Course description Summer 2020

Word meaning is one of the least well-understood areas of language. Uses of lexical words express concepts, but there is considerable evidence from intuitions and experimental data that the meanings stored in the mental lexicon are much more schematic: in particular, they are neutral between the different senses of polysemous words. Anti-lexicalist views in morphology typically also postulate thin semantics: e.g. in Borer’s well-known framework, roots have no meaning at all. In recent publications Carston has argued that such roots provide the right foundation for theories of lexical pragmatics.

Assuming only general competence in linguistics, this course will bring students up to date with these developments in morphology, experimental and theoretical pragmatics and show them how the convergences described above are being explored in current work.

The following issues will be discussed:

  • Anti-lexicalist morphology
  • ‘Wrong format’ accounts of word meaning
  • The relationship between the linguistic features of lexical items and polysemy

The course will consist of altogether 7 lectures. Allott and Lohndal, representing pragmatics and morphology, respectively, will outline what the core issues are across the disciplines that the course covers. Such an introduction has been immensely helpful to the students in previous summer institutes that they have contributed to organizing, and it seems equally helpful to have such an introduction for this course too. In addition, Falkum, whose work is at the center of the topic for this course, will be giving a lecture. Furthermore, three external lecturers will be contributing lectures: Borer, Carston and Rey. Borer and Carston are world-leading experts on these topics. Rey is a renowned philosopher of mind and cognitive science. He has argued that linguistic theory indicates that we need to distinguish between what combinations of lexical items are allowed by the language faculty and questions of the truth and conceivability of the semantic structures thus constructed. He has worked extensively on related issues in a forthcoming monograph on Chomskyan linguistics, and it would be most beneficial for the students to have him present during the entire course.

Preliminary schedule:

Time

Day 1

Day 2

Day 3

10-12

Nicholas Allott & Terje Lohndal

Hagit Borer

Robyn Carston

12-13

Lunch

13-15

Robyn Carston

Georges Rey

Hagit Borer

1530-1700

 

Ingrid Falkum

 

 

 

DINNER for all

 

Published Mar. 6, 2020 1:33 PM - Last modified Mar. 6, 2020 1:33 PM