Can we treat pragmatics like semantics?

Abstract

Over the last few years, several fuzzy-based approaches to linguistic text analysis have suggested that it is possible to find and to use patterns in the surface structure of linguistic utterances (i.e., pragmatic information) which reveal or conform to deeper linguistic regularities or constructs (Le., semantic information). This paper discusses two of these approaches, the fuzzy semantic typing of Subasic and Huettner and the computational semiotics of Rigger. From a theoretical point of view, such methods have been criticized on both philosophical and linguistic grounds. lit this paper, we perform some simple experiments to see whether useful insights or even useful text processing methods can be gleaned from application of techniques derived from one of these pragmatic approaches (computational semiotics). We conclude that the results are inconsistent and provide neither useful surface measures of regularities nor insights into underlying syntactico-semantic properties of linguistic utterance.