English Semantics: Meaning in Language
English 385
MWF, 1:00 - 1:50 pm, 1121 Susquehanna Hall
Asst. Prof. Michael Israel
Office Hours: MW 2-3 and by appointment
4109 Susquehanna Hall, tel: 405-3816, email: israel@wam.umd.edu
Course documents:
Syllabus (MS Word download)
Handouts
Assignments
Course outline:
What is meaning? What does it mean to "mean what one says"? How do
words carry meaning, and how do
people put meaning into the words they use? What is "literal" meaning
and how does it relate to
other kinds of meaning (allegorical, metaphorical, hidden)? What
makes a sentence true, or makes a
particular speech act count as a promise, a threat, a suggestion, or
a hint? These are some of the
questions that will concern us in this general introduction to the
study of meaning in language.
This course will introduce students to a broad range of semantic
phenomena and the theoretical tools
linguists use to analyze them. The organization of the syllabus
reflects both empirical and
theoretical perspectives in the study of linguistic semantics. On the
theoretical side, the basic
question is how does one represent meaning, and more particularly,
how should a theory of meaning
fit with an overall theory of language and mind. On the empirical
side, emphasis will be placed on
the description and analysis of real linguistic data. The examples we
will consider include both
spoken and written uses of English, as well as wholly invented
utterances supplemented with native
speaker judgments.
Major topics include the nature of word meaning, the relation between
lexical and grammatical
meaning, the role of compositionality and idiomaticity in the
creation of complex meanings, and
the interaction between context and convention in determining a
speaker's meaning. This course has
no prerequisites.