LING 260. Meaning in Language.

A hands-on introduction to the strategies that natural languages use to convey meaning. Requiring no previous background in linguistics, the course surveys fundamental properties of word and sentence meaning and their interdependence with context. It provides an overview of the grammatical mechanisms that languages employ to construct the literal meanings of sentences from word meanings, explores how meanings are anchored to real life situations, and analyzes how meanings are routinely enriched in context by language users to convey more than what is literally expressed.