120133 SE Linguistics Seminar (historical & descriptive linguistics): Lexical semantics and pragmatics (2008W)

Lexical semantics deals with the description of lexical meanings on the basis of lexical relations present in sets like flower: tulip, rose, daffodil, violet¿ size: big, small; sex: male : female, etc., called lexical fields. It also investigates relations such as bite : tooth, kick : foot, kill : die, etc. (called lexical solidarities). The latter are also the basis of semantic implications, e.g. If A killed B, B is dead. Pragmatics deals with the use of language in concrete situations, i.e. it will take into consideration connotations present in He is very married, Peter called John a Republican, and then John insulted Peter. The two domains are not strictly separable but interact with each other. Topics for seminar papers will include: paradigmatic and syntagmatic lexical relations, presupposition, syntactic-semantic roles, connotations, semantic features and lexical decomposition, implicatures, speech acts