Note: the following schedule is subject to change.
| Week | Date | Topic | Reading | Assignments |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Tu 1/17 | Course Overview; Requirements | ||
| Th 1/19 | Towards a Theory of Meaning: Truth, truth-conditions, and compositionality; Entailments, presuppositions, and implicatures | Kearns Chap. 1 | HW1 out | |
| 2 | Tu 1/24 | Chierchia & McConnell-Ginet, excerpt from Meaning and Grammar (16-22) | ||
| Th 1/26 | Conversational Implicature: Sentence meaning vs. speaker meaning; Grice’s maxims; Varieties of implicature; Scalar implicature | Levinson §3.0-3.1 (97-109) | HW1 due; HW2 out |
|
| 3 | Tu 1/31 | Levinson §3.1 (109-118) | ||
| Th 2/2 | HW2 due; HW3 out |
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| 4 | Tu 2/7 | Propositional Logic: Meaning at the sentence level; Sentential connectives; Semantic relations amongst sentences | Kearns §2.1-2.2 (24-32) | |
| Th 2/9 | Löbner §4.2-4.3 (62-73) | |||
| 5 | Tu 2/14 | A Case Study: and vs. & | HW3 due | |
| Th 2/16 | Midterm Exam #1 | |||
| 6 | Tu 2/21 | NO CLASS | ||
| Th 2/23 | Presupposition: Tests for backgroundedness; Triggers and projection; Semantic vs. pragmatic presupposition | Levinson §4.0-4.2 (167-185) | HW4 out | |
| 7 | Tu 2/28 | Levinson §4.3 (185-198) | ||
| Th 3/1 | HW4 due; HW5 out |
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| 8 | Tu 3/6 | Predicate Logic: Meaning below the sentence level; Predicates and arguments | Kearns §2.3 (32-39) | |
| Th 3/8 | HW5 due on F 3/9 @ 5pm | |||
| Spring Break (Sa 3/10 – Su 3/18) | ||||
| 9 | Tu 3/20 | Lexical Semantics: Semantic relations amongst words; Varieties of adjectival modifiers; Alternations and implicit arguments | Löbner Chap. 5 | HW6 out |
| Th 3/22 | ||||
| 10 | Tu 3/27 | Pronouns and Quantified NPs | HW6 due | |
| Th 3/29 | Midterm Exam #2 | |||
| 11 | Tu 4/3 | First-Order Predicate Logic The quantifiers all and some; The Aristotelian Square of Opposition; Scope ambiguities | Bach, excerpt fr. Informal Lectures on Formal Semantics (6-17) | |
| Th 4/5 | Kearns Chap. 3 | HW7 out | ||
| 12 | Tu 4/10 | |||
| Th 4/12 | NO CLASS | |||
| 13 | Tu 4/17 | Generalized Quantifiers: Expressive capacity of FOPL; The problem of most; Quantified NPs and compositionality | Kearns §6.1-6.2 (94-99) | HW7 due; HW8 out |
| Th 4/19 | Kearns §6.3-6.7 (99-111) | |||
| 14 | Tu 4/24 | Negative Polarity Items | Kearns §6.9 (118-121) | HW8 due; HW9 out |
| Th 4/26 | Nouns and Verbs: Aspectual classes of verbs; Distributive vs. collective predicates; Plurals and universally quantified NPs | Kearns §8.1-8.3 (156-166) | ||
| 15 | Tu 5/1 | Vendler, “Each and Every, Any and All” | HW9 due | |
| 16 | Tu 5/8 | Final Exam (9-11am) | ||