Note: the following schedule is subject to change.
Week | Date | Topic | Reading | Assignments |
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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) |
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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 |
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4 | Tu 2/5 | Birner §2.2-2.3 (62-73) (skip §2.2.2 (66-68)) |
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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 |
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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) |
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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 |
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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) |
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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) |
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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 |
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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) |