Course syllabus

APPLIED LANGUAGE STUDIES AND LINGUISTICS

 

 

Linguist 206

Semantics and Pragmatics

 

 

 

Name and contact details

Professor Yan Huang, R323, Arts 2 Building

Ph 87809, Email: yan.huang@auckland.ac.nz

Office hours Tuesday 11-12

 

 

Class times and locations

Check your final timetable.

 

Course teaching format

Through lectures and tutorials. Students are required to attend both.

 

 

Readings

Required reading/Prescribed textbook:

Huang, Yan (2014).  Pragmatics, 2^nd edition.  (Oxford Textbooks in Linguistics). Oxford University Press. (Copies can be bought in the University Bookshop.)

 

Recommended reading/Recommended textbook:  

Lyons, John (1995) Linguistic semantics. Cambridge University Press.

 

Other readings will be provided.

 

A separate reading list for semantics and for pragmatics will be provided.

 

Assessment requirements

Students’ knowledge and skills of the topics taught will be assessed in the examination and assignment.

 

Examination: Two hours. Worth 60% of the final grade.

Coursework: One take-home assignment. Worth 40%.

Coursework due date: Thursday, 4 May

 

 

Course aims/outcomes

This course provides an introduction to a wide range of issues of contemporary relevance to the study of meaning. The semantics part selects topics from structural, truth-conditional and cognitive semantics. Topics to be covered may include denotation, reference and sense, various sense relations, componential analysis, ambiguity and vagueness, and truth-conditional semantics. The pragmatics part deals with some of the basic topics in pragmatics such as the domain of pragmatics, conversational implicature, conventional implicature and speech acts. Students are expected to have a firm grasp of the topics in the lecture series. Their knowledge and skills will be assessed in the assignment and the final examination.

 

 

Course content schedules

1 Denotation, reference and sense

   What is meaning, denotation, intension, extension, reference, typology of referring expressions, types of reference, sense.

Lyons Ch 3, Sec 10.1.  Cann Ch 1.  Huang Ch 6.Secs 6.1 and 6.2

 

2 Ambiguity and vagueness

   Ambiguity, typology of ambiguity (syntactic, lexical, scope, and other), tests for lexical ambiguity, vagueness, typology of vagueness.

Cruse pp. 49-68. Kempson pp.123-132.

 

3 Structural semantics: componential analysis

   Componential analysis, sense components, problems and critiques.

Lyons Secs 4.2-4.3

 

4 Truth-conditional semantics

Sentence, utterance, proposition, propositional content, compositionality, truth-value, truth-condition, entailment, truth-conditional semantics: strengths and weakness.

Huang Ch 1. Secs 1.3.

 

5 The domain of pragmatics

    What is pragmatics, brief history of pragmatics, two main schools of thought, why pragmatics, context.

Huang ch 1.

 

6 Conversational implicature (I):  classical Gricean theory of conversational implicature

   Co-operative principle and maxims of conversation, relationship between the speaker and the maxims, conversational implicature_O vs conversational implicature_F, GCI vs PCI, properties of conversational implicature.

Huang Ch 2.  Secs 2.1.-2.2.

 

7 Conversational implicature (II): neo-Griciean pragmatic theory

   Horn’s typology of  conversational implicature, Levinson’s typology,  interaction of conversational implicature.

Huang Ch 2. Secs 2.1-2.2.

 

8 Conventional implicature

     What is conventional implicature? properties of conventional implicature, conventional vs conversational implicature.

Huang Ch 2. Sec 2.5.

 

9 Speech acts (I)

Performative vs. constative, explicit vs. implicit performative, syntactic and semantic properties of explicit performative, Austin’s felicity conditions.

Huang Ch 4 Secs 4.1 - 4.4.

 

10 Speech acts (II)

Locutionary, illocutionary and perlocutionary speech acts, Searle’s felicity conditions, typology of speech acts, indirect speech acts, politeness, speech acts and culture.

Huang Ch 4. Secs 4.5 – 4.7.