English Semantics And Pragmatics

The linguistic products of the morphological and syntactic processes in the analysis of a language, i.e. the words and sentences, require both an interpretation in meaning as autonomous units as well as units in use in various contexts. This course provides the opportunity to introduce the study of meaning in general, independent of context of use, as well as the study of meaning in particular contexts of usage for language forms.

COURSE DESCRIPTION

This is a presentation of basic areas and concepts in semantics and pragmatics. Both conceptual and interpersonal meaning are dealt with and the sentence is investigated for meaning both as being independent of contextual use as well as being part of the context in which it is used.

COURSE AIMS

•   Introduce basic concepts in semantics and pragmatics.
  
•   Present the many perspectives/theories about semantics.
  
•   Illustrate the effect of context of use to language forms from a meaning perspective.
  
•   Investigate relationships between sentence structures and sentence meaning.
  

COURSE LEARNING OUTCOMES

•   On completion of this course, students are expected to:
  
•   Show understanding of the basic concepts in semantics and pragmatics.
  
•   Critically assess the viability of different theories of meaning.
  
•   To evaluate the role of context in meaning interpretation.
  
•   To demonstrate the relationships between sentence structure and sentence meaning.