LING 233A: Presupposition and Context Dependence

David Beaver
Department of Linguistics, Stanford University

(Personal Homepage, mail: dib@stanford.edu )

Winter, 2004 - Tuesdays 2:15-5:05, Building: 160 Room: B35


This is the main web page for LING233A, an advanced course on semantics and pragmatics. Students will normally be expected to have taken LING230A, or some equivalent. Undergraduates who gained an A in LING130 are welcome.

The main reference texts used will be my the early chapters of my book on presupposition Beaver (2001), as well as an overview article Beaver (97) which covers some of the same ground more formally. Additional readings will be given on a weekly basis, and students should expect to lead discussion of some papers.

Preliminary Schedule
Date
Topic
 Additional References
1/6
 Prehistory; Diagnostic Tests; Presupposition Triggers; Multivalence and Partiality
Soames, Karttunen & Peters 79, Beaver & Krahmer
1/13
 Cancellation and Filtering; Dynamic Semantics
Gazdar 79, Karttunen 73, Karttunen 74, Heim 83
1/20
 Presupposition and anaphora, accommodation
van der Sandt 92,
Beaver and Zeevat (to appear)
1/27
 Definiteness Heim, Kadmon, Abbott, Szabo
2/3
 Definiteness
Roberts, Roberts, Zeevat
2/10
 Indexicality
Davidson, Zeevat 
2/17
 Topic, Focus and Givenness
Reinhart, Prince, Horn 86, Gundel et al, Hajicova, Partee
2/24
 Presupposition and Focus
Rooth, Geurts and van der Sandt, Beaver, Jaeger, Atlas, Horn

3/2
 Presupposition and Focus,
Taxonomy of Triggers
 Abusch, Simons, Zeevat, Beaver and Zeevat
3/9
 Special presentation:
Klaus von Heusinger

Class notes


Handout 1

Links


David Beaver, Presupposition and Assertion in Dynamic Semantics, 2001. Studies in Logic, Language and Information, CSLI Publications. (Local users: pdf OR html)
David Beaver, Presupposition, 1997. In J. van Benthem and A. ter Meulen (eds.), The Handbook of Logic and Language, Elsevier, pp. 939-1008.
David Beaver and Henk Zeevat, Accommodation, to appear. Ramchand and Reiss (eds.), The Oxford Handbook of Linguistic Interfaces, OUP. (Local users: pdf)
Bart Geurts, B. and Rob van der Sandt, to appear. Interpreting Focus, Theoretical
Linguistics.

David Beaver

2000-03-12