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Levels of Linguistic Analysis II: Lexical Semantics

Welcome

Welcome to Levels of Linguistic Analysis II: Lexical Semantics! On this page, I will condense all presentation materials, summaries of our classes, and also the weekly homework assignments.

To get started, you can find the syllabus below with everything important accessible via links. Each homework assignment is to be prepared for the following week (#1 for week 2 …). I also discuss the design of the course under workflow.

You can download this page as html ctrl+s and view it in your Browser offline in case you don’t have internet connection. If you really need a print of individual sections, this website is fairly well optimized for printing via your browser’s print option ctrl+p.

Syllabus

Date Topic Main Reading Homework1
17.10. 1 Introduction #1
24.10. 2 Word classes Stefanowitsch (2020) ch. 1-2 #2
31.10. 3 Form and meaning Stefanowitsch (2020) ch. 3 #3
07.11. 4 The Lexicon Geeraerts (2015) #4
14.11. 5 Antonymy Justeson & Katz (1991) #5
21.11. 6 Synonymy Kennedy (2003) #6
28.11. 7 Metaphor and metonymy Deignan (2005) #7
05.12. 8 Derivation Kaunisto (1999) #8
12.12. 9 Lexical Patterns Altenberg & Granger (2001) #9
02.01 10 Lexical Bundles Biber, Conrad & Cortes (2004) #10
09.01. 11 Constructions Stefanowitsch & Gries (2009) #11
16.01. 12 Productivity Plag, Dalton-Puffer & Baayen (1999) #12
23.01. 13 Morphosyntax Rosenbach (2003) #13
30.01. 14 Project Day 1
06.02. 15 Project Day 2
13.02. 16 Final Discussion

Contact

Course Requirements

  • Enrollment on Campus Management (CM)
  • successfully participated in an introductory class to linguistics

A basic grasp of linguistic concepts and a basic knowledge of linguistic terminology is required. If this is the first linguistics seminar for your, please contact me.

  • Regular participation: Stay in touch, do homework, participate in group activity.
  • Lecture course: regular and active participation is also required in the lecture course Levels of Linguistic Analysis I. It is not offered this semester, so ideally you take it in winter.

Weekly workflow

These are basic components of our seminar:

  1. Preparation
    • Read the paper of the week
  2. Class
    • My weekly presentations
    • Interactive and group exercises
  3. Follow up
    • Do Homework
    • Read Follow-ups

I. This Website

This website is going to be the main hub for information. It will essentially replace most PDF materials you are familiar with from regular semesters, such as presentation slides. You will find all course information, the syllabus, bibliography, and tips and tricks, which you can easily navigate with the sidebar.

All homework will be published here. I’d recommend you bookmark the syllabus, because everything that is relevant weekly is linked from there.

The main sections will replace presentation slides. They will be written in the form of short articles that pick up some major points that came up during class. They also might go a bit deeper into certain subjects.

My aim is to make the experience as integrated as possible and tell the story of our class in a coherent way throughout the semesters. Inform me about broken or misdirected links. :)

Blackboard

I am not planning to use Blackboard at all this semester. I like responsive websites that work on every browser, and aren’t built with expensive closed source software. Being able to link content directly is also a plus.

II. Self-study

There is a preparatory reading every week. I will build on it, and assume that you are familiar with it. Reading academic literature is one of the major corner stones of this (and most other) seminars. Most of the times, there will also be a special homework task posted here.

In fact, the bulk of the work, you have to do by yourself. This is nothing special about an online semester. If you look up what an ECTS credit represents, you will find that it is work load measured in time. If you then subtract the little time we use during live sessions, you’ll realize how much time is left for you to prepare for every week, study the readings, discover your own further readings, do research for your own project, or practice. Ideally, you should have read even more than just the recommended literature by the end of the seminar. Reality check if you find yourself skipping entire readings or procrastinating homework assignments.