Pragmatics in Linguistic Theory
MIT OpenCourseWare offers this advanced linguistics course on formal theories of pragmatics and its boundary with semantics. Topics include context-dependency, presupposition, implicature, context-change, focus, and topic, with applications to quantification, definiteness, presupposition projection, conditionals, modality, anaphora, and questions and answers. The course draws on formal semantic frameworks to analyze how meaning depends on context and use, treating pragmatics as a rigorous theoretical discipline rather than a descriptive add-on to grammar. Materials follow the standard OCW format of lecture notes, readings, and problem sets, taken from an MIT graduate-level syllabus in the Department of Linguistics and Philosophy. The course is free to access through MIT OpenCourseWare with no certificate offered. It suits students who already have a background in formal semantics and want a systematic treatment of how context, inference, and discourse structure interact with sentence meaning.