The course commences with a definition of the goals of a theory of meaning and theories of word meaning. The course is devoted to the concepts and constituents of word

meaning and gradually moves to larger constructions, sentence meaning and utterance meaning (that is, meaning in actual communication). The remaining part of the

course will cover the area of pragmatics. Examples of concepts to be covered in pragmatics include politeness, implicature, speech acts, deixis, and presupposition.

Perhaps these two contemporary writers differ mainly in the sources of their influences. Yet, in spite of Ayi Kwei Armah’s absorption in the ideas of Frantz Fanon, and

Ngugi Wa Thiongo’s alignment with a folksy kind of Marxism, both writers explore the actual, spiritual and moral terrain of African life and history. Both express a concern for African wholeness;

both are disturbed by a history of European exploitation in Africa; both have attacked the notion that economic relationships among people can be meaningfully studied from emotional and moral concerns;

and yet both writers seem convinced that humans cannot produce good work unless they are themselves good. This course will study the complete up-to-date writing of these two writers with a view to

assessing the value of their contribution to modern African thought.

This course provides exposure to English grammar. It includes a study of English word structure and an examination of English phrases, clauses and constructions.

The course will be devoted to issues of verb morphology and argument structure. It will then focus on tense, mood, and aspect systems of English.

It is especially interested in the insights that contemporary theoretical work on English morphology and syntax brings to descriptive grammar.