Foundations of Linguistic Theory: Categories and Concepts

3–4 credits · Graduate

This course investigates foundational issues and recurrent themes in linguistics related to the notions of category and concept. It will review traditional approaches to these notions and consider how they have shaped more recent developments in our understanding. Possible topics include: the world-to-word mapping, the relation between cognitive and grammatical categories, arbitrariness vs. regularity in the grammatical properties of words, and the nature of lexical categories. The discussion will be grounded in lexical semantics, but students will have an opportunity to examine how categorization figures in other areas of linguistics. Restricted to Linguistics Ph.D. students. Prerequisites: Strong background in Linguistics or permission of instructor.