NCHU Course Outline
Course Name (中) 語意學(5111)
(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 2024-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 (9/10) Orientation
Week 2 (9/17) Moon Festival
Week 3 (9/24) Semantics in Linguistics
Week 4 (10/1) Meaning, Thought, and Reality
Week 5 (10/8) Word Meaning
Week 6 (10/15) Sentence Relations and Truth
Week 7 (10/22) Sentence Semantics 1: Situations
Week 8 (10/29) Sentence Semantics 2: Participants
Week 9 (11/5) Context and Inference
Week 10 (11/12) Midterm Exam
Week 11 (11/19) Corpus-based Approach to Semantics: Lin & Chung (2018), Hong (2014)
Week 12 (11/26) Construction Grammar: Chen & Hu (2020), Yeh (2006)
Week 13 (12/3) Metaphor: Fan (2014), Yu (2003)
Week 14 (12/10) Semantic Change: Huang & Chang (1996), Huang & Hsieh (2008)
Week 15 (12/17) Individual Conferences
Week 16 (12/24) Final Project Presentation
Week 17 (12/31) Self-directed Learning (I) (attending a linguistic talk or a linguistic conference and
submitting your reflections)
Week 18 (1/7) Self-directed Learning (II) (Final Project)
Evaluation
Attendance & Assignments 20%
Midterm Exam 35%
Oral presentation 10%
Final project 30%
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
04.Quality Educationinclude experience courses:N
Please respect the intellectual property rights and use the materials legally.Please repsect gender equality.
Update Date, year/month/day:2024/08/28 15:23:39 Printed Date, year/month/day:2024 / 10 / 13
The second-hand book website:http://www.myub.com.tw/