80-306 Meaning in Language Units: 9.0 Department: Philosophy Prerequisites: Prerequisites: listed or by permission of the instructor , , , , , , Cross-listed: 11-725 , 80-606 Notes: Prerequisites: listed or by permission of the instructor Related URLs: http://www.hss.cmu.edu/philosophy This course provides a survey of the different ways in which meaning is conveyed in spoken languages, and of the different types of meaning which are conveyed. Topics to be covered will include: word meaning (lexical semantics); structure and meaning (compositional semantics); information structure (foregrounding and backgrounding); verb argument structure and thematic roles; intonational meaning and focus; presupposition; context dependency; discourse markers and utterance modifiers; and the role of inference in interpretation. The topics to be addressed bring together a variety of fields: linguistics; philosophy of language; communication studies and rhetoric; and language technologies. The course may be taken as either a 9-unit (80-306) or 12-unit (80-606/11-725) course. The 12-unit course will include an additional component, which will relate the content of the course to issues in computational linguistics, with an emphasis on methods of implementation. (The computational component will be taught by faculty from the Language Technologies Institute.) If there is adequate interest, an alternative additional component focussing on linguistic and philosophical literature may be available. Prerequisites: Any course from the following list, or permission of the instructor: 80-180, 80-280, 80-380, 82-280, 82-383, 85-421, 76-385, 76-386, 76-387, 76-389 or 76-451 or 11-521/721.

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