Welcome to Pragmatics of Linguistic Communication

Below are the web readings for each topic that we will cover in the class. Please do the web reading BEFORE class. The goal is to use class time for activities and further explanation/discussion -- all with the aim of letting you evaluate and further your understanding (or that's the plan at least!).

Week1: Introduction

Read for Monday 15 January: What's an utterance?

Week2: Semantics vs Pragmatics

Read for Monday 22 January: Truth conditions & entailment, Presupposition

Week3: Implicature

Read for Monday 29 January: Implicature [reminder: class meets only 4:10-5pm on the 29th]

Week4: Processing perspectives

Read for Monday 5 February: Experimental approaches to presupposition [reminder: class meets only 4:10-5pm on the 5th]

Week5: Speech Acts

Read for Monday 12 February: Speech acts

Creative Learning Week

No reading / no class for Monday 19 February

Week6: Information structure

Read for Monday 26 February: Packaging information

Week7: Reference; Meaning in context

Read for Monday 5 March: Reference

Week8: Common Ground

Read for Monday 12 March: Shared common ground, audience design, and a noisy channel model of communication