230201 Linguistic Theory: Semantic Universals (S) (WiSe 2004/2005)

In this class we will be looking at the age-old question of how meaning in words is constituted. In order to avoid circularity in defining meaning (as when saying demand means "to request firmly" and request means "to demand gently") a need has long been felt to find a metalanguage suitable to describe lexical meaning. One way of approaching this has been to resort to semantic components or semantic primitives, into which the meaning of a word may be decomposed. This is done on the assumption that meaning is, in some manner of speaking, componential; that is, smaller units of meaning can be combined to form the meanings associated with different words. All this is usually undertaken under the conditions that this permits us to make an economical characterization of the relations between words, that this is helpful in explaining the syntactic and morphological processes of language, and that these universal building blocks of meaning are part of our psychological endowment as human beings.

We will review some of the more significant attempts at approaching this question in the past half century (e.g. Katz and Postal; Levin and Pinker; Hjelmslev; Jackendoff, and, perhaps most radically, Wierzbicka). But we will try to relate what these linguists have said to particular questions such as the relativity of meaning from language to language, culture-specific lexicons, and the structure of word fields.

Aside from the reading, exercises and class discussion there will be a final exam (required for B.A. students). Students interested in writing a term paper within the framework of this class (singly or in a small team) are encouraged to choose a topic early in order to be able to present a resume of the question they are pursuing, the methods they are implementing, and the problems they may be encountering to the class for discussion.

A reserved reading shelf with basic literature will be provided.

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