole sentences in isolation
Sentence semantics
Whole sentences in context
Speech act theory
Conversational principles, maxims, ethics
Relevance
Manner
Quality
Quantity

9. Theories Interactional phenomena
Theory of mind
Interactive communication management
Turn-taking
Feedback
Alignment
Self-correction
Nonverbal and contextual communication
Cognitive semantics (metaphor, deixis, anaphors, mental spaces, holistic patterns, flexibility and adaptation)
Gestures, body language, actions.

10. Cooperative principles and maxims
relevance - make your contribution relevant
manner - make your contributions in a clear and well-organized manner (structure, time sequence etc)
quality - make your contribution true
quantity - make your contribution contain the rightamount of information

11. Understanding Language Use: Cognitive semantics
Metaphor
He is a lion
Han is a pig
That’s a mouthful
Deixis
reference depending on the context/situation
e. g.: to point to something in the room
person deixis: he, she, I, you, we, they, it, that
spatial deixis: here, there, this, that
time deixis: now, then, later, tomorrow, yesterday

12. Cognitive Semantics
Anaphoric reference: reference to earlier linguistic context.
The boy woke up. He was hungry.
Deixis offers possibilities to refer with the help of the environment.
Comprehension problems involving interpretation of deixis and anaphora occur
mixup of pronouns, e g ”he” becomes ”she”
Vague reference ”they”, ”it”

13. Cognitive Semantics Mental spaces and Image schemas
here and now vs. there and then
Over vs. under
Decontextualization (abstract meaning)
how much something is tied to a situation
Flexibility and adaptation
the ability to use language consists, to a great extent, of the ability to rapidly adapt to the context

14. Cognitive Semantics Holistic patterns Prosodic patterns
Top-down-processing from expectations of complete utterances
E.g., Holistic production of phrases with the right contour but not completely correctly specified content
Sinewave speech example:

15. Interactional phenomena
Theory of Mind (ToM)
feeling of what the other person knows and how he/she thinks and feels
Interactive communication regulation
- Sequences, adjacency pairs, preference organization
- Turn taking
- Feedback
- Own communication management
- Choice and change (e g pause and self correction)
Alignment - mutual adaptation

16. Body Language
Gestures
Facial expressions
Actions
Use of illustrations

17. Topics in studying aphasia
Scope of study and theories
Studying Aphasia in terms of pragmatics
– Left-hemisphere lesions
– Right-hemisphere lesions
– Dementia, especially of Alzheimer type
– Traumatic brain injury
Implications for therapy

18. Applications in Aphasia Study
What is aphasia?
a language disorder caused by acquired brain damage.
Since lexical-semantic symptoms are salient in aphasia, they were studied in traditional neurolinguistics. But “language in context” and communicative aspects, body communication, etc., have only recently come to be considered as suitable objects of study.

19. Beyond traditional theories of aphasia
What more than ”typical traditional” aphasia after left hemisphere lesions?
• Right hemisphere lesions
• Dementias
• Traumatic brain damage
• High Level Language - subtle language
Pragmatics important here!

20. Right hemisphere lesions
Left neglect
• Prosody disorders
• Lexical-semantic disorders
• Problems witth emotion information
• Discourse disorder (complexity, ToM, metaphor, humor, irony, etc)

21. Dementia, esp. Alzheimer Type (DAT)
Changes in memory, language, communication, visuo-spatial ability, personality, other cognitive abilities
Over 50% DAT: Semantics-pragmatics most
salient problem
Other types: more frontal Pick’s disease (stereotypy, perseveration, echolalia), MS, Huntington, Creutzfeldt-Jakob, HIV. etc
Primary progressive aphasia (PPA) – primarily language, esp High-level language use.

22. DAT 3 stages: 1) Anomia, disordered connected speech (temporal
lobe). Problems understanding complex syntax and
semantics, less information content, tangential
discourse, reference errors, reduced fluency
2) Most of language affected (PTO area), like
transcortical sensory aphasia (lack of comprehension, repetition ok.)
3) Global aphasia (also frontal)

23. Pragmatics-based Therapy
• Videorecording • Conversational coaching • Group training • Activity based analysis and training • Social approach • Supported communication (SCA) • Language game therapy • Computer suppor for communication