Chapter IV: Syntax

Event Schemas and Participant Roles

An Event Schema combines a type of action or state with its most salient
participants, which may have different roles in the action or state. There are
different types of event schemas, involving participants with different semantic
roles.

The BEING schema

The main function of this schema is to relate a characteristic or any other

conceptual category to a given entity which does not really play a dominant role
in the relationship. The role of the main participant is described as a Patient.
The Patient in a being schema can be related with different ways of being: it can
be linked to an identifying element, to a category or class, to a characteristic, to
a given place or to the notion of mere existence. An Essive is any role that is
related to a patient via being link. The category of Essives has in common that
they all denote a state of being.

The HAPPENING schema

It emphasizes a process that is taking place and the participating entity involved
in it. The participating entity itself doesnt need to be actively involved in the
process and is therefore also a Patient.

The DOING schema

One entity is seen as the source of the energy that is developed, and
consequently as instigating the action. This schema is mostly exclusively linked
to human Agents, whereby an Agent is defined as the entity that deliberately
instigates the action expressed by the verb. The main difference between the
happening schema and the doing schema is in the role of an Agent as the
source of the energy, the willful instigator of the action. The energy he/she
generates can often be seen to flow to a Patient.

The EXPERIENCING schema

In the context of conceptual schemas, the term experience is used in a

narrower technical sense, it means a mental processing of the contact with the
world, it is expressed by mental verbs such as to see, to feel, to know, to think,
to want, etc. The entity involved in an experiencing schema is neither passive
like a Patient, nor active like an Agent, but it is the registration centre of these
perceptions, emotions, thought processes and wants. It is called the
Experiencer, the role of the entity that has a mental experience.

All types of second participants in the experiencing schema are Patients.

The HAVING schema

This schema relates a human Possessor to the object possessed, but it also
may relate an affected entity to its cause of affection, a whole to its parts, or one
family member to another. It can denote, ownership of mental objects, it can
denote affections, part-whole relations or kinship relations.

In this type of schema the Possessor is very much like a Patient.

The MOVING schema

Is a combination of either a happening schema or a doing schema with the

places where the process or action starts (Source), where it passes by (Path),
and where it goes (Goal): It is called source-path-goal schema

The goal-over-source principle is when the goal is usually more important than
the source and the source and goal are usually more important than the path.

The TRANSFERRING schema

Is a combination of different schemas: the having schema, the happening or

doing schema, and the moving schema. The transferring schema implies
two states, the initial state implicates one participant that has something and
passes it on to another participant. The resultant state indicates that the second
participant has the thing passed on.

The grounding elements of a sentence

When we describe an event is important to know where the participants are

located and when the event took place. Relating an event to the speakers
experience of the world is called grounding. The participants of an event and
the event as a whole need to be anchored, or grounded in order to ensure
successful communication. The process of pointing to thins in the world by
means of language is known as reference.

Communicative function: MOOD

When the speaker is performing a speech act he/she utters a sentence to

realize his/her communicative intention.

Moods are the declarative mood: to indicate statements of facts

the interrogative mood: to express an information question
the imperative mood: to express an order

Speakers attitude: MODALITY

It represents the speakers attitude about the event being described. The events
described are potential ones. To mark such potential events modal auxiliaries
are used such as will, would, may, might, shall, should, can, could and must.
If the modality indicates volition towards an event is called deontic modality, if
it indicates judgment is called epistemic modality.

Speech act time: TENSE

Present or past tense

Relating events to each other: THE PERSPECTIVE ASPECT

How the speaker relates an event to what is happening at speech act time or at
another specified time. The perfective aspect can also highlight a relevant
connection between two past events or two future events.

Internal phases in an event: PROGRESSIVE ASPECT

The speaker describes the internal phases in events. The progressive aspect
focuses on the ongoing progression of an event, the non-progressive aspect
view the event as a whole.

Chapter VII: Pragmatics

Pragmatics is the study of how people interact when using language

Not all talk is meant to convey intentions. Lot of talk is just meant to show one
another that we have acknowledged each others presence. Small talk is an
example of this. Our main intention in this kind of talk is not necessarily to
convey information or our beliefs and wants, but to socialize. This is the phatic
function of language.

What we try to accomplish with our language, informing, requesting, ordering,

persuading, encouraging, etc, is called the communicative intention of
language. The actual words we utter to realize a communicative intention is the
speech act.

By means of a directive speech act we give an order or make a request. By

means of an expressive speech act we express congratulations, our feelings
of gratitude and our praise. By means of the declarative speech act we
declare a (new) social fact.

Speech acts can be grouped according to superordinate categories to which

similar principles may apply.

The informative speech acts cover the assertive acts and information
questions. The obligative speech acts cover the directives and commissives.
The constitutive speech acts subsume both the expressive and the
declarative speech act. Constitutive speech acts constitute a social reality; it
pertains if something is uttered by the right person, in the right form, and at the
right moment.
Felicity conditions

When someone expresses how he/she feels or performs a declarative act

certain felicity conditions need to be met. They are: the act must be
performed in the right circumstances and also enough to say the correct
formula, without doing anything else. The mere utterance of a ritual formula in
the appropriate circumstances may change the situation. They are
circumstantial conditions that allow a speaker to make a successful speech act.
In a directive speech the speaker must be in a position to give commands to
people of lower rank. Felicity conditions are especially evident in declarative
acts. Various conditions need to be fulfilled in order to make an institutionalized
act, the declarative act can only be effective if all the conditions are satisfied.

Performative verbs

Denote linguistic action that can both describe a speech act and express it.
Declaratives are highly formal and require an institutional context and
institutionally appointed people to perform them. They must be in the simple
present tense, since in constitutive acts the saying and the doing coincide. They
cannot usually be pronounced in isolation, but can only be used at a certain
point in amore elaborate ritual.

Informative speech acts and cooperative interaction

Conversational and conventional presuppositions: background knowledge is

knowledge which is taken for granted by the participants of a speech act. Taking
things for granted in a conversation is a conversational presupposition.

The world knowledge is indicated by grammatical devices such as the use of

definite articles. Such knowledge is obvious from the grammar and it is a
conventional presupposition. Cultural presuppositions include historical
events, national institutions, elections, public figures, etc.

We make a great deal of presuppositions on the basis on the basis of the

cultural knowledge we have in common with our interaction partners in the
same or a similar cultural community.

The cooperative principle and maxims of conversation

There are silent rules or principles called maxims. There are four maxims of
conversation that govern all rational interaction

Maxim of quality requires we only give information for which we have

evidence. Therefore it requires that we should be truthful about what we say.

Maxim of quantity means that one gives all the necessary information one
has for the present needs of the partner, nor to much nor too little.

Maxim of relevance is the maxim of relation.

 Maxim of manner

Conversational and conventional implicatures

Cooperative speakers are expected to speak the truth. Without this assumption
conversation could not work. People in interaction should not be over informed
and hearers must infer to what extent information and communicative intentions
in a conversation are only left implicit.

The kind of implications that follow from the maxims are called implicatures.
They come in various sorts, conversational implicature is the information
inferred but not literary expressed in the speech act. A conventional
implicature or an implicature by convention is an implicature that is tied to
linguistic expressions. They cannot be cancelled.

When the maxims are not obeyed but violated it is called flouting. It is different
from deception. Flouting involves an open and obvious violation of the maxims.
There is always a cooperative interaction as long as the speakers utterance
remains relevant.

Politeness: Acknowledging the others identity

It is important not only to say to the other person what one thinks, but also what
one wants or feels. It is just as important to take into account what the other
person might think, feel or want about what one says. In a communication
participants want to be acknowledged by others, they claim a specific identity as
they want to be seen in a specific way and therefore project a specific image of
themselves. This interactional identity is known as face.

When we interact we want to establish and keep our face. We hope our feelings
and wants are appreciated by the other. In the majority of cases we also hope to
convey that our conversational partner should feel good about themselves. To
do so we use positive and negative politeness strategies to signal our
appreciation of the others face.

Positive politeness strategies signal to the hearer that the speaker

appreciates the hearers needs.

Negative politeness strategies show the hearer that the speaker respects the
hearers desire not to be imposed upon.

A face-threatening act can occur when these strategies do not happen.

Chapter VIII: text linguistics

A text can be defined as the linguistic expressions used in communication
between people and the interpretation the hearer or reader makes of them.

Text linguistics is the study of how the speaker/writer and the hearer/reader
manage to communicate via texts, that is how they go beyond the text (words)
they produce or have in front of them to see the relations between the
sentences, paragraphs, sections, etc.

The textual function of language contains information concerning the way

texts are structured.

Coherence and cohesion

A text is coherent if its possible to construct a coherent representation of that

text. Coherence in a text can be established by repeated reference of the same
referent or mental objects in a text, called referential coherence and by
linking text parts with coherence relations like cause-consequence and
contrast, which is called relational coherence.

Referential coherence

Typical referential expressions are pronouns and full noun phrases. The
reference can be to something outside the text, which is called the exophoric
reference or deixis, or to other concepts mentioned in the text, which is called
the endophoric reference.

Endophoric elements get their interpretation from the textual context, either the
preceding context, which is the anaphoric reference or the following context,
which is called the cataphoric reference. If the reference is further reduced it
becomes elliptical.