WEBVTT 00:00:02.340 --> 00:00:06.523 So, as we saw last time, there are three distinct levels of language. 00:00:06.523 --> 00:00:11.444 Linguistic level, the speech level, and the conversational level, and all of these 00:00:11.444 --> 00:00:16.181 levels of meaning affect arguments. So, in the next three lectures, we want to 00:00:16.181 --> 00:00:20.734 work through these levels one by one. And this lecture is going to deal in 00:00:20.734 --> 00:00:25.840 particular with the linguistic level of language, which is simply the production 00:00:25.840 --> 00:00:30.048 of a meaningful utterance. So, in order to form a linguistic act, 00:00:30.048 --> 00:00:34.463 all you have to do is utter a set of words that are meaningful, 00:00:34.463 --> 00:00:37.474 that fit together according to the semantics, 00:00:37.474 --> 00:00:42.692 that is, the meanings of particular words, and the syntax, or the grammar of the 00:00:42.692 --> 00:00:45.732 language in general. For example, it's easy. 00:00:45.732 --> 00:00:51.768 It's easy is a linguistic act because it's, is a contraction, you're allowed to 00:00:51.768 --> 00:00:57.339 contract it and is according to the rules of English, and easy is a word. 00:00:57.339 --> 00:01:03.298 So, it's easy follows the semantics and the syntax of the language of English. 00:01:03.298 --> 00:01:07.654 That's all there is to it. Although linguistic acts are really 00:01:07.654 --> 00:01:12.670 simple, they do require some special components that are worth separating out. 00:01:12.670 --> 00:01:16.293 For example, they require meaningful words. 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 00:01:22.506 --> 00:01:28.718 performing a linguistic act because there are no meaningful words in it. 00:01:28.718 --> 00:01:35.707 But when you sing a song, I love Miranda and Nicholas too, then you are performing 00:01:35.707 --> 00:01:43.128 a linguistic act because you uttered words that were meaningful when they were put 00:01:43.128 --> 00:01:48.038 together in that way. And I've been taking this for granted but 00:01:48.038 --> 00:01:51.256 of course the words you utter have to be meaningful. 00:01:51.565 --> 00:01:56.082 It's not going to be a linguistic act if you utter what looks like a sentence, 00:01:56.082 --> 00:02:00.537 namely a set of sounds, that look like words if they're not really words. 00:02:00.537 --> 00:02:05.177 So, if you say, `Twas brillig and the slithy toves did gyre and gimble in the 00:02:05.177 --> 00:02:08.890 wabe, and so on from Lewis Carroll's famous Jabberwocky poem. 00:02:08.890 --> 00:02:14.232 Then, it's not going to be a linguistic act if those words are not meaningful 00:02:14.232 --> 00:02:18.465 words in any language. And you can also get nonsense when you 00:02:18.465 --> 00:02:24.016 take words that have meanings, and put them together in an order that doesn't make 00:02:24.016 --> 00:02:27.868 any sense. My dog has fleas makes sense, but dog 00:02:27.868 --> 00:02:33.930 fleas my has doesn't make any sense. So, meaningful words with the wrong 00:02:33.930 --> 00:02:40.248 grammatical structure won't work. And Noam Chomsky from MIT taught us that 00:02:40.248 --> 00:02:46.992 you can also get nonsense when you take words that make sense, and you put them 00:02:46.992 --> 00:02:50.920 together with the right grammatical structure, 00:02:51.220 --> 00:02:57.949 but they still don't fit together, because of the relation between the meanings. 00:02:57.949 --> 00:03:02.974 His example here was colorless green ideas sleep furiously. 00:03:02.974 --> 00:03:07.915 What does that mean? Colorless green ideas sleep furiously? 00:03:07.915 --> 00:03:11.918 Well, colorless makes sense. Green, that's a word. 00:03:11.918 --> 00:03:13.890 Ideas. Sleep. 00:03:13.890 --> 00:03:19.616 Furiously. Each of those words makes sense and they're each in their appropriate 00:03:19.616 --> 00:03:23.768 grammatical role, but altogether it doesn't make any sense. 00:03:23.768 --> 00:03:28.994 So, there are lots of ways you can get nonsense in language, and when you do, 00:03:28.994 --> 00:03:34.434 you're not performing a linguistic act. Now, there's some really fun examples 00:03:34.434 --> 00:03:39.016 where it's not clear whether or not the utterance is meaningful. 00:03:39.230 --> 00:03:44.098 Some of these examples, among my favorites are garden path sentences. 00:03:44.098 --> 00:03:47.320 Here's one. The man who whistles tunes pianos. 00:03:47.900 --> 00:03:50.280 Wait a minute. What does that mean? 00:03:50.280 --> 00:03:54.550 If you think of it as the man who whistles tunes as one unit, 00:03:54.550 --> 00:03:58.470 then you don't understand what the word pianos is doing. 00:03:58.470 --> 00:04:04.280 Because the man who whistles tunes sounds like a reference to a particular man, and 00:04:04.280 --> 00:04:08.410 pianos is not a verb. But if you think of it as the man who 00:04:08.410 --> 00:04:12.976 whistles as one unit, And the second unit is tunes pianos, 00:04:12.976 --> 00:04:18.953 So it's the man who whistles tunes pianos, Then it makes sense. Because it's the man 00:04:18.953 --> 00:04:23.659 who's whistling also tunes piano. So, you have to be able to carve the set 00:04:23.659 --> 00:04:28.550 of words up into the right units and see what grammatical structure they have in 00:04:28.550 --> 00:04:32.626 order to understand the sentence. Because tunes can either be a verb, which 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 00:04:37.226 --> 00:04:41.710 to the thing that the man is whistling. And you have to get those grammatical 00:04:41.710 --> 00:04:46.310 categories straight, and the garden path sentences lead you astray and make you 00:04:46.310 --> 00:04:50.444 think of it in the wrong way. There'll be some more examples of that in 00:04:50.444 --> 00:04:54.460 the exercises. But my favorite example of all is Buffalo 00:04:54.460 --> 00:04:57.668 buffalo buffalo. What does that mean? 00:04:57.668 --> 00:05:03.720 Well, buffalo or American bison, Okay? But buffalo, the word buffalo in 00:05:03.720 --> 00:05:09.742 English that is, can also be used as a verb to refer to tricking or fooling 00:05:09.742 --> 00:05:13.516 someone. So you can have buffalo, American bison, 00:05:13.516 --> 00:05:16.967 buffaloing, That is tricking or fooling, buffalo, 00:05:16.967 --> 00:05:19.749 American bison. Buffalo buffalo buffalo. 00:05:19.749 --> 00:05:25.099 This can go even further because there is a city in New York named Buffalo. 00:05:25.099 --> 00:05:30.448 And, of course, there can be buffalo, that is American bison, from the city of 00:05:30.448 --> 00:05:34.157 Buffalo, New York and they're called Buffalo buffalo. 00:05:34.157 --> 00:05:39.650 And, when they trick or fool other American bison from Buffalo, New York, then you 00:05:39.650 --> 00:05:44.490 have Buffalo buffalo buffalo Buffalo buffalo, or Buffalo buffalo buffalo 00:05:44.490 --> 00:05:48.959 buffalo buffalo, which doesn't sound like a meaningful utterance, but it is. 00:05:48.959 --> 00:05:53.066 And you can go even further. You can actually build it out to eleven 00:05:53.066 --> 00:05:57.269 straight utterances of the word buffalo. Buffalo buffalo buffalo buffalo 00:05:57.269 --> 00:06:00.522 buffalo buffalo buffalo buffalo buffalo buffalo buffalo. 00:06:00.522 --> 00:06:04.820 Now, tell me what that means. I'm not going to explain it to you because it 00:06:04.820 --> 00:06:08.712 takes a while to explain it. But, if you think about it, you might be 00:06:08.712 --> 00:06:12.371 able to figure it out. And even if you can't figure out eleven 00:06:12.371 --> 00:06:15.229 baffaloes in a row, the point still holds. 00:06:15.229 --> 00:06:19.813 Because the point's just that sometimes, what doesn't seem meaningful turns out to be 00:06:19.813 --> 00:06:22.909 meaningful. And if you're careful and charitable, 00:06:22.909 --> 00:06:25.945 and do your best to interpret what it really means, 00:06:25.945 --> 00:06:30.947 Then you might be able to make sense out of some utterances that don't seem to make 00:06:30.947 --> 00:06:34.281 sense at first. And when you can make sense of them, then 00:06:34.281 --> 00:06:38.202 they're linguistic acts. For now, I don't have time to go into any 00:06:38.202 --> 00:06:42.335 detail on semantics or syntax. Although, we will discuss some details 00:06:42.335 --> 00:06:47.502 when we discuss vagueness and ambiguity in the discussion of fallacies later in this 00:06:47.502 --> 00:06:50.358 course. But, I hope that the linguistic level is 00:06:50.358 --> 00:06:55.221 pretty simple and understandable so we can go on and look in more detail at the 00:06:55.221 --> 00:06:58.200 speech act level and the conversation act level.