Posted: Mar 20, 2014 4:35 pm
seeker
There isn't a simple answer to your questions. I used to teach semantics, and most courses are fairly complex, as there are so many aspects of it, and so many different theories of meaning and pragmatics, and also, of course, there are big overlaps with philosophy. Thus, discussions of reference might be avoided in some linguistics courses, which didn't want to become too philosophical.
One common approach is to separate word meaning, sentence meaning, and pragmatics, that is meaning in context (utterances). But there is still a lot of choice here - for example, word meaning might cover structuralist theories, such as semantic fields, and also the differences between sense and reference.
Sentence (and utterance) meaning becomes very complex - you might cover presuppositions, implicature, quantifiers, deixis, negation, metaphor, and so on. Also, the way meanings are created in whole texts, a very complex area.
Pragmatics might cover intentions, co-operation, speech acts, and the use of speech and language in different situations.
I'm not sure which text-books are used today, as I am well out of it, but without doubt there will be a number which will be worth reading.
There isn't a simple answer to your questions. I used to teach semantics, and most courses are fairly complex, as there are so many aspects of it, and so many different theories of meaning and pragmatics, and also, of course, there are big overlaps with philosophy. Thus, discussions of reference might be avoided in some linguistics courses, which didn't want to become too philosophical.
One common approach is to separate word meaning, sentence meaning, and pragmatics, that is meaning in context (utterances). But there is still a lot of choice here - for example, word meaning might cover structuralist theories, such as semantic fields, and also the differences between sense and reference.
Sentence (and utterance) meaning becomes very complex - you might cover presuppositions, implicature, quantifiers, deixis, negation, metaphor, and so on. Also, the way meanings are created in whole texts, a very complex area.
Pragmatics might cover intentions, co-operation, speech acts, and the use of speech and language in different situations.
I'm not sure which text-books are used today, as I am well out of it, but without doubt there will be a number which will be worth reading.