LING 040. Semantics (W)

(Cross-listed as PHIL 040)
This course is an introduction to the field of natural language semantics, a branch of linguistics concerned with meaning. We will aim to understand how the meaning of complex expressions arises through the meaning of their parts and the way these parts are combined in the syntax. Our approach to understanding these combinatorial phenomena will be rooted in truth-conditional, model-theoretic semantics, following Gottlob Frege’s insights. Frege conjectured that semantic composition involves a ‘saturation’ of an ‘unsaturated’ meaning component and modeled this ‘saturation’ using mathematical functions. Frege’s treatment of semantic composition as functional application will serve as our guiding principle, and for this, we will learn some descriptive tools, including set theory, propositional and predicate logic, lambda-calculus, and type theory. We will explore how these formal tools apply (and do not apply) to natural languages and discuss how we can achieve a more comprehensive understanding of meaning.

This course counts for distribution in humanities under the philosophy rubric and in social sciences under the linguistics rubric.
Social sciences.
Writing course.
1 credit.
Eligible for COGS.
Fall 2025. Sağ.
Spring 2026. Owusu.
Fall 2026. Sağ.
Spring 2027. Owusu.
Catalog chapter: Linguistics
Department website: http://www.swarthmore.edu/linguistics

Access the class schedule to search for sections.