Course : Introduction to Linguistics II (Εαρ. 2024-'25) - Sections Α-Καρ & Π-Ω
Course code : ENL588
Course Description
Course description
The aim of this course is to familiarize students with issues pertaining to the study of linguistic meaning, in particular the semantic, pragmatic, and textual parameters that are involved in the production and understanding of language, while also considering the role of regional, social, and cultural dimensions. Drawing on semantics, pragmatics, text linguistics/discourse analysis, and sociolinguistics, we will address the key concepts that form the backbone in the study of meaning across the board.
Upon successful completion of the course students are expected to:
- acquire basic concepts pertaining to the study of linguistic meaning;
- apply such concepts to the analysis of linguistic examples;
- associate the study of language with contextual parameters (pragmatic, textual, regional, and social);
- reflect on how society and culture impact on the production and understanding of language.
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Bibliography
Yule, George (2010). The Study of Language. 4th edition. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. [chapters 9, 10, 11, 17, 18, and 19]
Dirven, René & Marjolijn Verspoor (2004). Cognitive Exploration of Language and Linguistics. 2nd edition. Amsterdam: John Benjamins. [extracts from chapters 2, 7, 8 and 9]
Instructional Methods
The course is offered in the form of lectures, which are uploaded on e-class together with other learning materials, including articles and book chapters, online resources, and formative coursework. Students are expected to actively participate through in-class discussions and workshop-style group work during class meetings. Classes will include take-home assignments in order to facilitate, and monitor, students’ understanding of the topics discussed in class.
Assessment Methods
Students will be assessed on the basis of an end-of-term exam.
Course Syllabus
Week 1
Introduction to the course.
The study of meaning, comprising semantic, pragmatic, textual, regional, and social dimensions.
Week 2
Semantics I.
Semantic features.
Semantic/thematic roles.
Words, meanings, and concepts.
Week 3
Semantics II.
Lexical relations.
Synonymy, antonymy. Collocations.
Week 4
Semantics III.
Homonymy vs polysemy.
Metaphor and metonymy.
Week 5
Pragmatics I.
Context.
Deixis and reference.
Presupposition.
Week 6
Pragmatics II.
Speech acts. Direct and indirect speech acts.
Week 7
Pragmatics III.
Politeness.
Face-threatening acts and politeness strategies.
Week 8
Pragmatics IV.
Conversational implicature.
The Cooperative principle and the maxims of conversation.
Week 9
Text linguistics-Discourse analysis I.
Cohesion and coherence.
Week 10
Text linguistics-Discourse analysis II.
Conversation analysis and turn-taking.
Week 11
Sociolinguistics I.
Regional variation.
The standard language. The dialect continuum.
Bilingualism and diglossia. Pidgins and creoles.
Week 12
Sociolinguistics II.
Social variation.
Social dialects, register, and slang.
Prestige. Speech accommodation.
Week 13
Wrap up class and exam preparation.
Please note that this course outline is tentative, hence subject to change.
The first day of classes was dedicated to introducing the aims and the content of this course. We thus outlined the different areas of linguistics that we will cover throughout the semester, namely semantics, pragmatics, discourse analysis, and sociolinguistics, as well as the key concepts we will discuss under each course unit. This journey starts with the study of word meaning through the lens of lexical semantics. We specifically addressed the question as to how we can define word meaning, and the various challenges that are entailed in the so-called "dictionary" definition of word meaning. Finally, we established a distinction between conceptual and associative meaning; for the purposes of this course, we will focus specifically on conceptual meaning.
More on word meaning in tomorrow's class. Please bring with you a copy of the Handout on semantic features and semantic roles that is found in Documents under the folder "Handouts".
In this class, we focused on the analysis of word meaning in terms of semantic features and semantic roles. We specifically analyzed word meaning in terms of a small set of semantic features, which help us define, at least partly, the meaning of certain words, as well as how words cluster to form semantic classes but also differ (cf. "woman" and "girl"). This helps us also explain the oddity of certain linguistic expressions, such as "?The apple ate the hay". Moreover, we analyzed words in terms of the semantic, or thematic roles they fulfill in a sentence. Such roles include: agent and theme, instrument, experiencer, location, source, and goal. Semantic roles are assigned primarily by verbs, as well as by prepositions.
Please study the lecture slides and the relevant pages from Yule's chapter 9 (pp. 112-116). For next time, please do the following exersices from Handout 1 on Semantics: 3, 8, 9, 10. You need to also bring with you Handout 2 that is available in the relevant folder under Documents.
In this class, we first discussed your homework on semantic features and semantic roles.
Next, we shifted our focus to polysemy, namely words that have two (or more) meanings that are different but related. Specifically, we distinguished polysemous words from homonyms, which have identical forms but their meanings are different and unrelated, as well as from homophones, which overlap phonologically although they differ in terms of spelling and meaning.
In order to analyze polysemy, we introduced the notion of prototypicality that helps us explain how polysemous words have one central meaning, which we call "prototypical". From this prototypical meaning all other senses of polysemous words are derived; these are the so-called "extended senses". Two mechanisms are involved in semantic extension, namely metonymy and metaphor.
Please study the lecture slides and the relevant pages from Yule's chapter on Semantics. For our next class, please prepare Exercises 5, 6 and 7 from the Handout on polysemy.
The last part of semantics is concerned with how the meaning of words relates to the meaning of other words in the mental lexicon, that is, lexical relations. Lexical relations include synonymy, antonymy, and hyponymy, the latter forming hierarchical taxonomies of hypernyms and hyponyms. Part of our knowledge of word meaning is how words are combined with other words in the form of collocations. With lexical relations we have now completed the study of word meaning in semantics. The exercises on lexical relations are found in Handout 3.
Please study the lecture slides and the relevant pages from Yule's chapter on Semantics.
For next time, please prepare the Self-assessment test on Semantics that you will find under Documents and bring with you Handout 1 on Pragmatics (Deixis & Presupposition).
After completing our overview of semantics, we shifted our focus to pragmatics. The object of study in pragmatics is so-called "utterance meaning", which, as opposed to "semantic meaning", depends on the context (both linguistic and physical, i.e. extra-linguistic), and the communicative intention of the speaker. Τhe notion of context is central to pragmatics. In particular, we discussed how the physical context of an utterance modulates the meaning of so-called "deictic expressions", including person, space, and time deixis.
The second part is concerned with presupposition, namely a precondition that is required for a sentence to be true as in, e.g., "Mary stopped smoking"; this presupposes that Mary used to smoke. We specifically examined how syntactic and lexical forms, so-called "presupposition triggers", serve to give rise to presuppositions (such as the verb "stop" in the example above). We also discussed an instance of presupposition found in a political slogan ("Make America great again!") and serving as a means to implicitly get across a message of lost grandeur which therefore must be restored. Finally, we did in class all the exercises that are contained in Handout 1 in Pragmatics.
Please study the lecture slides and the relevant pages from Yule's chapter on Pragmatics. Next time, please bring with you Handout 2 in Pragmatics (on speech acts & politeness).
I wish you all a lovely Easter break! Καλό Πάσχα!
Agenda
Announcements
All announcements...-
Thursday, April 10, 2025, 7:24 PM
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Sunday, April 6, 2025, 6:41 PM
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Friday, April 4, 2025, 12:06 PM