The course aims at providing students with an appreciation of the critical debates that have characterized theories of semantics of natural languages, since the emergence of semantics as a viable sub-discipline of linguistic theory and analysis. It will examine how related disciplines such as philosophy of language and philology have influenced current theories of meaning. Also, classic theories of semantics, which examine meaning in terms of truth conditions, will be compared with more current cognitive theories, which emphasize the conceptual nature of word and sentence meanings.