NCHU Course Outline

Course Name	(中) 語意學(5229)
	(Eng.) Semantics
Offering Dept	Department of Foreign Languages and Literatures
Course Type	Elective	Credits	3	Teacher	Ching-Yu Yang
Department	Department of Foreign Languages and Literatures/Graduate	Language	中/英文	Semester	2026-FALL
Course Description	This course aims to introduce students to concepts and methods used in the field of semantics. Semantics is the branch of Linguistics which analyzes the meanings of linguistic units, such as words and sentences. Topics covered in the course include lexical semantics, event semantics, formal semantics, construction grammar, metaphor, semantic change and corpus-based approach to semantics. By the end of the semester, students will be acquainted with general concepts and approaches of semantics and develop skills required for understanding semantic papers and tackling various puzzling semantic phenomena.
Prerequisites				self-directed learning in the course	Y

Relevance of Course Objectives and Core Learning Outcomes(%)			Teaching and Assessment Methods for Course Objectives
Course Objectives	Competency Indicators	Ratio(%)	Teaching Methods	Assessment Methods
By the end of this course, students will: 1. To have a better understanding of basic concepts and methods of semantics 2. To be familiar with topics often investigated in semantic studies 3. To learn how to investigate data and propose a semantic analysis			topic Discussion/Production Exercises Discussion Lecturing	Written Presentation Attendance Oral Presentation Assignment Quiz
Course Content and Homework/Schedule/Tests Schedule
Week Course Content Week 1 (9/8) Orientation; Semantics in Linguistics Week 2 (9/15) Meaning, Thought, and Reality Week 3 (9/22) Word Meaning Week 4 (9/29) Sentence Relations and Truth Week 5 (10/6) Corpus-based Approach to Semantics Week 6 (10/13) Semantic Change Week 7 (10/20) Metaphor Week 8 (10/27) Lin & Chung (2018), Hong (2014) Week 9 (11/3) Midterm Exam Week 10 (11/10) Invited Talk Week 11 (11/17) Finding Research Questions Week 12 (11/24) Literature Review Week 13 (12/1) Methods and Tools of Doing Semantic Research Week 14 (12/8) Individual Conferences (I) Week 15 (12/15) Final Project Presentation (Poster) Week 16 (12/22) Individual Conferences (II) self-directed learning    01.Participation in professional forums, lectures, and corporate sharing sessions related to industry-government-academia-research exchange activities.    03.Preparing presentations or reports related to industry and academia. attending a linguistic talk or a linguistic conference and submitting your reflections
Evaluation
Attendance & Assignments 20% Midterm Exam 35% Poster presentation 20% Final project 20% Self-directed Learning I 5%
Textbook & other References
Saeed, John I. 2016. Semantics. Oxford, UK: Blackwell. [Fourth edition; original edition published 1997.] Papers: Chen, R., & Hu, X. (2020). “Be Suicided”: A Construction Grammar Analysis of the Innovative bèi Construction in Chinese. Cognitive Semantics, 6(1), 83-106. Fan, J. (2014). Study on Chinese Spatial Metaphors at Lexical Level. Theory & Practice in Language Studies (TPLS), 4(3). Hong, J. F. (2014). Chinese near-synonym study based on the chinese gigaword corpus and the chinese learner corpus. In Chinese Lexical Semantics: 15th Workshop, CLSW 2014, Macao, China, June 9--12, 2014, Revised Selected Papers 15(pp. 329-340). Springer International Publishing. Huang, C. R., & Chang, S. M. (1996). Metaphor, metaphorical extension, and grammaticalization: A study of Mandarin Chinese. Conceptual structure, discourse and language, 201-216. Huang, S. M., & Hsieh, S. C. Y. (2008). Grammaticalization of directional complements in Mandarin Chinese. Language and Linguistics, 9(1), 49-68. Lin, M. C., & Chung, S. F. (2018). A Corpus-Based Lexical Semantic Study of Mandarin Verbs: Guān and Bì. In Chinese Lexical Semantics: 19th Workshop, CLSW 2018, Chiayi, Taiwan, May 26–28, 2018, Revised Selected Papers 19 (pp. 358-371). Springer International Publishing. Yeh, J. C. (2006). On the excessive construction in Mandarin Chinese. Concentric: studies in Linguistics, 32(2), 93-118. Yu, N. (2003). Chinese metaphors of thinking.
Teaching Aids & Teacher's Website
The materials will be available on iLearning 3
Office Hours
Mon. 15:00-17:00
Sustainable Development Goals, SDGs(Link URL)
include experience courses：N

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Update Date, year/month/day：2026/08/31 15:48:29	Printed Date, year/month/day：2026 / 10 / 17
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