[_Mike]

I took this course in Winter 2012 with Dr. Kucerova.

Overview of Topics Covered:
Logic; semantic vs. speaker's meaning; type-driven semantics; predicates; modifiers; referring expressions; quantifiers; intensional vs. extensional contexts; tense, aspect, and modality; propositional attitudes; focus; presupposition; speech acts; implicatures


Grading Scheme:
5% - iClicker Participation:
Students must attend 75% of the lectures. This is a pass (5) or fail (0) grade.

25% - Midterm:
The midterm was very fair. It covered all of the topics listed above, up to and including quantifiers. No big surprises. The average was ~ 74%.

30% - Weekly Problem Sets:
I thought the problem sets were more challenging than the midterm, which makes sense because you have a week to complete them. They weren't too difficult, but sometimes I felt that I lost marks where I shouldn't have. Good news is that your lowest problem set is dropped, so you can either not complete one problem set, or in essence "erase" a bad grade. The average for this component of the course was ~ 83%.

40% - Final Exam:
IMO, the exam was very fair. There were no tricks or surprises -- everything that was covered was emphasized in class and should have been mastered. That said, I thought I aced it, but didn't do as well as I thought (though still did well). The average was ~ 60%, though I would have expected higher, as it wasn't too tough of an exam.


Overall:
To be honest, the subject matter wasn't my cup of tea, but certain topics were useful and would be of interest to many linguistics students. What I was not expecting was the prevalence of logic in the course. Many concepts in semantics involve logic, and for that reason, having taken Philosophy 2B03 could be advantageous. But if you're like me and did not take logic, you can still grasp the concepts, though a bit more effort may be required in the beginning of the course. One negative about semantics is that at times, the concepts can be kind of abstract, so you need to do whatever you can to try to master them. I found that asking questions and reading select portions of the textbook were helpful when something didn't click in lecture.

As for the prof, I've had Dr. Kucerova 4 times and I have enjoyed all of her classes. I find that she really cares about her students and she's very fair -- she doesn't set out to trick you, yet her evaluations still have an appropriate level of challenge. Overall, this course was a good elective. The weekly problem sets were quite short so the workload wasn't very demanding and there were many ways to pull up your grade. If you really try to grasp the concepts and clarify your misunderstandings early on, a double-digit grade is definitely acheiveable. I would recommend this course to anyone with a penchant for linguistics, as it is one of the better linguistics courses I've taken.