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Reading from semantics and pragmatics

Class at Faculty of Mathematics and Physics |
NPFL115

Syllabus

I. General introduction

- Morris Triangle: syntax - semantics - pragmatics

- Meaning and context: interconnectivity between semantics and pragmatics, meaning adaptation to the context

II. Semantics

- Lexical semantics and lexical typology, semantics of constructions

- Semantics and morphosyntax: semantics of grammatical categories

- Cognitive semantics

- Formal semantics

III. Pragmatics - basics

- Language functions (K. Bühler, R. Jakobson)

- Speech acts (J. L. Austin, J. Searle)

IV. Pragmatics - modern approaches

- Grice maxims, relevance theory

- Presupposition and discourse structure

Annotation

The aim of this course is to provide the students with the deeper theoretical understanding of language phenomena, which are especially complicated from the point of view of their computation processing (metaphors, inference, presupposition, speech acts). We will deal with lexical semantics, semantic structure of ambiguous words and constructions, deixis and the deictic components of meaning, theory of reference grammar and the semantics of grammatical categories. As for pragmatics, we will focus on the basic literature.

The subject opens according to the interest of the students.