This course is the second of the three parts of our graduate introduction to semantics. The others are 24.970 Introduction to Semantics and 24.954 Pragmatics in Linguistic Theory. Like the other courses, this one is not meant as an overview of the field and its current developments. Our aim is to help you to develop the ability for semantic analysis, and we think that exploring a few topics in detail together with hands-on practical work is more effective than offering a bird’s-eye view of everything. Once you have gained some experience in doing semantic analysis, reading around in the many recent handbooks and in current issues of major journals and attending our seminars and colloquia will give you all you need to prosper. Because we want to focus, we need to make difficult choices as to which topics to cover.
This year, we will focus on topics having to do with modality, conditionals, tense, and aspect.

This book provides an introduction to the study of meaning in human language, from a linguistic perspective. It covers a fairly broad range of topics, including lexical semantics, compositional semantics, and pragmatics. The chapters are organized into six units: (1) Foundational concepts; (2) Word meanings; (3) Implicature (including indirect speech acts); (4) Compositional semantics; (5) Modals, conditionals, and causation; (6) Tense & aspect.

This class investigates the theory, method, and form of collage. It studies not only the historical precedents for collage and their physical attributes, but the psychology and process that plays a part in the making of them. The class was broken into three parts, changing scales and methods each time, to introduce and study the rigor by which decisions were made in relation to the collage. The class was less about the making of art than the study of the processes by which art is made.

This course explores languages that have been deliberately constructed, including Esperanto, Klingon, and Tolkien’s Elvish. Students construct their own languages while considering the basic linguistic characteristics of various languages of the world. Through regular assignments, students describe the phonology, morphology, syntax, semantics, and writing system of their constructed language. The final assignment is a grammatical description of the new language.

A survey of a range of disciplines whose practitioners are venturing into the new field of digital rhetoric, examining the history of the ways digital and networked technologies inhabit and shape traditional rhetorical practices as well as considering new rhetorics made possible by current technologies

This course is designed to help students understand the aspects of linguistic principles and processes that underlie oral and written language proficiency, and how this knowledge is relevant K-12 instruction. Emphasis is on a thorough, research-based understanding of phonology, morphology, orthography, semantics, syntax, and pragmatics. Students learn ways to use this information to support literacy and oral language development for elementary and secondary school students. Issues of linguistic diversity and second language learning are addressed.

This course offers a comprehensive introduction to the field of program analysis. It covers some of the major forms of program analysis including Type Checking, Abstract Interpretation and Model Checking. For each of these, the course covers the underlying theories as well as modern techniques and applications.

The German Frame-semantic Online Lexicon (G-FOL) is a prototype of a new kind of pedagogical dictionary. The goal is to help students learn how words are used in modern-day German. This online resource is different from traditional dictionaries and textbooks because it is based on the German FrameNet at the University of Texas at Austin, a digital archive of how German words are used in real life contexts. As such, students can easily access up-to-date information about the syntactic, semantic, and pragmatic contexts in which a German word appears. In addition, each lexical entry provides information about a word’s register, frequency, and related meanings. Thanks to G-FOL’s web-based architecture, the lexicon easily links to other pedagogical resources in digital format and can be updated with new words or new usages of existing words.

This grammar provides the first comprehensive grammatical description of Moloko, a Chadic language spoken by about 10,000 speakers in northern Cameroon. The grammar was developed from hours and years that the authors spent at friends’ houses hearing and recording stories, hours spent listening to the tapes and transcribing the stories, then translating them and studying the language through them. Time was spent together and with others speaking the language and talking about it, translating resources and talking to Moloko people about them. Grammar and phonology discoveries were made in the office, in the fields while working, and at gatherings. In the process, the four authors have become more and more passionate about the Moloko language and are eager to share their knowledge about it with others.

forall x is an introduction to sentential logic and first-order predicate logic with identity, logical systems that significantly influenced twentieth-century analytic philosophy. After working through the material in this book, a student should be able to understand most quantified expressions that arise in their philosophical reading.

This books treats symbolization, formal semantics, and proof theory for each language. The discussion of formal semantics is more direct than in many introductory texts. Although forall x does not contain proofs of soundness and completeness, it lays the groundwork for understanding why these are things that need to be proven.

This class provides some answers to basic questions about the nature of human language. Throughout the course, we examine a number of ways in which human language is a complex but law-governed mental system. Much of the class is devoted to studying some core aspects of this system in detail; we also spend individual classes discussing a number of other issues, including how language is acquired, how languages change over time, language endangerment, and others.

This course studies what is language and what does knowledge of a language consist of. It asks how do children learn languages and is language unique to humans; why are there many languages; how do languages change; is any language or dialect superior to another; and how are speech and writing related. Context for these and similar questions is provided by basic examination of internal organization of sentences, words, and sound systems. No prior training in linguistics is assumed.

Hands-on experience designing, conducting, analyzing, and presenting experiments on the structure and processing of human language. Focuses on constructing, conducting, analyzing, and presenting an original and independent experimental project of publishable quality. Develops skills in reading and writing scientific research reports in cognitive science, including evaluating the methods section of a published paper, reading and understanding graphical displays and statistical claims about data, and evaluating theoretical claims based on experimental data. Instruction and practice in oral and written communication provided.

This course focuses on the process by which native speakers of a language acquire the ability to speak and understand that language. It covers some of the major results in the study of first-language acquisition, concentrating on morpho-syntax, semantics, and pragmatics. The findings primarily come from English, but cross-linguistic differences in the phenomena of interest and corresponding differences in acquisition patterns are considered where appropriate. Of interest throughout is how these developmental data inform linguistic theory and/or learnability theory.

6.863 is a laboratory-oriented course on the theory and practice of building computer systems for human language processing, with an emphasis on the linguistic, cognitive, and engineering foundations for understanding their design.

The course introduces formal theories of context-dependency, presupposition, implicature, context-change, focus and topic. Special emphasis is on the division of labor between semantics and pragmatics. It also covers applications to the analysis of quantification, definiteness, presupposition projection, conditionals and modality, anaphora, questions and answers.

Psychology is designed to meet scope and sequence requirements for the single-semester introduction to psychology course. The book offers a comprehensive treatment of core concepts, grounded in both classic studies and current and emerging research. The text also includes coverage of the DSM-5 in examinations of psychological disorders. Psychology incorporates discussions that reflect the diversity within the discipline, as well as the diversity of cultures and communities across the globe.Senior Contributing AuthorsRose M. Spielman, Formerly of Quinnipiac UniversityContributing AuthorsKathryn Dumper, Bainbridge State CollegeWilliam Jenkins, Mercer UniversityArlene Lacombe, Saint Joseph's UniversityMarilyn Lovett, Livingstone CollegeMarion Perlmutter, University of Michigan

By the end of this section, you will be able to:Define language and demonstrate familiarity with the components of languageUnderstand how the use of language developsExplain the relationship between language and thinking