The first four lectures revolve around field semantics – research methods for studying linguistic meaning under fieldwork conditions. The remaining six lectures deal with semantic typology, the crosslinguistic study of how humans communicate about the world in terms of the meaning categories of the languages they speak. Together, the lectures present one of the first comprehensive introductions to either topic. A thread pervading the lectures involves the following questions: how much do languages vary in how they represent reality? To what extent does this variation reflect cultural differences? To what extent does it influence the nonverbal thinking of the speakers?
Jürgen Bohnemeyer (Ph.D., Tilburg University, 1998; Max Planck Institute for Psycholinguistics, 1998-2003) currently holds the rank of Associate Professor of Linguistics at the University at Buffalo. He is the author of The grammar of time reference in Yukatek Maya (2002).
These lectures are directed at students and scholars in linguistics and neighboring disciplines with an interest in linguistic meaning especially as it intersects with culture and nonverbal cognition.