Logic and Conversation
Place: University of Amsterdam, OMHP D1.18B
Time: Fall 2012, Mondays 13.00-15.00 and Wednesdays 17.30-19.30 Lecturer: Jeroen Groenendijk and Floris Roelofsen
Overview
The theme of the course is the interplay between semantics and pragmatics in the interpretation of natural language discourse, and the role of logic in formulating semantic and pragmatic theories. Traditionally, logic is concerned with the characterization of valid reasoning and argumentation, and therefore focusses on informative content, defined in terms of truth conditions. When analyzing discourse, however, other notions become of interest as well. For instance, besides informative content, inquisitive content also plays a crucial role, and besides entailment/validity, logical notions of relatedness and relevance take center stage.
Schedule
Theme 1: Setting the stage29/10: Logic and Conversation (Grice 1975) See also Chapter 6 of Gamut31/10: The logic of interrogation (Groenendijk 1999) ( slides) See also Axiomatizing Groenendijk's LOI (Ten Cate & Shan, 2007)
Assignment: assignment 1, due 5/11.
Theme 2: Dynamic semantics with structured discourse contexts
See also:
Note: There will be a closely related DIP colloquium on Friday 9/11 by Jakub Dotlacil.
Theme 3: Raising and resolving issues
Theme 4: Compliance and witnesses
Theme 5: Division of labor between semantics and pragmatics12/12: The content and implicatures of modified numerals (Westera 2012)
Assignments and gradingThere will be 6 homework assignments. The first five assignments will each make up 15% of the grade. The final assignment will make up 25% of the grade.
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