Aug. 24, 1999

Heidi Harley

phone: 626-3554, email: hharley@u.arizona.edu Office: Douglass 208 Office hours: Tues/Thurs 4:45-5:15 or by appointment Tues/Thurs. 3:30-4:45, Douglass 206

You can get to the lecture notes for a given class by clicking on the appropriate date below.

Course description: Have you ever noticed that if the adage "All that glitters is not gold" were true, the guards at Fort Knox would be out of a job? On one reading, of course. Or wondered about the difference in size between a small dog and a small planet? Or laughed about that poor guy who gets mugged in the U.S. every three seconds? If so, this course is for you.

This course introduces the basic tools that semanticists use to analyze meaning: set theory, functions, compositional interpretation, predicate logic, and lambda abstraction, and explores the interface between syntactic and semantic representations. We will see how our tools are used in semantic treatments of some natural language phenomena, including at least some of: natural language quantifiers, the semantics of DPs, bound variable and other interpretations of pronominals, and tense and modality. As we go along we’ll discuss conceptual, logical and linguistic questions about deep topics like truth, existence and reference.

11 assignments 50% (5% each, drop the lowest grade)

2 quizzes 15% each

1 class presentation 10%

Class participation 10%

Note: Assignments are given out on Thursdays and are due the next class, the Tuesday. We will go over the assignments in class, so late assignments will not be accepted. The course is top-heavy, workwise, so although it may feel like a lot of work initially, keep in mind that there are no final exams or papers, and towards the end of term even the assignments disappear and your only responsibilities are reading and one presentation (of about 30 minutes).

2) Textbooks:

Introduction to Natural Language Semantics, Henriëtte de Swart

Semantics in Generative Grammar, Irene Heim and Angelika Kratzer

additional photocopied readings assigned as we go along

Aug. 24 What’s the subject of formal semantics?

Aug. 26 Compositionality, ambiguity, entailment, presupposition,

implicature, metalanguage

Assignment #1 handed out

Aug. 31 Propositional logic (Assignment #1 due)

Sept. 2 Propositional logic

Assignment #2

Sept. 7 Set theory, functions

Sept. 9 Predicate calculus

Assignment #3

Sept. 14 Predicate calculus

Sept. 16 Predicate calculus

Assignment #4

Sept. 21 Scope

Sept. 23

Quantifier Raising, Quantifying-in (intro)

Sept. 28 Quiz 1

Sept. 30 Quiz review, shortcomings of predicate calculus.

From now on, the lecture notes will be pdf files, obviating the problems of getting the darn figures and symbols to look right, and saving me a bunch o' time. pdf files are readable using Adobe Acrobat Reader, which is free, and avaialable from a link to, e.g., Andrew Carnie's home page. Hope this is ok with everybody.

Oct. 5 Fregean Program, types, characteristic functions

Oct. 7 Schoenfinklization, lambdas

Oct. 12 Theta-roles, argument structure, linking

Oct.14 Review of types and functions, more about argument structure.

Assignment #6

Oct. 19 Nonverbal predicates, Modifiers

Oct. 21 Definite article

Assignment #7

Oct. 26 Homework answers: type-shifting rules

Oct. 28 Relative clauses, variables, predicate abstraction, multiple variables

Assignment #8

Nov. 2 Why quantified expressions aren't type

Nov. 4 Review: how to apply PM, PA

Assignment #9

Nov. 9 Generalized Quantifiers

Questions and answers

Nov. 11 Holiday

Nov. 16 Generalized quantifiers

Nov. 18 Generalized quantifiers

Assignment #10

Nov. 23Quantifier Raising

Questions and answers, round 2

Nov. 25 Thanksgiving! No quiz, after all. :(

Nov. 30 Some more on quantifier raising, perhaps beyond extensional theories

Dec. 2 Presentations: Katie (Gathercole: Evaluating Competing Linguistic Theories with Child Language Data: The case of the Mass-Count Distinction), Bob (Nissenbaum: Derived predicates and the Interpretation of parasitic Gaps), Travis (Russell: Descriptions)

Assignment #11

Dec. 7 Presentations: Kris (May: Logical Form), Erika (Kamp: Two theories about adjectives), Gondy (Conway and Crain: Donkey anaphora in child grammar)