Sincerity conditions in a Stalnakarian update semantics˚
Jessica Rett
[email protected]
UC Davis Linguistics & Philosophy Colloquium
May 9, 2014
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Overview
• across languages, speakers use certain words and intonation to encode their attitude towards the
content of an utterance (e.g. alas)
• their attitude is encoded in not-at-issue content: it cannot be directly addressed in discourse
• as Searle and Vanderveken (1985) argue, these “attitude markers” are illocutionary force modifiers,
restricting the sincerity conditions of an utterance
• this means we need a theory of speech acts and/or illocutionary force in which sincerity conditions
are represented and compositionally modifiable
• I show that such an account is possible in dynamic adaptations of Stalnakarian update semantics
1
Speaker attitude markers
• the core data: alas (Frege 1956, Searle and Vanderveken 1985, Vanderveken 1990)
(1)
a.
b.
John arrived on time.
Alas, John arrived on time!
“[T]he meaning of the adverb alas in a declarative sentence serves to indicate that the
speaker is sad and not happy with the existence of the state of affairs represented by
the propositional content.” (Vanderveken 1990, 16)
– not at-issue: cannot be denied in discourse (2) or scope under negation (3)
(2)
A: Alas, Sue won the race.
B: That’s not true, Alex did!
B1 :#That’s not true, you’re glad Sue won!
˚
Thanks to Sam Cumming, Gabe Greenberg, Jesse Harris, Ezra Keshet, Sarah Murray, Chris Potts, Craige Roberts,
Mats Rooth, the amazing Adam Sennet, Patrick Shirreff, Mandy Simons, and Will Starr for particularly helpful comments.
Thanks also to audiences at the 2nd Cornell Workshop on Linguistics & Philosophy, CUSP 5 San Diego, the UCLA
Syntax/Semantics Seminar, and the 2013 Michigan Philosophy and Linguistics Workshop.
1
Sincerity conditions in a Stalnakarian update semantics
(3)
a.
b.
c.
5/9/14
Alas, John did not arrive on time.1
Alas, it is not the case that John arrived on time.
It is not the case that John arrived on time, alas.
*neg ą alas
*neg ą alas
*neg ą alas
• also relevant: mirativity markers (for a larger list, see Rett 2013)
– in English, exclamation intonation (Rett 2009, 2011): typically a steady Rise, abrupt Fall
contour (Cruttenden 1986) with features of emphasis like lengthening (Bartels 1999)
(4)
a.
b.
John arrived on time.
(Wow,) John arrived on time!
– in Finnish, a sentential particle pä 2
(5)
a.
b.
Täällä on
paljon kukk-ia.
here be-3rd.sg a.lot flower-prt.indf.pl
‘There are lots of flowers here.’
Täällä pä on
paljon kukk-ia.
here pa be-3rd.sg a.lot flower-prt.indf.pl
‘(Wow,) There are lots of flowers here!’
– in Mandarin, two sentential adverbs (Wu 2008)
(6)
Zhangsan guoran /jingran lai le.
Zhangsan guoran /jingran come pst
‘Zhangsan came (as expected/not expected by the speaker).’
– in dozens of other languages, tense/aspect and evidentiality markers are co-opted to mark
mirativity in certain contexts (DeLancey 1997, 2001, Rett and Murray 2013)
(7)
Moto
jo-nu-e.
motorcycle be-ind-decl
‘It is apparently a motorcycle.’ or
‘It’s a motorcycle!’
Tsafiki (Dickinson 2000)
• in all of these cases, the morpheme in question encodes information about the speaker’s attitude
(expressive content, Kaplan 1997) in not-at-issue content. This information:
– cannot be directly denied in discourse;
– cannot be embedded under negation or other operators (e.g. attitude verbs);
– cannot be used to address the Question Under Discussion (Roberts 1996)
1
Alas can occur sentence-medially, and its scope seems correspondingly more narrow. I will focus only on alas as a
sentential operator for now.
2
Thanks to Peter Sutton (p.c.) for drawing my attention to -pä, and to Tuomo Tiisala (p.c.) for his judgments. pä
can also attach to nouns and verbs; the result seems to be much like the combination of focus and exclamation intonation
in English (namely, the difference between Wow, JOHNF arrived on time! and Wow, John arrived on TIMEF ! ).
UC Davis Colloquium
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Jessica Rett
Sincerity conditions in a Stalnakarian update semantics
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5/9/14
Attitude markers as illocutionary force modifiers
• other types of expressives encode locutionary not-at-issue content, part of what is said
– expressives like those in (8) encode conventional implicature, the same type of content encoded
in appositives (9) (Potts 2005, 2007, 2012)
(8)
a.
b.
The damn dog is on the couch.
That bastard Richard arrived last night.
(9)
a.
b.
The dog, who I can’t stand, is on the couch.
Richard, who I think is a bastard, arrived last night.
– this content, too, is not-at-issue; it cannot be directly denied or semantically embedded, etc.
(10)
John arrived on time, which disappointed me, but Bill did not.
Table 1: the semantic content of (10)
at-issue proposition
p = λw. john arrived on time in w
not-at-issue restriction speaker is disappointed that p
illocutionary content
propose to add p to the CG
• attitude markers encode illocutionary not-at-issue content, part of how something is said.
“An indicative sentence often contains, as well as a thought and the assertion, a third
component over which the assertion does not extend. This is often said to act on the
feelings, the mood of the hearer or to arouse his imagination. Words like alas or thank
God belong here.” (Frege 1956, 295)
• two differences (taken from Rett and Murray 2013):
1. unacceptability in questions (see also Speas and Tenny 2003, Faller 2006)
– expressives and other encoders of locutionary not-at-issue content demonstrate various
behaviors in questions: expressives remain speaker-oriented, as in (11), and Cheyenne
evidentials participate in ‘interrogative flip’ (Murray 2010).
(11)
When did that bastard Richard arrive?
– attitude markers, in contrast, are unacceptable in questions.3
(12)
a. #Alas/*fortunately, has John arrived on time?
b. Has John arrived on time, #alas/*fortunately?
c. *Alas/*fortunately, when did John arrive?
d. When did John arrive, *alas/*fortunately?
– true for Finnish pä and exclamation intonation as well
2. triggering of Moore’s Paradox
– if a speaker denies locutionary not-at-issue content, a contradiction results; if she denies
illocutionary not-at-issue content, Moore’s Paradox results (Murray 2010)4
3
Alas can occur in yes/no questions that are biased towards a positive answer. So ‘*’ indicates ungrammaticality, as
usual, while ‘#’ indicates that the meaning is only available in this specialized context.
4
This test differentiates the evidential and mirative use of the Cheyenne mirative evidential (Rett and Murray 2013).
UC Davis Colloquium
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Jessica Rett
Sincerity conditions in a Stalnakarian update semantics
5/9/14
– contradiction (#K ) for appositives and expressives:
(13)
a.
b.
The dog, who I can’t stand, is on the couch. #K I don’t mind the dog so
much, though.
The damn dog is on the couch. #K I don’t mind the dog so much, though.
– denial of sincerity conditions, the classical Moore’s Paradox:
(14)
a.
b.
It’s raining, #but I don’t believe it’s raining.
Does Sue like pizza? ...#I don’t want to know.
– Moore’s Paradox for English sentence exclamations (15) and alas and fortunately (16)
(15)
a.
b.
John arrived on time! ...#I’m not surprised, I knew he’d be punctual.
How incredibly early John was for his flight! ...#I’m not surprised, he arrived
exactly when I thought he would.
(16)
a.
b.
Alas, John arrived on time. #I’m not disappointed, I wanted him to be.
Fortunately, John arrived on time. #I’m not glad, I wanted him to be late.
• caveat: all speaker-oriented content can reflect some other perspective (Amaral et al. 2007); this
is arguably a pragmatic phenomenon (Harris and Potts 2009).
– this is true for expressives:
(17)
rContext: We know that Bob loves to do yard work and is very proud of his lawn,
but also that he has a son Monty who hates to do yard chores. So Bob could say
(perhaps in response to his partners suggestion that Monty be asked to mow the lawn
while he is away on business):]
Well, Monty said to me this very morning that he hates to mow the friggin’ lawn.
– as well as attitude markers:
(18)
rContext: A is rooting for Team X but B is rooting for Team Y:]
Alas, Team Y just doesn’t have it in them to win this season.
• my conclusion: while the meaning of expressives should be encoded in the not-at-issue restriction
on locutionary content, the contribution of attitude markers should be encoded in illocutionary
content (with sincerity conditions and illocutionary force)
(19)
John arrived on time, alas.
Table 2: the semantic content of (19)
at-issue proposition
p = λw. john arrived on time in w
not-at-issue restriction
illocutionary content
propose to add p to CG
speaker is disappointed that p
• in particular: alas and fortunately (and other attitude markers) “modify the indicative mood...
and serve to compose a... complex marker which expresses the illocutionary force obtained from
assertion by adding the condition which they express... an assertive speech act stronger than an
assertion.” (Vanderveken 1990, 128–9)
UC Davis Colloquium
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Jessica Rett
Sincerity conditions in a Stalnakarian update semantics
(20)
5/9/14
The illocutionary force rΨsF obtained by adding to a force F the sincerity condition Ψ is
either identical with or stronger than that force.
(Vanderveken 1990, 150)
• for our purposes:
(21)
Constituive rules, assertion
(Searle 1969)
a. propositional content: any proposition p
b. preparatory conditions:
i) S has evidence that p; and
ii) S believes that H needs to know p
c. sincerity conditions: S believes that p
d. essential conditions: an undertaking that p represents an actual state of affairs
(22)
Constitutive rules, alas
a. propositional content: any proposition p
b. preparatory conditions:
i) S has evidence that p; and
ii) S believes that H needs to know p
c. sincerity conditions:
i) S believes that p; and
ii) S regrets/is sad that p
d. essential conditions: an undertaking that p represents an actual state of affairs
• importantly, (22) forms a strict subset of (21); contrast with the notion of ‘multiple speech acts’
3
Attitude markers in an update semantics
3.1
Some theoretical background
• Stalnaker’s (1978) proposal that assertions could be modeled at the level of discourse, in terms of
common ground (CG) update, has been extended formally and empirically
• a new consensus: to assert that p is to propose that p be added to the CG, while not-at-issue
content directly updates the CG (Murray 2010, 2014, AnderBois et al. 2010, 2013)
• in Murray’s (2010, 2014) system, illocutionary force is represented in terms of CG structuring;
interrogative mood, for instance, structures the CG into possible answers.
• the theory in Farkas and Bruce (2010) supplements this picture with considerations like salience
in the discourse (which models discourse anaphora; Ginzburg 1996) and a participant’s discourse
commitments (which model yes/no responses to questions; Gunlogson 2001)
– Farkas and Bruce (2010) define different subcomponents of a given discourse structure K:
1. the common ground (CG), the set of propositions corresponding already confirmed by
the discourse participants (including their mutual beliefs);
2. sets of discourse commitments (DC): for each participant x, the set of propositions
x has publicly committed to during the conversation;
3. the Table T , modelling discourse salience;
4. the projection set (ps), the set of beliefs being considered for addition into the CG.
UC Davis Colloquium
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Jessica Rett
Sincerity conditions in a Stalnakarian update semantics
5/9/14
– they formalize an assertion operator (Krifka 2001) over sentence S (with declarative force
D), a speaker or author a, and an input (Ki ) and output (Ko ) discourse structure.5
(23)
Assertion operator (A), for sentences S with at-issue content p and locutionary notat-issue content q:
(Farkas and Bruce 2010, 92)
A(SrDs, a, Ki ) = Ko such that
(i) DCa,o “ DCa,i Y tpu
adding p to the speaker’s public commitments
(ii) To “ pushpxSrDs; tpuy, Ti q
making p salient in the discourse
adding p to the projection set for CG update consideration 6
(iii) pso “ psi Y tpu
(iv) CGo = CGi Y tqu
directly adding q to the CG
– their polar question operator is similar:
(24)
Polar question operator (PQ), for sentences S with at-issue content p and locutionary
not-at-issue content q:
(Farkas and Bruce 2010, 95)
PQpSrIs, Ki q “ Ko such that
(i) To “ pushpxSrIs; tp, puy, Ti q
making p and p salient in the discourse
(ii) pso “ psi Y tp, pu adding p, p to the proj set for CG update consideration
(iii) CGo = CGi Y tqu
directly adding q to the CG
• Farkas and Bruce (2010) don’t mention sincerity conditions, and they’re not explicitly represented
in (23) or (24). This is true of the proposals in Murray (2010, 2014) as well.
– what we don’t want to do: add propositions like ‘Speaker is disappointed that p’ to the CG,
or treat them as presuppositions
– what we can do: take advantage of the notion of ‘discourse commitments,’ originally motivated to model bias in questions and declarative sentences used as questions (e.g. That’s a
persimmon? ; Gunlogson 2001)
3.2
The analysis
• claim 1: to publicly commit to p is to communicate a belief in p (whenever the speaker is sincere).
Accordingly, we can use DC to model sincerity conditions.
• claim 2: alas denotes a relation between a force operator F and its arguments pS, a, w@ , Ki q.
(25)
alas(FqpS, a, w@ , Ki q “ Ko such that
(i) FpS, a, w@ , Ki q “ Ko
(ii) DCa,o “ DCa,i Y
ta is disappointed that p in w@ , for ιp such that To = pushpxS; tpuy; Ti q}
(26)
JAlas, John diedK = Ko such that:
(i) DCa,o “ DCa,i Y
tλw.john died in w, a is disappointed in w@ that ιp such that To = pushpxS; tpuy; Ti q}
(ii) To “ pushpxSrDs; tλw.john died in wuy, Ti q
salient in the discourse
CG update consideration
(iii) pso “ psi Y tpu
5
I’ve modified their operators, which didn’t deal with not-at-issue content, with Murray’s treatment of not-at-issue
content as direct CG update. This is done in Step (iv) in (23) and Step (iii) in (24).
6
Y represents set union minus inconsistent propositions, Farkas and Bruce 2010, 90.
UC Davis Colloquium
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Jessica Rett
Sincerity conditions in a Stalnakarian update semantics
5/9/14
• some empirical predictions
– because alas requires that the speaker be disappointed in the salient proposition, we predict
that it is incompatible with any speech act that makes more than one proposition salient
∗ this explains the incompatibility of attitude markers and questions, as illustrated in (12):
for these questions, unless one answer is more salient than the other(s), alas is undefined
∗ it correctly predicts that attitude markers are unacceptable with disjunctive sentences
that denote multiple alternatives (Alonso-Ovalle 2006, Groenendijk 2009)7
(27)
a. #(Wow,) John rode his bike or arrived on time!
b. #Alas, John rode his bike or arrived on time.
– because it is defined in terms of the most salient proposition – the proposition at the top of
the stack – we predict that alas can modify different sorts of content, as long as it is salient
(28)
4
a.
b.
John arrived, alas, on time.
Bill’s tennis coach, alas not his dentist, extracted the tooth.
Conclusions
• speech acts have traditionally been defined in terms of their content, preparatory conditions, and
sincerity conditions as well as their essential conditions (Austin 1962, Searle 1969)
• because speech acts can be indicated and modified compositionally, they arguably need to be
modeled in a compositional semantics
• based on Stalnaker 1978, recent dynamic semantic theories have modeled speech acts, or illocutionary force, compositionally in terms of Common Ground update (Murray 2010, 2014, Farkas
and Bruce 2010)
• these theories leave sincerity conditions untreated...
• ...but the existence and behavior of attitude markers like alas, which modify the sincerity conditions
on assertions, demonstrate a need to represent sincerity conditions compositionally
• I take advantage of the notion of a speaker’s ‘discourse commitments’ – originally proposed to deal
with polarity bias in questions and assertions – to model a speaker’s expression of his/her attitude
• I characterize attitude markers as discourse-anaphoric on the most salient proposition, typically
the at-issue content of the assertion, which correctly predicts their distribution across speech acts
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7
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UC Davis Colloquium
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Sincerity conditions in a Stalnakarian update semantics
5/9/14
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