122220 SE Linguistics Seminar / BA Paper (2019W)

The notion of categorization plays a crucial role in any approach to lingusitic analysis, whether descriptive, generative, functional or cognitive: one cannot do linguistics without assuming the existence (in some form or other) of linguistic categories. What linguists disagree about, however, is the nature of those categories. Are they discrete and clear-cut, i.e. is category membership a matter of all or nothing? Or are linguistic categories blurred at the edges, with some members being better examples than others? And if the latter, is it always possible (and desirable) to determine category membership at all? In this course, two basic approaches to categorization – the classical approach and the prototype approach - are compared and tested on categories within the fields of semantics, morphology, syntax and phonology.

The aim of this course is to provide insight into the process of linguistic categorization, i.e. in the way humans use language to categorize objects and events from the external world (‘cat’, ‘love’, ‘art’) and in the way the linguistic items used to describe this world are themselves categorized (as nouns or verbs, as subjects or objects, or as vowels or consonants). Students will be made aware of the kind of criteria used for distinguishing linguistic categories and the problems involved in applying and evaluating these criteria.