| Description: |
The topic of this seminar will be the notion of language as
it is employed in the philosophy of language. The seminar will be
divided into two parts, of somewhat unequal length. The first
part will be devoted to the change in the conception of language that
marked the transition from structural linguistics to generative
linguistics (the so-called "Chomskian revolution"). We will
approach this not only as a chapter in the philosophy of language, but
also as an important chapter in the philosophy of science, in large
part because much of the discussion centers around to what extent, and
how, the study of language can be understood as a scientific inquiry,
continuous with the other natural sciences. From this
discussion, which will be devoted to reading some of the classic
literature from the mid-50's to the mid-70's (largely by Chomsky), an
articulation of the subject matter of the study of language will
emerge, and in particular this will involve an articulation of the
relation of syntax, semantics and pragmatics. This will lead us
to explore, in the second part of the seminar, the most influential
work, that of Grice, especially in "Logic and Conversation" devoted to
articulating this distinction. Note that the seminar does not
presuppose any background in linguistics |