This course is concerned with one of the fundamental issues in linguistics: meaning. It looks at meanings of individual words and the meanings they engender in combination (semantics), as well as how language-users construct meaning in communication (pragmatics). Fundamental concepts and issues introduced may include sense and reference, semantic features, lexical relations, polysemy, non/literality, presupposition, inference, implicature, speech acts and politeness.

CILO-1: Recognize and discuss the basic differences between semantic and pragmatic meanings. CILO-2: Be aware of and appreciate the various debates in the issue of linguistic meaning. CILO-3: Evaluate the merits and demerits of various approaches to describing linguistic meaning. CILO-4: Gain basic knowledge in various approaches to semantic and pragmatic analysis. CILO-5: Carry out basic semantic and/or pragmatic analyses of linguistic expressions using the said approaches.