Linguistics III - Semantics and Pragmatics

Lehrstuhl Semantik (Program in Semantics) is one of the sections of the Institute of Language and Information at the College of Arts and Sciences at the Heinrich Heine University in Düsseldorf. Since 2010, when it was established, it has been led by Prof. Dr. Hana Filip. The teaching and research mission of the Program in Semantics is also supported by several postdoctoral researchers and associates. The Program in Semantics offers courses at the level of B.A. and M.A. studies, which are mainly directed at students who specialize in (one or more of the area(s) of) general linguistics or in computer linguistics, and are also taken by students from other Departments of the Heinrich Heine University. The Program in Semantics accepts Ph.D. students, as well. The study of meanig in natural language is addressed from the point of view of formal (compositional) semantics, and its intersections with pragmatics, logic and syntax. In the course of the last few decades, the study of meaning in natural language has been conducted in the context of several areas of cognitive science, most notably philosophy, psycholinguistics, and computational linguistics, and so the courses and research in the Program of Semantics are also informed by the cutting edge research in these areas. The specific research areas of Prof. Dr. Filip concern aspect, genericity, countability (count/non-count distinction) in both the nominal and verbal domain, interaction of nominal semantics with aspect, (in)definiteness, cross-linguistic and typological semantics, contextually-determined aspects of interpretation, and integration of formal (compositional) semantics with lexical semantics. Much of the current research agenda at the Program of Semantics is currently driven by the project “Individuation of Eventualities and Abstract Things”, which is funded by the German Research Foundation (Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft, DFG), the funding period is 2020-2024.