Schedule

Handouts are here, linked from the date the handout was distributed.

Week Date Topic Reading Assignments
1 Th 1/16 Course Overview; Requirements
2 Tu 1/21 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 1/23 HW1 out
3 Tu 1/28 Conversational Implicature: Sentence meaning vs. speaker meaning; Grice’s maxims; Varieties of implicature; Scalar implicature Birner §2.1 (40-62)
Th 1/30 HW1 due;
HW2 out
4 Tu 2/4 Birner §2.2-2.3 (62-73)
(skip §2.2.2 (66-68))
Th 2/6 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 2/11 Löbner §4.2-4.3 (62-73)
Th 2/13 A Case Study: and vs. & HW3 due
(F 2/14 @ 5pm)
6 Tu 2/18 Midterm Exam #1
Th 2/20 Presupposition: Triggers and the S-Family test Birner §5.1-5.2 (146-155) HW4 out
7 Tu 2/25 Midterm #1 discussion
Th 2/27 Presupposition (cont.): Given vs. new; Semantic vs. pragmatic presupposition Birner §5.5-5.6 (163-172)
8 Tu 3/4
Th 3/6 Predicate Logic: Meaning below the sentence level; Predicates and arguments Kearns §2.3 (32-39) HW4 due
Spring Break (Sa 3/8 – Su 3/16)
9 Tu 3/18 (cont’d) (cont’d)
Th 3/20 Lexical Semantics: Semantic relations amongst words; Lexical opposites; Varieties of adjectival modifiers Löbner Chap. 5 HW5> out
10 Tu 3/25
Th 3/27 Argument Structure: Predicates and thematic roles; Linking theory; Alternations and implicit arguments Kearns §10.1-10.3 (206-220) HW5 due
11 Tu 4/1 Midterm Exam #2
Th 4/3

 HW6 out
12 Tu 4/8 First-Order Predicate Logic The quantifiers all and some; The Aristotelian Square of Opposition; Scope ambiguities Bach Chap. 1
(focus on 6-17)
Th 4/10 Kearns Chap. 3 HW6 due;
HW7 out
13 Tu 4/15 Generalized Quantifiers: Expressive capacity of FOPL; The problem of most; Restricted quantifier notation Kearns §6.1-6.2 (94-99)
Th 4/17 Generalized Quantifiers (cont.): Quantified NPs and compositionality; Set-based definitions of quantifiers Kearns §6.3-6.7 (99-111) HW7 due; HW8 out
14 Tu 4/22 Negative Polarity Items Kearns §6.9 (118-121)
Th 4/24 NO CLASS
15 Tu 4/29 Nouns and Verbs: Aspectual classes of verbs; Distributive vs. collective predicates; Plurals and universally quantified NPs Kearns §8.1-8.3 (156-166) HW8 due
Th 5/1 Vendler, “Each and Every, Any and All”
16 Tu 5/?? Final Exam (Time TBA)