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HU Credits:
4
Degree/Cycle:
1st degree (Bachelor)
Responsible Department:
Linguistics
Semester:
1st Semester
Teaching Languages:
Hebrew
Campus:
Mt. Scopus
Course/Module Coordinator:
Malka Rappaport Hovav
Coordinator Office Hours:
Wednesday 9:30,
Teaching Staff:
Prof Malka Rappaporthovav
Course/Module description:
This course deals with theories of word meaning. We begin with a discussion of foundational questions dealing with the essence and nature of word meaning, drawing on literature from linguistics, philosophy and psychology. Among other issues, we deal with questions such as: what is the relation between conceptual categories expressed by words and reality? What do we know about the structure of conceptual categories expressed by words? Then we will focus more on linguistic/grammatical data. We will examine the relation between the semantic content of conceptual categories and the grammatical properties of words which express them. We look at the grammatical properties of nouns, adjectives and verbs and the relation between the prototypical core of these categories and the common linguistic properties of words in these categories.
Course/Module aims:
To become familiar with the basic issues in lexical semantics
Learning outcomes - On successful completion of this module, students should be able to:
Read basic literature in lexical semantics; apply basic terms in lexical semantics and solve problems in lexical semantics
Attendance requirements(%):
100%
Teaching arrangement and method of instruction:
Reading, class discussion, data analysis
Course/Module Content:
Schedule of Topics and Readings
Week 1 October 16 Introduction; goals of a theory of lexical semantics; classical theory of categorization; componential analysis
October 18 Shortcomings of componential analysis; prototypes and family resemblance categories
Reading: Taylor
Week 2 October 23 Principles of categorization
October 25 Principles of categorization
Reading: Taylor; Rosch
Week 3 October 30 Denominal verbs; Artefacts vs. natural kinds
November 1 The nominal domain: Introduction to the mass/count distinction
Reading: excerpt from Nichols
Week 4 November 6 More on mass/count
November 8 More on Mass/count; (in class exercise – Russian and Welsh)
Readings: Wisniewski (excerpts), Doron and Muller (excerpts), Grimm and Levin
Week 5 November 13 Homonymy and polysemy
November 15 Polysemy and the mass/count distinction
Reading: Nunberg and Zaenen
Week 6 November 20 The adjectival domain: property concepts and adjectival meanings
types of adjectives: intersective, subsective; types of antonymy
November 22 Scales and scale structure
Reading: Murphy Chapter 7
Week 7 November 27 Un-prefixation in English
Reading: Horn
November 29 The verbal domain: verbal polysemy and challenges for theories of verb meaning
Reading: Searle
Week 8 December 4
December 8 Verb classes and alternation; Semantic roles
Reading: Levin 1993
Winter vacation
Week 9 December 18 Semantic roles and their drawbacks;
Reading: Cruse; Levin and Rappaport Hovav
December 20 Lexical Decomposition
Reading: Jackendoff
Week 10 December 25 No class
December 27 Lexical decomposition
Week 11 January 1 The dative alternation
January 3 The dative alternation
Reading: Francez
Week 12 January 8 The causative alternation
January 10 The causative alternation
Reading: Rappaport Hovav
Week 13 January 15 Aspectual classes
January 17 Aspectual classes
Reading: Kearns
Required Reading:
Cruse, D. Allan. 1973. Some thoughts on agentivity. Journal of Linguistics 9: 11 – 23.
Doron, Edit and Ana Müller. 2013. The cognitive basis of the mass-count distinction: evidence from bare nouns In Patricia Cabredo Hofherr, Anne Zribi-Hertz (eds.) Crosslinguistic Studies on Noun Phrase Structure and Reference. Brill. 73 – 101.
Frances, Itamar. 2016. Possessors, goals and the classification of ditransitive predicates: Evidence from Hebrew . In Empirical Issues in Syntax and Semantics 6, Olivier Bonami and Atricia Cabredo Hofherr, eds.
Grimm, Scott. and Beth. Levin. 2017. Artifact Nouns: Reference and Countability'', Proceedings of the 47th Annual Meeting of the North East Linguistic Society, Volume 2, 45-64.
Horn, Larry. 2002. Uncovering the un-word; a study in lexical pragmatics. Sophia Linguistica 49.
Jackendoff, Ray. 1983. Semantics and Cognition, MIT Press.
Kearns, Kate. 2000. Aspectual Classes of Events. from Kearns, Kate, Semantics, St. Martins.
Levin, Beth. 1993. English Verb Classes and Alternations, Chicago University Press.
Murphy, Lynne. 2010. Lexical Meaning, Cambridge University Press.
Nichols, Lynn. 2008. Lexical semantic constraints on noun roots and noun borrowability. Studies in Language 32:683–700
Nunberg and Annie Zaenen. 1992. Systematic polysemy in lexicology and lexicography. In Hannu Tommola, Krista Varantola, Tarja Salmi-Tolonen and Jürgen Schopp, eds., Proceedings of Euralex II, University of Tampere, Tampere, Finland.
Rappaport Hovav, Malka and Beth Levin. 2008. The English Dative Alternation: the Case for Verb Sensitivity. Journal of Linguistics 44.1. 129-167
Rosch, Eleanor. 1978. Principles of Categorization. In Rosch and Lloyd, eds. Cognition and Categorization, Erlbaum.
Searle, John R. 1980. The background of meaning. in J. R. Searle, F. Kiefer, and M. Bierwisch (eds.), Speech Act Theory and Pragmatics, 221-232.
Van Valin, Robert. D., Jr. and David. P. Wilkins. 1996. The case for ‘Eeffector’: case roles, agents, and agency revisited,” in M. Shibatani and S. A. Thompson, (eds.). 1996. Grammatical Constructions, Clarendon Press, Oxford. 289–322.
Edward Wisniewski. 2010. On Using Count Nouns, Mass Nouns, and Pluralia Tantum: What Counts? In: Francis Jeffry Pelletier, ed., Kinds, Things, and Stuff. Oxford University Press.
Additional Reading Material:
-
Grading Scheme :
Submission assignments during the semester: Exercises / Essays / Audits / Reports / Forum / Simulation / others 90 %
Attendance / Participation in Field Excursion 10 %
Additional information:
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