The semantics/pragmatics distinction is an integral part of the received wisdom in formal linguistics. Nevertheless, the nature of the distinction is very much subject to discussion itself and, in fact, many of the hot topics in the study of meaning today straddle the semantics/pragmatics divide in interesting and largely unexpected ways. The goal of this course is to allow the student to understand the controversies that exist as well as the theoretical frameworks that accommodate such issues. The successful student will be able to conduct research within the context of such frameworks herself.

 The semantics/pragmatics divide is often paralleled to Grice’s distinction between saying and implicating. Recently, this simple view on what is semantic and what is pragmatic has been called into question. Furthermore, the saying/implicating distinction is inappropriate for phenomena that involve presupposed, expressive or, more generally, non-asserted content. Interestingly, the emerging debates rely heavily on empirical methods, ranging from truth-value judgment experiments to questionnaire fieldwork.

 The course is divided into 3 parts: (1) background and overview of the field; (2) case studies of particular phenomena, such as appositive, expressives, evidentials, non-assertive speech acts; (3) small-scale group research projects by the students (parallel to 1 and 2).