in this article, on the basis of habermas’ universal pragmatics, we have tried to indicate that empirical pragmatics in linguistics, suffers from ‘normativity deficit’ in the field of foreign language education. what we mean by ‘normativity deficit’, is the lack of normative resources required for judging the validity claims inherent in social interactions. since agreement on the validity claim...

The approach to pragmatics explored in this article focuses on elements of social interaction which are of universal relevance, and which may provide bases for a comparative approach. The discussion is anchored by reference to a fragment of conversation from a video-recording of Lao speakers during a home visit in rural Laos. The following points are discussed. First, an understanding of the fu...

The most provocative and crucial argument of Habermas' Theory Communicative Action is the claim that parties participating in communicative action can reach an understanding agreement any case if they aim to agreement, not dominate/oppress or manipulate each other. This claim, which at core his social theory as a whole, requires analysis conditions for reaching action. In this regard, Habermas ...

This article surveys the state of the art in the field of semantic universals. We examine potential semantic universals in three areas: (i) the lexicon, (ii) semantic “glue” (functional morphemes and composition principles), and (iii) pragmatics. At the level of the lexicon, we find remarkably few convincing semantic universals. At the level of functional morphemes and composition principles, w...

This article surveys the state of the art in the field of semantic universals. We examine potential semantic universals in three areas: (i) the lexicon, (ii) semantic “glue” (functional morphemes and composition principles), and (iii) pragmatics. At the level of the lexicon, we find remarkably few convincing semantic universals. At the level of functional morphemes and composition principles, w...

Explaining why some linguistic features and constructions are easy or difficult to acquire in a second language has become a prominent current concern in generative second language acquisition (SLA) research. Based on a comparison of findings on the L2 acquisition of functional morphology, syntax, semantics and pragmatics, the Bottleneck Hypothesis argues that functional morphemes and their fea...

This paper explores the use of a simple and computational optimality theoretic pragmatics (OT pragmatics, OTP) to the analysis of the rhetorical structure of texts. It introduces this variant of OTP briefly and then shows that it can be applied to explain coherence, rhetorical relations, discourse trees and context dependence using the occasional extra premiss. It thereby improves on existing a...

There is much research on the syntax-semantics and syntax-phonology interaction. However, exact relation between prosodic patterns informational structure (as part of pragmatics) still to be investigated. In this empirical study, we challenge view that prosody pragmatics are two autonomous levels grammar. This paper an analysis narrative poem ‘Mending Wall’ recited by Robert Frost explore featu...