Ling 522

Lexical Semantics 522

Spring 2007

(Here are links to previous incarnations of 522:
Spring 1999, Spring 2002, with Massimo Piattelli-Palmarini, Fall 2004), Spring 2007

Dates, readings:
Aug 24 No class: HH travelling
Aug 26 No class: Hurricane! agh
Aug 31 Introductory lecture (Lecture notes here)
Sept 2 Reading: Fodor from Concepts: Where Cognitive Science Went Wrong 'The demise of definitions: The linguist's tale'
Sept 7 No class: Labor day
Sept 9 Partee, "On Semantics" in Osherson et al, Vol 1
Sept 14 Harley on argument structure (mailed to you already)
Sept. 16 Dowty: "Thematic proto-roles and argument selection."
Sept 21 Hale and Keyser: "On argument structure and the lexical expression of syntactic relations."

Sept 23 Fodor: "Three reasons for not analyzing 'kill' as 'cause to die'"
Kratzer: "Severing the external argument from its verb"
Sept. 28 Rosen: "The syntactic representation of linguistic events."
Sept. 30 Talmy: Chapter 1 of Vol II of Toward a cognitive semantics
This e-version is not printable. If you don't want to read it onscreen, the book is available in the syntax lab (and library). Alternatively, here's a link to the original 1987 version of this paper; the central message is the same, though the later version is fairly expanded in comparison.
Oct 5 Slobin: "The many ways to search for a frog: linguistic typology & the expression of motion events."
Oct 7 Folli, R. and H. Harley (2006) "Waltzing Matilda all over." Studia Linguistica 60.2 1-35.
Oct 12 Gleitman 1: "The structural sources of verb meanings"
(already mailed to you)
Gleitman 2: Lidz, J. and L. Gleitman. 2004 "Argument Structure and the Child's Contribution to Language Learning." TICS 8.4
Bonus! Fischer, Hall, Rackowicz and Gleitman 1994
Oct. 14 Jackendoff, R. 1991. "Parts and boundaries" Cognition 41, 9-45
Oct 19 Bloom: "Possible names: The role of syntax-semantics mappings in the acquisition of nominals."
Oct 21 Zhang, N. 2007. Syntactic properties of numeral classifiers in Chinese. http://ling.auf.net/lingBuzz/000854
Oct 26 Harley on bare nouns and Dayal, V. A Semantics for pseudo-incorporation. Ms. Rutgers University http://mutis.upf.es/~mcnally/ESSLLI/Dayal_2003.pdf
Oct 28 Boskovic, Z. (2008) What will you have, DP or NP? In Proceedings of NELS 37, and Boskovic, Z. (2009). Semantic Correlates of the NP/DP parameter. Proceedings of NELS 39.
Nov 2 Partee, Barbara H. in press. Privative adjectives: subsective plus coercion. In Presuppositions and Discourse, eds. Rainer Bauerle, Uwe Reyle and Thomas Ede Zimmermann. Amsterdam: Elsevier. ms. 2001, final revisions 2007
Nov 4 Kennedy and McNally, 2005. Scale Structure, Degree Modification, and the Semantics of Gradable Predicates, Language - Volume 81, Number 2, June 2005, pp. 345-381
Nov 9 Kennedy and Levin, 2008. Measure of Change: The Adjectival Core of Degree Achievements. In: Adjectives and adverbs: syntax, semantics, and discourse, ed. by Louise McNally, Christopher Kennedy.
Nov 11 Frazier, Clifton and Stolterfohlt, 2008. Scale structure: Processing Minimum Standard and Maximum Standard Scalar Adjectives. Cognition 106.1, pp. 299-324
Nov 16 Gleitman 3: Gleitman L, Gleitman H, Miller, C., Ostrin, R. 1996. "Similar and similar concepts." Cognition 58, 321-376. and Partee, Barbara H. 2008. Symmetry and symmetrical predicates. In Computational Linguistics and Intellectual Technologies: Papers from the International Conference 'DIALOGUE' (2008), ed. A. E. Kibrik et al, 606-611. Moscow: Institut Problem Informatiki
Nov 18
Nov 23 No Class
Nov 25 No Class
Nov 30
Dec 2
Dec 7