Note: the following schedule is subject to change.
| Week | Date | Topic | Reading | Assignments |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | W 1/19 | Course Overview; Requirements | ||
| F 1/21 | Towards a Theory of Meaning: Truth, truth-conditions, and compositionality; Entailment | Kearns Chap. 1 | ||
| 2 | M 1/24 | Chierchia & McConnell-Ginet, excerpt from Meaning and Grammar (16-22) | HW1 out | |
| W 1/26 | Conversational Implicature: Sentence meaning vs. speaker meaning; Grice’s maxims; Varieties of implicature | Levinson §3.0-3.1 (97-109) | ||
| F 1/28 | ||||
| 3 | M 1/31 | Levinson §3.1 (109-118) | HW1 due; HW2 out |
|
| W 2/2 | Kearns §11.1.3 (258-260) | |||
| F 2/4 | Propositional Logic: Meaning at the sentence level; Sentential connectives; Semantic relations amongst sentences | Kearns §2.1-2.2 (25-35) | ||
| 4 | M 2/7 | HW2 due; HW3 out |
||
| W 2/9 | Löbner §4.2-4.3 (62-73) | |||
| F 2/11 | ||||
| 5 | M 2/14 | A Case Study: and vs. & | HW3 due | |
| W 2/16 | Midterm Exam #1 | |||
| F 2/18 | Midterm Discussion | |||
| 6 | Tu 2/22 | NO CLASS | ||
| W 2/23 | Presupposition: Tests for backgroundedness; Triggers and projection; Semantic vs. pragmatic presupposition | Levinson §4.0-4.2 (167-185) | HW4 out | |
| F 2/25 | ||||
| 7 | M 2/28 | Levinson §4.3.1-4.3.2 (185-198) | ||
| W 3/2 | HW4 due; HW5 out |
|||
| F 3/4 | Predicate Logic: Meaning below the sentence level; Predicates and arguments | Kearns §2.3 (35-41) | ||
| 8 | M 3/7 | |||
| W 3/9 | HW5 due Th 3/10 @ 5pm | |||
| F 3/11 | NO CLASS | |||
| Spring Break (Sa 3/12 – Su 3/20) | ||||
| 9 | M 3/21 | Lexical Semantics: Semantic relations amongst words; Varieties of adjectival modifiers; Alternations and implicit arguments | Löbner Chap. 5 (85-97) | HW6 out |
| W 3/23 | ||||
| F 3/25 | HW6 due | |||
| 10 | M 3/28 | Midterm Exam #2 | ||
| W 3/30 | Midterm discussion | |||
| F 4/1 | Pronouns and Quantified NPs | Bach, excerpt fr. Informal Lectures on Formal Semantics (6-17) | ||
| 11 | M 4/4 | First-Order Predicate LogicThe quantifiers all and some; The Aristotelian Square of Opposition; Scope ambiguities | HW7 out | |
| W 4/6 | Kearns §2.4 (41-47) | |||
| F 4/8 | ||||
| 12 | M 4/11 | HW7 due; HW8 out |
||
| W 4/13 | Generalized Quantifiers: Expressive capacity of FOPL; The problem of most; Quantified NPs and compositionality | Kearns §4.1-4.2 (67-72) | ||
| F 4/15 | Kearns §4.3-4.5 (73-85) | |||
| 13 | W 4/20 | HW8 due; HW9 out |
||
| Th 4/21 | Negative Polarity Items | Kearns §4.6 (85-89) | ||
| F 4/22 | ||||
| 14 | M 4/25 | Nouns and Verbs: Aspectual classes of verbs; Distributive vs. collective predicates; Plurals and universally quantified NPs | Dowty, excerpt fr. Word Meaning and Montague Grammar (51-71) | HW9 due; HW10 out |
| W 4/27 | ||||
| F 4/29 | Vendler, “Each and Every, Any and All | |||
| 15 | M 5/2 | HW10 due | ||
| W 5/4 | Final Exam Review; Course Evaluations | |||
| 16 | Tu 5/10 | Final Exam (12:30-2:30pm) | ||