BETTY J. BIRNER is Professor Emeritus at Northern Illinois University, where she taught Linguistics and Cognitive Science for 24 years. She has published widely on the subjects of pragmatics, semantics, and information structure, particularly on noncanonical syntactic constructions. Her recent publications include Meaning: Semantics, Pragmatics, Cognition and Pragmatics: A Slim Guide.

Preface viii

Acknowledgments xi

1 Defining Pragmatics 1

1.1 Pragmatics and Natural Language 2

1.2 The Philosophical Background 8

1.3 The Boundary Between Semantics and Pragmatics 13

1.4 Summary 36

1.5 Exercises 38

1.6 Discussion Questions 39

2 Gricean Implicature 41

2.1 The Cooperative Principle 42

2.2 Types of Implicature 62

2.3 Testing for Implicature 67

2.4 The Gricean Model of Meaning 72

2.5 Summary 73

2.6 Exercises 73

2.7 Discussion Questions 74

3 Later Approaches to Implicature 76

3.1 Neo- Gricean Theory 76

3.2 Relevance Theory 84

3.3 Comparing Neo- Gricean Theory and Relevance Theory 91

3.4 Lexical Pragmatics 100

3.5 Summary 110

3.6 Exercises 110

3.7 Discussion Questions 111

4 Reference 113

4.1 Referring Expressions 113

4.2 Deixis 117

4.3 Definiteness and Indefiniteness 123

4.4 Anaphora 131

4.5 Referential and Attributive Uses of Definite Descriptions 139

4.6 Summary 142

4.7 Exercises 143

4.8 Discussion Questions 144

5 Presupposition 146

5.1 Presupposition, Negation, and Entailment 146

5.2 Presupposition Triggers 153

5.3 The Projection Problem 156

5.4 Defeasibility 158

5.5 Presupposition as Common Ground 163

5.6 Accommodation 167

5.7 Summary 172

5.8 Exercises 173

5.9 Discussion Questions 173

6 Speech Acts 175

6.1 Performative Utterances 175

6.2 Felicity Conditions 183

6.3 Locutionary Acts 187

6.4 Direct and Indirect Speech Acts 192

6.5 Joint Acts 202

6.6 Summary 203

6.7 Exercises 204

6.8 Discussion Questions 205

7 Information Structure 207

7.1 Topic and Focus 210

7.2 Open Propositions 216

7.3 Discourse- Status and Hearer- Status 218

7.4 Information Structure and Constituent Order 220

7.5 Information Structure and Constructions 229

7.6 Functional Compositionality 232

7.7 Summary 237

7.8 Exercises 237

7.9 Discussion Questions 239

8 Inferential Relations 242

8.1 Inferential Relations at the Constituent Level 243

8.2 Inferential Relations at the Propositional Level 259

8.3 Summary 266

8.4 Exercises 267

8.5 Discussion Questions 268

9 Social Pragmatics 269

9.1 Face and Politeness 269

9.2 Honorifics 275

9.3 Speech Communities 278

9.4 Communication and Miscommunication 288

9.5 Pragmatics and Persuasion 289

9.6 Exercises 294

9.7 Discussion Questions 295

10 Pragmatics and AI 297

10.1 The Human Mind 298

10.2 Minds and Machines 305

10.3 The Semantics/Pragmatics Boundary Revisited 312

10.4 Exercises 314

10.5 Discussion Questions 315

Sources for Examples 316

References 321

Index 331