1 00:00:02,340 --> 00:00:06,523 So, as we saw last time, there's three distinct levels of language. 2 00:00:06,523 --> 00:00:11,075 Linguistic level, the speech level, and the conversational level, and all of 3 00:00:11,075 --> 00:00:16,181 these levels of meaning affect arguments. So, in the next three lectures, we want 4 00:00:16,181 --> 00:00:20,734 to work through these levels one by one. And this lecture is going to deal in 5 00:00:20,734 --> 00:00:25,840 particular with the linguistic level of language, which is simply the production 6 00:00:25,840 --> 00:00:30,048 of a meaningful utterance. So, in order of a formal linguistic act, 7 00:00:30,048 --> 00:00:34,463 all you have to do is utter a set of words that are meaningful. 8 00:00:34,463 --> 00:00:37,474 That fit together according to the semantics. 9 00:00:37,474 --> 00:00:42,692 That is, the meanings of particular words and the syntax or the grammar of the 10 00:00:42,692 --> 00:00:45,732 language in general. For example, it's easy. 11 00:00:45,732 --> 00:00:51,768 It's easy is a linguistic act because it', as a contraction, you're allowed to 12 00:00:51,768 --> 00:00:57,339 contract it and is according to the rules of English, and easy is a word. 13 00:00:57,339 --> 00:01:03,298 So, it's easy follows the semantics and the syntax of the language of English. 14 00:01:03,298 --> 00:01:07,654 That's all there is to it. Although linguistic acts are really 15 00:01:07,654 --> 00:01:12,670 simple, they do require some special components that are worth separating out. 16 00:01:12,670 --> 00:01:16,293 For example, they require meaningful words. 17 00:01:16,293 --> 00:01:22,506 When you simply hum a tune, like hm-hm-hm-hm-hm-hm-hm-hm, then you're not 18 00:01:22,506 --> 00:01:28,718 performing a linguistic act because there are no meaningful words in it. 19 00:01:28,718 --> 00:01:35,707 But when you sing a song, I love Miranda and Nicholas too, then you are performing 20 00:01:35,707 --> 00:01:42,782 a linguistic act because you uttered words that were meaningful when they were 21 00:01:42,782 --> 00:01:48,038 put together in that way. And I've been taking this for granted but 22 00:01:48,038 --> 00:01:51,256 of course the words you utter have to be meaningful. 23 00:01:51,256 --> 00:01:56,082 it's not going to be a linguistic act if you utter what looks like a sentence, 24 00:01:56,082 --> 00:02:00,537 namely a set of sounds, that look like words if they're not really words. 25 00:02:00,537 --> 00:02:05,177 So, if you say, `Twas brillig and the slithy toves did gyre and gimble in the 26 00:02:05,177 --> 00:02:08,890 wabe, and so on from Lewis Carroll's famous Jabberwocky poem. 27 00:02:08,890 --> 00:02:14,232 Then, it's not going to be a linguistic act if those words are not meaningful 28 00:02:14,232 --> 00:02:18,465 words in any language. And you can also get nonsense when you 29 00:02:18,465 --> 00:02:24,016 take words that have meanings, and put them together in an order that don't make 30 00:02:24,016 --> 00:02:27,868 any sense. My dog has fleas makes sense, but dog 31 00:02:27,868 --> 00:02:33,930 fleas my has doesn't make any sense. So, meaningful words with the wrong 32 00:02:33,930 --> 00:02:40,248 grammatical structure won't work. And Noam Chomsky from MIT taught us that 33 00:02:40,248 --> 00:02:46,992 you can also get nonsense when you take words that make sense, and you put them 34 00:02:46,992 --> 00:02:51,220 together with the right grammatical structure. 35 00:02:51,220 --> 00:02:57,182 But they still don't fit together, because of the relation between the 36 00:02:57,182 --> 00:03:01,100 meanings. His example here was colorless green 37 00:03:01,100 --> 00:03:04,678 ideas sleep furiously. What does that mean? 38 00:03:04,678 --> 00:03:10,215 Colorless green ideas sleep furiously? Well, colorless makes sense. 39 00:03:10,215 --> 00:03:12,430 Green, that's a word. Ideas. 40 00:03:12,430 --> 00:03:16,467 Sleep. Furiously. Each of those words makes 41 00:03:16,467 --> 00:03:21,120 sense and they're each in their appropriate grammatical role, but 42 00:03:21,120 --> 00:03:26,345 altogether it doesn't make any sense. So, there's lots of ways you can get 43 00:03:26,345 --> 00:03:31,786 nonsense in language, and when you do, you're not performing a linguistic act. 44 00:03:31,786 --> 00:03:37,298 Now, there's some really fun examples where it's not clear whether or not the 45 00:03:37,298 --> 00:03:41,521 utterance is meaningful. some of these examples, among my 46 00:03:41,521 --> 00:03:44,886 favorites are garden path sentences. Here's one. 47 00:03:44,886 --> 00:03:48,880 The man who whistles tunes pianos. Wait a minute. 48 00:03:48,880 --> 00:03:52,660 What does that mean? If you think of it as the man who 49 00:03:52,660 --> 00:03:57,350 whistles tunes is one unit, then you don't understand what the word 50 00:03:57,350 --> 00:04:01,410 pianos is doing. Because the man who whistles tunes sounds 51 00:04:01,410 --> 00:04:05,750 like a reference to a particular man, and pianos is not a verb. 52 00:04:05,750 --> 00:04:09,880 But if you think of it as the man who whistles is one unit, 53 00:04:09,880 --> 00:04:15,496 and the second unit is tunes pianos, so it's the man who whistles tunes 54 00:04:15,496 --> 00:04:18,953 pianos, then it makes sense. Because it's the man 55 00:04:18,953 --> 00:04:23,659 who's whistling also tunes piano. So, you have to be able to carve the set 56 00:04:23,659 --> 00:04:28,550 of words up into the right units and see what grammatical structure they have in 57 00:04:28,550 --> 00:04:32,626 order to understand the sentence. because tunes can either be a verb, which 58 00:04:32,626 --> 00:04:37,226 tells you what the man is doing to the pianos, or it can be a noun, which refers 59 00:04:37,226 --> 00:04:41,710 to the thing that the man is whistling. And you have to get those grammatical 60 00:04:41,710 --> 00:04:46,310 categories straight, and the garden path sentences lead you astray and make you 61 00:04:46,310 --> 00:04:50,444 think of it in the wrong way. There'll be some more examples of that in 62 00:04:50,444 --> 00:04:53,851 the exercises. But my favorite example of all is 63 00:04:53,851 --> 00:04:57,668 Buffalo, Buffalo, Buffalo. What does that mean? 64 00:04:57,668 --> 00:05:03,720 Well, buffalo or American bison, okay? But buffalo, the word buffalo in 65 00:05:03,720 --> 00:05:09,742 English that is, can also be used as a verb to refer to tricking or fooling 66 00:05:09,742 --> 00:05:13,516 someone. So you can have buffalo, American bison, 67 00:05:13,516 --> 00:05:16,967 buffaloing, that is tricking or fooling, buffalo, 68 00:05:16,967 --> 00:05:19,749 American bison. Buffalo, buffalo, buffalo. 69 00:05:19,749 --> 00:05:25,099 This can go even further because there is a city in New York named Buffalo. 70 00:05:25,099 --> 00:05:30,448 And, of course, there can be buffalo, that is American bison, from the city of 71 00:05:30,448 --> 00:05:34,157 Buffalo, New York and they're called Buffalo, buffalo. 72 00:05:34,157 --> 00:05:39,650 And, when they trick or fool bi, American bison from Buffalo, New York, then you 73 00:05:39,650 --> 00:05:44,490 have Buffalo, buffalo, buffalo, Buffalo, buffalo, or buffalo, buffalo, buffalo, 74 00:05:44,490 --> 00:05:48,959 buffalo, buffalo, which doesn't sound like a meaningful utterance, but it is. 75 00:05:48,959 --> 00:05:53,066 And you can go even further. You can actually build it out to eleven 76 00:05:53,066 --> 00:05:57,269 straight utterances of the word buffalo. Buffalo, buffalo, buffalo, buffalo, 77 00:05:57,269 --> 00:06:00,522 buffalo, buffalo, buffalo, buffalo, buffalo, buffalo, buffalo. 78 00:06:00,522 --> 00:06:04,181 Now, tell me what that means. I'm not going to explain it to you 79 00:06:04,181 --> 00:06:08,712 because it takes a while to explain it. But, if you think about it, you might be 80 00:06:08,712 --> 00:06:12,371 able to figure it out. And even if you can't figure out eleven 81 00:06:12,371 --> 00:06:15,229 buffaloes in a row, the point still holds. 82 00:06:15,229 --> 00:06:19,635 because the point's just that sometimes, what doesn't seem meaningful turns out to 83 00:06:19,635 --> 00:06:22,254 be meaningful. And if you're careful and, and 84 00:06:22,254 --> 00:06:25,945 charitable, and do your best to interpret what it really means, 85 00:06:25,945 --> 00:06:30,649 then you might be able to make sense out of some utterances that don't seem to 86 00:06:30,649 --> 00:06:34,281 make sense at first. And when you can make sense of them, then 87 00:06:34,281 --> 00:06:38,202 they're linguistic acts. For now, I don't have time to go into any 88 00:06:38,202 --> 00:06:42,335 detail on semantics or syntax. Although, we will discuss some details 89 00:06:42,335 --> 00:06:47,198 when we discuss vagueness and ambiguity in the discussion of fallacies later in 90 00:06:47,198 --> 00:06:50,358 this course. But, I hope that the linguistic level is 91 00:06:50,358 --> 00:06:55,221 pretty simple and understandable so we can go on and look in more detail at the 92 00:06:55,221 --> 00:06:58,200 speech act level and the conversation lack level.