🔍 LIGN 130: Semantics

Instructor: Seoyeon Jang [sʌjʌn dʑaŋ]

Pronouns: she or they

Email: [email protected]

Office hours: Thu 1 - 1:50 pm (Art of Espresso)

TA: Joshua Wampler [ˈʤɑʃʊə wɑmplɚ]

Pronouns: he

Email: [email protected]

Office hours: Thu 11 - 11:50 am (on Zoom; link on Canvas)

Lecture: Mon & Wed 11 am - 1:50 pm @ WLH 2207 (in-person only)

https://goo.gl/maps/idTKXXWwb6o6pMuu5

📜 Course Description

This course is an introduction to semantics, that part of linguistics that studies how human languages convey meaning. The course addresses issues like:

• The basic data that semantics aims to account for: ambiguity, synonymy, contradiction, entailment;
• Some simple formal tools that semantics makes use of: sets, possible worlds, and related notions;
• Some simple components of the logic that is behind human languages;
• Aspects of the interaction between syntax and semantics: scope and the meaning of various syntactic categories;
• Aspects of the interaction between semantics and pragmatics (the subfield of linguistics that studies how meaning depends on context): implicatures and presuppositions.

The main goal of this course is not to teach students everything we know about meaning (it would take many quarters to teach that, and there's still plenty we don't know). The course, instead, aims to introduce students to some core aspects of linguistic meaning that we know more about and give an idea of how they can be accounted for by using precise rules and simple formal tools.

Learning Outcomes

Upon completion of this course, students will be able to…

1. Differentiate “meaning” as a research target of formal semantics from “meaning” as its broader use.
2. List three types of linguistic ambiguity, create a sentence (in any language) that exemplifies each type, and explain the source of ambiguity.
3. Define the meaning of functional and lexical items using set theoretical notation.
4. Derive the meaning of simple declarative sentences through the composition of the meanings of each lexical item in them.
5. Determine the semantic class of lexical items (nouns, adjectives, and predicates) by applying relevant diagnostics.
6. Distinguish entailments from implicatures and presuppositions by applying relevant tests.

📢 General Rules

• Kumeyaay Land Acknowledgement: the UC San Diego community holds great respect for the land and the original people of the area where our campus is located. The university is built on the un-ceded territory of the Kumeyaay Nation. Today, the Kumeyaay people continue to maintain their political sovereignty and cultural traditions as vital members of the San Diego community. We acknowledge their tremendous contributions to our region and thank them for their stewardship. For more information on un-ceded territories, visit this interactive map: https://native-land.ca/