A cartoon illustration of structural ambiguity. (Image courtesy of MIT OpenCourseWare.)
Instructor(s)
Prof. Kai von Fintel
MIT Course Number
24.903 / 24.933
As Taught In
Spring 2005
Level
Undergraduate
Course Description
Course Description
This course gives an introduction to the science of linguistic meaning. There are two branches to this discipline: semantics, the study of conventional, "compositional meaning", and pragmatics, the study of interactional meaning. There are other contributaries: philosophy, logic, syntax, and psychology. We will try to give you an understanding of the concepts of semantics and pragmatics and of some of the technical tools that we use.