|
|
LING 055 -- THE MEANING OF LANGUAGE
INSTRUCTOR: Maribel Romero (short for Maria-Isabel Sangüesa Romero)
COURSE DESCRIPTION
This course introduces freshmen to linguistic meaning by emphasizing the empirical and interface aspects of the semantics of natural language. It covers several facets of meaning, ranging from animal communication to complex human syntactico-semantic structures, and providing a selective overview of the relation between semantics and psycholinguistics, cognitive science, learnability theory and computational linguistics.
This course counts as an Arts and Letters distributional course (sector III).
SYLLABUS
Organization:
The course will be based on a series of lectures and readings provided by the instructor. Lectures will be given by the instructor and, occasionally, by an invited guest. Readings will be presented by the students (in average, in teams of two). Both lectures and readings are intended to promote in-class discussion.
Requirements:
The student will have to fulfill the following requirements. In addition to class attendance, readings and class participation, the student will have to:
- complete weekly homework assignments,
- present at least one reading in class, and
- write two short papers, one of which s/he will present at the end of the term at our "mini-conference".
Homeworks are designed to reinforce the comprehension of the lectures and the reading of the week. They may consist of questions about the lectures or reading themselves or they may posit puzzles related to the topic. Homework assignments are due in class at 3pm on the due date. Assignments handed in up to 2 days late will be penalized; assignments handed in later will not be accepted. Assignments have to be work out by each student individually.
Each student has to (co-)present at least one of the assigned readings in class. A clearly outlined, typed handout is required.
Students will team up in groups of 2-3 to write two short papers (7 pages long each). The first paper should be on any of the topics 1-3; the second paper should be on any of the topics 4-9. On the last days of class of the semester, we will hold a mini-conference where each student or student group will present one of the two papers they wrote. A clear, typed handout is required.
Grade:
| Homework assignments (all together) | 35% |
| Reading presentation | 15% |
| Two papers (together) | 40% |
| Class participation | 10% |
See page 46 of your Class of 200x Handbook for University policy on academic integrity.
|