This course offers a presentation of the mental lexicon, with particular attention to its internal architecture and to the main models of lexical, morphological and lexico-semantic analysis.
- Elisabetta Jezek (2011). Lessico. Classi di parole, strutture, combinazioni. Seconda edizione. Bologna: il Mulino.
- Maria Koptjevskaja-Tamm (2008). Approaching lexical typology. In Martine Vanhove (ed.), From polysemy to semantic change: Towards a typology of lexical semantic associations, pp. 3-52. Amsterdam: John Benjamins.
- Joost Zwart (2017) Spatial semantics: Modeling the meaning of prepositions. Language and Linguistics Compass. 2017:11:e12241
- Peter Svenonius (2006) ‘The Emergence of Axial Parts,’ in Tromsø Working Papers in Language and Linguistics (Nordlyd) 33.1: 49-77.
- Ludovico Franco (2016). Axial Parts, Phi‐Features and Degrammaticalization: the Case of Italian Presso/Pressi in Diachrony. Transactions of the Philological Society 114.2: 149-170
- Ludovico Franco (2017). L-syntax and phono-symbolism: on the status of ideophones in complex predicates.
The Canadian Journal of Linguistics.
Cambridge University Press
62.2: 243-279
Learning Objectives
The main aim is the acquisition of the principal notions of lexical semantics. A set of topics related to the interface between lexicon and syntax will also be introduced in class. Spatial adpositions and ideophones will be the focus of two case studies.
Prerequisites
Basic knowledge of general linguistics.
Teaching Methods
taught class and (elective) workshops.
Further information
English texts will be introduced and commented in class and will be made available in electronic format.
Type of Assessment
Oral exam.
The final rating will be based on the overall result on a series of questions on the different themes outlined in the class.
Course program
The main topics of the course are: classification of words and types of words existing in cross-linguistic/typological perspective, the principles regulating the combination of words, the semantic properties of the verbal lexicon (classes of verbs; transitivity and valence; thematic structure; Aktionsart; The interactions between the meaning of the words and their syntactic behavior.