So, as we saw last time, there's three distinct levels of language.
Linguistic level, the speech level, and the conversational level, and all of
these levels of meaning affect arguments. So, in the next three lectures, we want
to work through these levels one by one. And this lecture is going to deal in
particular with the linguistic level of language, which is simply the production
of a meaningful utterance. So, in order of a formal linguistic act,
all you have to do is utter a set of words that are meaningful.
That fit together according to the semantics.
That is, the meanings of particular words and the syntax or the grammar of the
language in general. For example, it's easy.
It's easy is a linguistic act because it', as a contraction, you're allowed to
contract it and is according to the rules of English, and easy is a word.
So, it's easy follows the semantics and the syntax of the language of English.
That's all there is to it. Although linguistic acts are really
simple, they do require some special components that are worth separating out.
For example, they require meaningful words.
When you simply hum a tune, like hm-hm-hm-hm-hm-hm-hm-hm, then you're not
performing a linguistic act because there are no meaningful words in it.
But when you sing a song, I love Miranda and Nicholas too, then you are performing
a linguistic act because you uttered words that were meaningful when they were
put together in that way. And I've been taking this for granted but
of course the words you utter have to be meaningful.
it's not going to be a linguistic act if you utter what looks like a sentence,
namely a set of sounds, that look like words if they're not really words.
So, if you say, `Twas brillig and the slithy toves did gyre and gimble in the
wabe, and so on from Lewis Carroll's famous Jabberwocky poem.
Then, it's not going to be a linguistic act if those words are not meaningful
words in any language. And you can also get nonsense when you
take words that have meanings, and put them together in an order that don't make
any sense. My dog has fleas makes sense, but dog
fleas my has doesn't make any sense. So, meaningful words with the wrong
grammatical structure won't work. And Noam Chomsky from MIT taught us that
you can also get nonsense when you take words that make sense, and you put them
together with the right grammatical structure.
But they still don't fit together, because of the relation between the
meanings. His example here was colorless green
ideas sleep furiously. What does that mean?
Colorless green ideas sleep furiously? Well, colorless makes sense.
Green, that's a word. Ideas.
Sleep. Furiously. Each of those words makes
sense and they're each in their appropriate grammatical role, but
altogether it doesn't make any sense. So, there's lots of ways you can get
nonsense in language, and when you do, you're not performing a linguistic act.
Now, there's some really fun examples where it's not clear whether or not the
utterance is meaningful. some of these examples, among my
favorites are garden path sentences. Here's one.
The man who whistles tunes pianos. Wait a minute.
What does that mean? If you think of it as the man who
whistles tunes is one unit, then you don't understand what the word
pianos is doing. Because the man who whistles tunes sounds
like a reference to a particular man, and pianos is not a verb.
But if you think of it as the man who whistles is one unit,
and the second unit is tunes pianos, so it's the man who whistles tunes
pianos, then it makes sense. Because it's the man
who's whistling also tunes piano. So, you have to be able to carve the set
of words up into the right units and see what grammatical structure they have in
order to understand the sentence. because tunes can either be a verb, which
tells you what the man is doing to the pianos, or it can be a noun, which refers
to the thing that the man is whistling. And you have to get those grammatical
categories straight, and the garden path sentences lead you astray and make you
think of it in the wrong way. There'll be some more examples of that in
the exercises. But my favorite example of all is
Buffalo, Buffalo, Buffalo. What does that mean?
Well, buffalo or American bison, okay? But buffalo, the word buffalo in
English that is, can also be used as a verb to refer to tricking or fooling
someone. So you can have buffalo, American bison,
buffaloing, that is tricking or fooling, buffalo,
American bison. Buffalo, buffalo, buffalo.
This can go even further because there is a city in New York named Buffalo.
And, of course, there can be buffalo, that is American bison, from the city of
Buffalo, New York and they're called Buffalo, buffalo.
And, when they trick or fool bi, American bison from Buffalo, New York, then you
have Buffalo, buffalo, buffalo, Buffalo, buffalo, or buffalo, buffalo, buffalo,
buffalo, buffalo, which doesn't sound like a meaningful utterance, but it is.
And you can go even further. You can actually build it out to eleven
straight utterances of the word buffalo. Buffalo, buffalo, buffalo, buffalo,
buffalo, buffalo, buffalo, buffalo, buffalo, buffalo, buffalo.
Now, tell me what that means. I'm not going to explain it to you
because it takes a while to explain it. But, if you think about it, you might be
able to figure it out. And even if you can't figure out eleven
buffaloes in a row, the point still holds.
because the point's just that sometimes, what doesn't seem meaningful turns out to
be meaningful. And if you're careful and, and
charitable, and do your best to interpret what it really means,
then you might be able to make sense out of some utterances that don't seem to
make sense at first. And when you can make sense of them, then
they're linguistic acts. For now, I don't have time to go into any
detail on semantics or syntax. Although, we will discuss some details
when we discuss vagueness and ambiguity in the discussion of fallacies later in
this course. But, I hope that the linguistic level is
pretty simple and understandable so we can go on and look in more detail at the
speech act level and the conversation lack level.