Course description

Various disciplines investigate different aspects of language. Philosophy of language is motivated mainly by a desire to study our intuitively obvious notion of meaning systematically. The lecture aims to introduce students to the issue, central concepts, and terminology of the analytical philosophy of language.

The following topics are present: language as signs; origins of analytical philosophy of language (G. Frege, B. Russell, and L. Wittgenstein on language), meaning and reference of linguistic expression, proper names and empty names, indexical expressions, vagueness, the analytic/synthetic distinction (R. Carnap), speech acts (J. Austin), presupposition (P. Strawson) and implicature (H.P. Grice), controversy about the nature of language, the productivity of language, definitions and questions as particular language expressions.

Evaluation:

Assessment for a grade