Sentences are objects crucial to several disciplines: grammar, logic, law, literature and philosophy. This seminar explores some of their conditions, limits and paradoxes. What distinguishes one kind of sentence from another? How can a command, for example, do things that a question cannot do? Why is it difficult, even impossible, to rephrase an exclamation as a statement? Reading works of literature, philosophy and linguistics, we focus on five basic sentence types: the question, exclamation, command, assertion and negation. We also consider the acts to which they are tied, from rulings to insults, prayers, judgment and curses.
