This course will explore theories concerning how the context of utterance affects the content of what is said, and concerning relationships between language on the one hand, and human action and communication on the other. Presupposition, conversational implicature, nondeclarative sentences, deixis and anaphora, and the analysis of discourse units larger than sentences will be among the phenomena we will consider. The literature we will examine belongs to linguistics, philosophy, and artificial intelligence. This course may be of interest to students in linguistics, philosophy, psychology, computer science, speech and communication, English, and language departments.
Prerequisites: There are no specific requirements for this course. But some of the material will be technical, and it will be assumed that students enrolled in the course will have had experience with some theoretical approach to language.
Recitations: none
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Credits: 3