Language in Use

Catalog description

In ordinary conversation, what a speaker conveys by the utterance of a sentence may go beyond, or be quite different from, the meaning that could be assigned to the sentence or expression that they use without consideration of the context in which it occurs. For example, the sentence "I have homework" means one thing; but it conveys something more when uttered in answer to the question "Do you want to go see a movie tonight?" In this course, we explore how the systematic study of linguistic meaning can be expanded from the domain of the sentence to the domain of connected, multiparty discourse. This involves taking into account the contributions of context, and of speaker and hearer's beliefs, goals and intentions, to the construction of meaning. This course is one of the set of courses on language and meaning offered by the Program in Linguistics, including in addition to this: 80-283 It Matters How You Say It, 80-288 Intonation, and 80-381 Meaning in Language. Each of these courses can be taken independently; as a set, these courses provide a comprehensive introduction to contemporary approaches to natural language semantics and pragmatics. Prerequisites: 80-100 or 80-180