Schedule

Note: the following schedule is subject to change.

Week Date Topic Reading Assignments
1 Th 1/17 Course Overview; Requirements
2 Tu 1/22 Towards a Theory of Meaning: Truth, truth-conditions, and compositionality; Entailments, presuppositions, and implicatures Kearns Chap. 1;
Chierchia & McConnell-Ginet, excerpt from Meaning and Grammar (16-22)
Th 1/24 HW1 out
3 Tu 1/29 Conversational Implicature: Sentence meaning vs. speaker meaning; Grice’s maxims; Varieties of implicature; Scalar implicature Birner §2.1 (40-62)
Th 1/31 HW1 due;
HW2 out
4 Tu 2/5 Birner §2.2-2.3 (62-73)
(skip §2.2.2 (66-68))
Th 2/7 Propositional Logic: Meaning at the sentence level; Sentential connectives; Semantic relations amongst sentences Kearns §2.1-2.2 (24-32) HW2 due;
HW3 out
5 Tu 2/12 Löbner §4.2-4.3 (62-73)
Th 2/14 A Case Study: and vs. & HW3 due
(F 2/15 @ 5pm)
6 Tu 2/19 Midterm Exam #1
Th 2/21 Presupposition: Triggers and the S-Family test Birner §5.1-5.2 (146-155) HW4 out
7 Tu 2/26 NO CLASS
Th 2/28 Presupposition (cont.): Given vs. new; Semantic vs. pragmatic presupposition Birner §5.5-5.6 (163-172) HW4 due;
HW5 out
8 Tu 3/5 Predicate Logic: Meaning below the sentence level; Predicates and arguments Kearns §2.3 (32-39)
Th 3/7 HW5 due
(F 3/8 @ 5pm)
Spring Break (Sa 3/9 – Su 3/17)
9 Tu 3/19 Lexical Semantics: Semantic relations amongst words; Lexical opposites; Varieties of adjectival modifiers Löbner Chap. 5
Th 3/21 HW6 out
10 Tu 3/26 Argument Structure: Predicates and thematic roles; Linking theory; Alternations and implicit arguments Kearns §10.1-10.3 (206-220)
Th 3/28 HW6 due
11 Tu 4/2 Midterm Exam #2
Th 4/4 First-Order Predicate Logic The quantifiers all and some; The Aristotelian Square of Opposition; Scope ambiguities Bach Chap. 1
(focus on 6-17)
12 Tu 4/9 Kearns Chap. 3 HW7 out
Th 4/11
13 Tu 4/16 Generalized Quantifiers: Expressive capacity of FOPL; The problem of most; Restricted quantifier notation Kearns §6.1-6.2 (94-99) HW7 due;
HW8 out
Th 4/18 NO CLASS
14 Tu 4/23 Generalized Quantifiers (cont.): Quantified NPs and compositionality; Set-based definitions of quantifiers Kearns §6.3-6.7 (99-111)
Th 4/25 Negative Polarity Items Kearns §6.9 (118-121) HW8 due;
HW9 out
15 Tu 4/30 Nouns and Verbs: Aspectual classes of verbs; Distributive vs. collective predicates; Plurals and universally quantified NPs Kearns §8.1-8.3 (156-166)
Th 5/2 Vendler, “Each and Every, Any and All” HW9 due
16 Tu 5/7 Final Exam (12:30-2:30pm)