Foundations of Meaning: Introduction to Semantics and Pragmatics

Course goals

After the course the students will be able to
- understand and appreciate different aspects of and perspectives on meaning
- engage with semantic and pragmatic literature that is not too specialized
- analyze basic meaning phenomena using important semantic/pragmatic notions and techniques

Content

Semantics and pragmatics are the two linguistic subdisciplines that deal with meaning in language. Semantics studies meaning from the dual perspectives of reference and truth on the one hand and concepts on the other hand. Pragmatics studies meaning from the perspective of language use in communication and discourse.

The course focuses on two subjects:
1 Semantics: The conceptual and philosophical basis for doing semantics and its application in accounting for entailment patterns and meaning composition.
2 Pragmatics: The role of context, discourse, expressiveness, implicatures, presuppositions, and subjectivity in language use.