Modular facultative lecture:Semantics 3200-L1-MPF-SMT
The aim of the course is to develop students' skills required in individual work with a scientific monographic volume as well as linguistic encyclopaedias and dictionaries; to present the basic semantic, pragmatic and syntactic terminology; to introduce students to the most important insights of contemporary functionalism. The main topics include: definition of meaning, types of definitions, prototypes and invariants; semantics and pragmatics; P.Grice, and his scheme; London pragmatics and its specific nature; pragmatics in lexical analyses; pragmatics in grammar: instrumental case, pragmatic dimension of the Russian aspect; pragmatic component in the short form of the adjective; pragmatics of the so-called "congruent" and "instrumental" form of Russian predicative names; syntactics: traditional and relational syntax; advantages of relational syntax; valence, predicates, arguments, first-order and higher-order predicates; projection of semantic roles onto formal structures; referential words; problems with defining concrete nouns and personal pronouns; types of reference (concrete, existential, predicative, etc.); application of the referential apparatus in linguistic analyses: grammaticalisation of referential status in world languages; "defective" referential paradigm typical of certain words e.g. evaluative words) referential idiosyncrasies of adverbs such as RARELY, AWLAYS; verb semantics; problems of aspect, tense, voice; words with quantificational meaning; definition and semantic origin of the words: MUCH and LITTLE; types of quantifiers; particles and linking words, and their metatextual features; communicative sentence structure and "internal" communicative structure of words: assertion, presupposition; problem of the so-called "weak meaning", its basic characteristics and explanatory force of the notion.
Type of course
Mode
Course coordinators
Learning outcomes
The student
– Analyses the semantic structure of words
– Knows the main methods of description of meaning
– Analyses communicative structure of words and sentences
– Analyses valence structure of predicates
– Knows types of denotation
– Distinguishes between semantic and pragmatic components of sentence’s meaning
– Distinguishes between text and metatext words
Assessment criteria
Oral tests. Discussion of theoretical issues combined with the analysis of examples
Bibliography
Apresjan Ju., 1974, Leksiczeskaja Semantika, Moskwa, Nauka. (Przekład polski: Semantyka leksykalna. Wrocław, 2000).
Dowty D., 1991, Thematic proto-roles and argument selection // Language, Vol. 67, N 3, 547-619.
Grice, P., 1975, Logic and Conversation, in.: P.Cole, J.Morgan (eds.) Syntax and Semantics, Vol. 3, Speech Acts, New York: Academic Press, 41-58. (Przekład polski: Logika i konwersacja, tłum. J. Wajszczuk, "Przegląd Humanistyczny", 1977, z. 7).
Levinson S., 2000, Presumptive Meanings, Cambridge.
Paduczewa E., 1985, Wyskazywanie i ego soontesennost' s dejstwitel'nost'ju, Moskwa, Nauka 1985. (Przekład polski: Wypowiedź i jej odniesienie do rzeczywistości. Warszawa, PWN, 1992).
Sperber D., D.Wilson, 1986/1995, Relevance, Oxford.
Taylor J., 1995, Linguistic Categorization, Oxford, University Press. (Przekład polski: Kategoryzacja w języku. Kraków 2004).
Tesniere L., 1965, Élements de syntaxe structurale, Paris.
Wierzbicka A., 1972, Semantic Primitives, Frank./am M.
Wierzbicka A., 1980, Lingua Mentalis, Sydney.
Wierzbicka A., 1988, The Semantics of Grammar, Amsterdam, John Benjamins.
Zeldowicz G., 2005, Russkij vid, Toruń, UMK.
Zeldowicz G., 2005, Russkoe predikativnoe imja, Toruń, UMK.
Additional information
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