Course Description

This course offers a general account of anaphora in discourse, covering definite NPs and indexicals, as well as triggers of other types. Anaphora is simple: Use of an anaphoric trigger presupposes that the speaker’s intended antecedent can be retrieved from the context of utterance. But discourse is complicated, so that explaining how this is possible in particular cases requires consideration of a range of contextual factors. As in generative syntax, where the complex interaction of components of the grammar predicts judgments of grammaticality, so in an adequate pragmatics the dynamic interaction of multiple functionally distinguished components of the context of utterance, together with the syntactico-semantic analysis of the constituent uttered should predict attested felicity and meaning(s), including felicitous anaphora resolution. We will adopt a theory of what a context of utterance is and how it influences compositional semantics which has evolved from Roberts (1996/2012). Context is not a component of the grammar. But the nature of the context of utterance and of its interaction with compositional interpretation are part of our linguistic competence.

The course assumes some background in formal semantics and basic pragmatics. But all are welcome who are willing do a little bootstrapping, with background reading offered.

Area Tags: Semantics, Pragmatics, Discourse, Cognitive Science, Lexicography

(Session 2) Monday/Thursday 10:30-11:50

Location: ILC S231

Instructor: Craige Roberts

Craige Roberts is Professor Emerita from The Ohio State University, now living in NYC, where she is a Research Scholar at Barnard College. She works at the interface between linguistic semantics and the philosophy of language, including work on formal models of the context of utterance and its role in interpretation: anaphora and domain restriction, presupposition, focus, perspective, and dynamic pragmatics; and on the semantics and pragmatics of modality, mood, tense, and aspect.