Theory of Descriptive Linguistics – Semantics

- The semantic competence of a speaker. Semantic relations: entailment, synonymy, contradiction, presupposition, ambiguity, vagueness / indeterminacy, anomalousness, appropriateness.
- Compositionality: the meaning of a linguistics expression as a function of its parts and their relations. Denotational and representational theory of meaning. The metalanguage of semantics.
- Truth: a posteriori / a priori; necessary / contingent, analytic / synthetic. Truth-conditional denotational semantics.
- Syntax and semantics of sentential logic.
- Syntax and semantics of predicate logic.
- Syntax and semantics of quantifiers. Determining the scope of a quantifier. Interpretation of quantified expressions.
- Syntax and semantics of intensional sentences. Circumstances and context in intensional semantics. Modal logic: epistemic, deontic.
- Syntax and semantics of time.
- Event semantics and aspect.
- From propositional to intended meaning. Semantics as a theory of the logical form of sentences and pragmatics as a theory of rational use of language. Language is systematically used in a way that, in given circumstances, the interpretation of a given utterance contains more than the meaning given by grammatical rules. Psychological pragmatics.
- Speech act theory.
- Cooperative principle and the theory of implicatures.
- Relevance theory.