Slovene Language III - Semantics

• Students are introduced to classical and current theoretical achievements in the linguistic field of semantics;
• They are acquinted with important topics like entailment and implication and their impact on sentence interpretation.

The content of this class is related to the content of the rest of the linguistic classes in the program, most notably with Slovenian language- Morphology and Slovenian language – Syntax.

This subject is a continuation of Slovenian language – Syntax. It provides an introduction into modern formal semantic theory. It acquints the students with the fundamental semantic properties of language in general, and Slovenian, in particular. We investigate how syntactic structures are assigned interpretations in a systematic way.

Students acquire a basic overview of classical and current semantic theorizing on:

 theories of meaning,,
 compositionality and the syntax-semantics interface,
 predication
 relations and non-verbal predicates,
 modification,
 definiteness,
 quantification,
 negation and logical connectors
 scope and ambiguity.

Toporišič, Jože. 1982. Nova Slovenska skladnja. Ljubljana : Državna založba Slovenije Catalogue
Toporišič, Jože. 2004. Slovenska slovnica. Založba Obzorja Maribor. Catalogue
Golden, Marija. 1996 – 2001 (več izdaj). O jeziku in jezikoslovju. Ljubljana: UL FF. Catalogue
Kearns, Kate. 2000. Semantics. London: Macmillan Catalogue
Articles from scientific journals like Slavistična revija, Jezik in Slovstvo, Jezikoslovni zapiski, and other home and international linguistic journals.

• Class attendance and active participation during lectures and seminars, 2 homework assignments, • written or oral final examination.

SAUERLAND, Uli, STATEVA, Penka. Two types of vagueness. V: ÉGRÉ, Paul (ur.), KLINEDINST, Nathan (ur.). Vagueness and language use, (Palgrave studies in pragmatics, language and cognition). Hampshire; New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2011, str. 121-145.
STEPANOV, Arthur, STATEVA, Penka. When QR disobeys superiority. Linguist. inq., 2009, vol. 40, no. 1, str. 176-185.
STEPANOV, Arthur, STATEVA, Penka. Successive cyclicity as residual wh-scope marking. Lingua. [Print ed.], dec. 2006, vol. 116, no. 12, str. 2107-2153.

STATEVA, Penka, How different are different degree expressions? MIT Working papers in Linguistics, 2002.