LING 30301 Fall 2014University of Chicago TuTh 12-1.20

Semantics and Pragmatics 1

Instructor: Chris Kennedy (ck@uchicago.edu)Office: Rosenwald 205EPhone: 834-1988Class website: ChalkOffice hours: Th 2-3.30 or by appointment

Course DescriptionThis is the first in a two-course sequence designed to provide a foundation in thescientific study of all aspects of linguistic meaning. The first quarter focuses primarilyon pragmatics: those aspects of meaning that arise from the way that speakers putlanguage to use, rather than through the formal properties of the linguistic systemitself, which is the domain of semantics. However, a central goal of the course willbe to begin to develop an understanding of the relation between pragmatics andsemantics, by exploring empirical phenomena in which contextual and conventionalaspects of meaning interact in complex but regular and well-defined ways, and bylearning analytical techniques that allow us to tease these two aspects of linguisticsmeaning apart.

AssignmentsThe written work for the course will consist of weekly reaction papers (due on Thurs-days); four or five larger and more comprehensive written assignments, spaced outover the course of the quarter; and a take-home final covering all aspects of the course,due by 5pm on Thursday, December 11.

The reaction papers should choose one article from the list we will be reading eachweek and provide a one page overview of its central points: what is the main issuethat it addresses, what are the core proposals, and what arguments are brought tobear to support the proposals? The article should come from the primary literaturewe are reading, not from the survey articles. (I will indicate which are which.) Thefirst reaction paper is due on Thursday, October 2, and should discussGrice 1957.

EvaluationYour evaluation will be based on the reaction papers, the assignments and the final,and on participation in class.

ReadingsOur readings will consist mainly of classic articles from the primary literature, plussome more recent work. I will also supplement each unit with one or two survey arti-cles that provide general introductions and overviews of the topics under discussion,but your main focus should be on the primary literature.

You are expected to do all the reading for the course. There will be a fair amount ofit, so please make time accordingly.

The PlanThe following is a rough week-by-week plan for the course. Note that we may end updiverging from it a bit depending on the discussion and interests of the class. Thereadings for each week will be posted on the Chalk site for the course.

Week 1: Foundational issues: Speaker meaning vs. sentence meaningThe division of labor between semantics and pragmatics: where do different types ofmeaning come from, and how can we tell them apart?

Weeks 2-3: Speech ActsThings we do with words, and the relation between propositional content and mean-ing. Indirect speech acts, illocutionary force, and performative utterances.

Weeks 4-6: PresuppositionThe relation between sentence meaning and prior context: what conditions on ourbackground knowledge does (the use of?) a particular sentence impose? Presupposi-tion projection, accommodation and semantic vs. pragmatic theories of presupposi-tion.

Weeks 7-9: ImplicatureThe relation between the truth-conditional and non-truth conditional aspects of aspeaker’s intended meaning: how much follows from general principles of communi-cation, cooperation and informativity, and how much of this can be sytematicallyexplained in terms of a fixed set of principles or maxims?

Week 10: ReferenceThe relation between words and the world.