Syllabus

Required Readings

• Paul Grice: 'Meaning'
• Stephen Neale: 'Implicit and Aphonic Reference', §§2, 3 & 5

Background Readings

• Paul Grice: 'Utterer's Meaning and Intention'
• Stephen Neale 'Paul Grice and the Philosophy of Language', §§4–6
• Stephen Neale: The Gricean Project, pp.1–8
• Stephen Neale: On Meaning and Interpretation (Philosophy Bites Interview), pp.246–7


• Handout

Required Readings

• Thom Scott-Philips: Speaking Our Minds, chs.1–3
• Dan Sperber & Deirdre Wilson: 'Beyond Speaker Meaning', §1

Background Readings

• Dan Sperber & Deirdre Wilson: Relevance, chs.1–2, especially §§1.1–1.2, §§1.10–1.12, §2.1


• Handout: Neale on the Third Clause

Required Readings

• Thom Scott-Philips: Speaking Our Minds, chs.4–6

Background Readings

• Dorit Bar-On: 'Origins of Meaning: Must We ‘Go Gricean’?'
• Marc Hauser, Noam Chomsky, and Tecumseh Fitch: 'The Faculty of Language'
• Tecumseh Fitch, Marc Hauser, and Noam Chomsky: 'The Evolution of the Faculty of Language'


• Handout: Neale on Modularity, Mindreading, and Mimesis
• Handout: Dan on the Third Clause

Required Readings

• Boaz Keysar 'Communication and Miscommunication: The Role of Egocentric Processes'
• J. Robert Thompson: 'Meaning and Mindreading'
• Carlos Santana: 'Intention-Based Accounts of Meaning are Idealized Scientific Models'

Background Readings

• Susan Carey: The Origin of Concepts, ch.5
• Richard Breheny: 'Communication and Folk Psychology'
• Anne Bezuidenhout: 'Perspective Taking in Conversation: A Defense of Speaker Non-Egocentricity'
• Kristine H. Onishi and Renée Baillargeon: 'Do 15-Month-Old Infants Understand False Beliefs?'
• Gergely Csibra: 'Recognizing Communicative Intentions in Infancy'
• Peter Carruthers: 'Mindreading in Infancy'


• Handout

Required Readings

• Daniel Harris: 'A Taxonomy of Communicative Acts'

Background Readings

• John Searle: Speech Acts, ch.3: 'The Structure of Illocutionary Acts'
• John Searle: 'A Taxonomy of Illocutionary Acts'
• Stephen Schiffer: Meaning, ch.4
• Kent Bach & Robert M. Harnish: Linguistic Communication and Speech Acts, ch.3: 'A Taxonomy of Communicative Illocutionary Acts'


• Dan's Handout

Required Readings

• Paul Grice: 'Logic and Conversation'
• Stephen Neale 'Paul Grice and the Philosophy of Language', §§1–2
• John Searle: 'Indirect Speech Acts'


• Dan's Original Handout
• Dan's Expanded Handout

Required Readings

• Stephen Neale: 'Implicit and Aphonic Reference', §§6,7
• Karen Lewis: 'The Speaker Authority Problem for Context-Sensitivity (or: You Can't Always Mean What You Want)'
• Daniel Harris: 'Semantics without Semantic Content'
  (unfortunately, this isn't ready to go yet. DH will present the main ideas in class.)

Background Readings

• Saul Kripke: 'Speaker's Reference and Semantic Reference', especially §2b
• Keith Donnellan: 'Speaker's Reference, Descriptions, and Anaphora', especially Intro–§2
• Jeff King: 'Speaker Intentions in Context'


• Dan's Handout

Required Readings

• Stephen Neale: 'Implicit and Aphonic Reference', §§1 & 7
• Stephen Neale: 'This, That, and the Other', §§4 & 7

Background Readings

• Jason Stanley & Zoltán Gendler Szabó: 'On Quantifier Domain Restriction'

Required Readings

• Robert Stalnaker: 'Assertion'
• Robert Stalnaker: Context, ch.2: 'Common Ground and Keeping Score'
• Robert Stalnaker: Inquiry, pp.79–81

Background Readings

• Richmond Thomason: ‘Accomodation, Meaning, and Implicature’, especially §§6–10 (pp.335–351)
• Herbert Clark & Thomas B. Carlson: ‘Hearers and Speech Acts’


• Handout

Required Readings

• Craige Roberts: 'Information Structure' §1 (pp.1–26)
• Paul Portner: 'The Semantics of Imperatives in a Theory of Clause-Types'

Backgroud Readings

• David Lewis: 'Scorekeeping in a Language Game'
• Ivano Ciardelli, Jeroen Groenendijk, and Floris Roelofsen: Inquisitive Semantics, §§1–2


• Handout

Required Readings

• Sarah Murray & Will Starr: 'Force and Conversational States'

Background Readings

• Sarah Murray & Will Starr: 'The Structure of Communicative Acts'

Required Readings

• Daniel Harris: 'We Talk to People, Not Contexts'

Required Readings

• Daniel Harris: 'Compositionality for Intentionalists'