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Joined: 03 Jul 2009
Posts: 9
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 Posted: Fri Jul 03, 2009 7:06 pm
Post subject: speaker's meaning vs.sentence meaning |
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| hellow everyone.my proffessor asked me a very difficult question of semantics and it was as follows:"A" came from a long vacation and "B" meets him on his returning "B" immediatly ask: "B":well,in paris,eh?did you enjoy it? "A":it was absolutely full: _Did or did not "A" answer the question? _How? _What did he mean? (with relating the answer to the idea of sentence meaning and speakers meaning) (i hope to get the answer as soon as possible , thanks:) |
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GuijarroChomsky 
Joined: 21 Jul 2008
Posts: 2093
Location: Cadiz (Spain) |
Posted: Sun Jul 05, 2009 3:09 am
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It was absolutely full
SENTENCE MEANING:
Processes involved:
1. Linguistic decoding:
X was absolutely full of Y
2. Interpreting the explicatures (X and Y) of the sentence. This is done by inferencing processes which I will not explicit; you may do it yourself.
X must refer to Paris
Y must refer to people / tourists
Final sentence meaning:
Paris was full of people
SPEAKER'S MEANING:
One arrives at it by inferencing processes only.
This meaning may not be directly depending of the sentence meaning. In this case, it depends on your knowledge of the speaker. If you know that he hates people and loves tranquility you will interpret his utterance as:
No, it was horrible!
But if you know that he loves crowded cities with lots of lively atmosphere, music, dancing, drinking and whatnot, then you may interpret his meaning as:
Yes, indeed! It was smashing!!
As you see, the speaker's meaning has very little in common with what he says explicitely. Therefore, we call this process of inferencing: recovering the implicatures of an expression.
You see, IT'S NOT DIFFICULT AT ALL!
_________________
JLG
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DdhaGM_MhPM |
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Joined: 03 Jul 2009
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Posted: Sun Jul 05, 2009 7:17 am
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Hey,thanks that really helped.you are a great teacher 
and nice video you got there.i really appreciate your help. |
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GuijarroChomsky
Joined: 21 Jul 2008
Posts: 2093
Location: Cadiz (Spain) |
Posted: Sun Jul 05, 2009 8:48 am
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Happy to oblige!
I have been on this forum for about a year. You are the first and only person to have commented upon the Cádiz video I put under my signature. I wanted people to come and visit us ... but apart from you, no one seems interested.
So, when are you visiting us?
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JLG
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DdhaGM_MhPM |
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Joined: 03 Jul 2009
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Posted: Sun Jul 05, 2009 4:19 pm
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soon i hope  and i think the name cadiz has an arabic origin right?anyway it is really beautiful and atractive. lucky you,am jealous;) |
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GuijarroChomsky
Joined: 21 Jul 2008
Posts: 2093
Location: Cadiz (Spain) |
Posted: Mon Jul 06, 2009 4:53 am
Post subject: Origin of Andalusian names |
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No, I am sorry. Cádiz is not an Arabic name, but a Phoenician one: Gadir. In Spain it turned into Cádiz and in Morocco into Agadir. The city boast of more than 3.000 years of History --when there were no Arabs, and very few Romans around ...
Naturally, we have thousands of Arabic names in Spain and even more in Andalucía, (i.e., Vandalusien, the land of the Vandals, which Arabs called Al-(V)andalus: So we have Algeciras, Tarifa, Gibraltar (i.e., Djebel Tarik: the Mountain of Tarik), Guadalete, and even Benamaoma.
There is a ridiculous true story about this last name. In Franco's time, where the Catholic Church was all powerful, the priest of Benamaoma thought that the name was an infidel call, for it sounds exactly as "¡Ven a Mahoma!" (Come to Muhammad!) in Spanish. So he tried to change its name and call it "¡Ven a María!" (Benamaría), i.e., "Come to (the Virgin) Mary!"
Luckily, he failed in his ridiculous attempt!
_________________
JLG
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DdhaGM_MhPM |
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Joined: 03 Jul 2009
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Posted: Mon Jul 06, 2009 6:37 am
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there is city in iraq that has almost the same name of cadiz and that is the only reason that made me think it has an arabic origin so i was just speculating.but you seem to know much about this subject.so i will not argue with you about this.and now i can proudly brag of the new information i got about Benamaoma which they did not know before pretending to be smart and sophisticated  .am just kidding,thank you,sir! |
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GuijarroChomsky
Joined: 21 Jul 2008
Posts: 2093
Location: Cadiz (Spain) |
Posted: Mon Jul 06, 2009 9:13 am
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You must know, of course, that جمهورية العراق has not always been an Arab country. In fact, it has been the craddle of Western Civilisation.
The region between two rivers, Mesopotamia, where writing was invented. Iraq has been Accadian, Assiryan, Babylonian, and Abbaside, Aquemenidan, Macedonian, Parthan, Sasasnid, Omeya, Mongolic and British. (I'm sorry, if I have spelled the names the Spanish way)
It may be very possible that you have Phoenician names also, Gadir, among them. This does not prove that it is Arabic. It proves that we belong to very old historical places ...
_________________
JLG
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DdhaGM_MhPM |
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Joined: 03 Jul 2009
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Posted: Mon Jul 06, 2009 1:19 pm
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| thank you for the clarification. |
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