LING218-12S2 (C) Semester Two 2012

Formal Semantics

15 points

Details:
Start Date: Monday, 9 July 2012
End Date: Sunday, 11 November 2012
Withdrawal Dates
Last Day to withdraw from this course:
  • Without financial penalty (full fee refund): Friday, 20 July 2012
  • Without academic penalty (including no fee refund): Friday, 5 October 2012

Description

This course provides an introduction to the main semantic phenomena of natural language and to a simple formal analysis, based on first-order logic, of the semantic structure of sentences. Topics will include truth-conditional theories of meaning, modality and possible worlds, predicates and arguments, truth-functional connectives, quantifiers, tense, scopal ambiguity, and the event-based analysis of action sentences.

This course provides an introduction to central semantic phenomena in natural language, with an emphasis on practical analysis. Throughout the course we will use simple formal representations, based (mainly) on first order logic, to analyse the semantic structure of sentences. Topics will include semantics and pragmatics, truth conditions, predicates and arguments, quantifiers, and tense and aspect.
The main aims of this course are to give students a good working understanding of important topics and issues in formal semantics, and to develop students' skills in the practical analysis of data. Given the analytic emphasis, the exercises and practical classes are extremely important.

Prerequisites

LING101 or LING111 or ENGL123 or ENGL112 or any 15 points in PHIL

Restrictions

LING202, PHIL251

Equivalent Courses

Course Coordinator

Lisa Matthewson

Assessment

Assessment Due Date Percentage 
Participation 10%
Homework Assignments (3) 30%
Written Test 1 09 Aug 2012 30%
Written Test 2 11 Oct 2012 30%

Textbooks / Resources

Recommended Reading

Kearns, Kate; Semantics ; 2nd ed; Palgrave Macmillan, 2011.

Course links

Library portal
The course outline is available on LEARN (only for students enrolled in this course).
LEARN

Indicative Fees

Domestic fee $619.00

International fee $2,688.00

* All fees are inclusive of NZ GST or any equivalent overseas tax, and do not include any programme level discount or additional course-related expenses.

For further information see School of Languages and Cultures .

All LING218 Occurrences

  • LING218-12S2 (C) Semester Two 2012
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