LING 230B: More Semantics and Pragmatics

David Beaver

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

Spring 2000, Monday & Wednesday 1:15-2:45, 90-92Q

General Information

This advanced course on linguistic meaning is a follow-up to LING 230A. Students who have gained an A grade for LING 130 may also take 230B. In this course we cover two of the most influential approaches to semantics, Discourse Representation Theory and Montague Grammar, as well as some subsidiary topics.

My office hours (provisionally) are Monday 2:45-4:15. Assignments are set on Wednesday, due on Wednesday, and returned on Wednesday, but not the same Wednesday. A final paper is due by 5pm 6/4/2000.

Provisional Schedule

Note: references in bold are intended as student presentations.


Date	Topic	Reading
3/29	Introduction, Administrative matters, DRT basics	Gamut 7.4, Kamp and Reyle 1, 2, Kamp
4/3	DRT construction/interpretation	Kamp and Reyle
4/5	NPs in DRT	Kamp and Reyle
4/10	Subordination, Uniqueness	Roberts, Kadmon
4/12	Temporal Anaphora in DRT	Partee, Kamp & Reyle
4/17	SDRT (Lascarides)	Lascarides & Asher
4/19	SDRT (Lascarides)	Lascarides & Asher
4/24	Modal Logic and Extensional Type Theory	Gamut 4.1, 4.2
4/26	IL and 2-sorted Type Theory	Gamut 5
5/1	Categorial Grammar	Gamut 4.3,4.4
5/3	Basic Montague Grammar	Gamut 6.1-6.3.8
5/8	Quantification, Scope and Anaphora	Gamut 6.3.8-6.4
5/10	MPs and NCs (general)	Gamut
5/15	MPs and NCs (delta-star and beyond)	Gamut
5/17	Generalized Quantifiers, Algebras of Individuals	Barwise & Cooper, Link
5/22	Partial Montague Grammar (Muskens)	Muskens
5/24	Type Shifting, NPs cross-linguistically	Partee & Rooth, Chierchia
5/28	NO CLASS	-
5/30	Ambiguity and Underspecification	Copestake et al, Reyle

Evaluation

The course will be evaluated on the basis of homework assignments (15%), a midterm squib (15%), in-class presentations (10%) and a final paper (60%). The final paper may be a summary and critique of the article presneted in class, or may be on an entirely different topic of the student's choosing.

References

(More will be added; articles cited will be made available for duplication.)

Volume 2

Logic, Language and Meaning: Intensional Logic and Logical Grammar

Kamp, Hans and Uwe Reyle, From Discourse to Logic, Kluwer, 1993

Kamp, Hans, "A Theory of Truth and Semantic Representation", in J. Groenendijk, T. Janssen, and M. Stokhof (eds.), Truth, Interpretation and Information, Foris, Dordrecht, 1984.

Heim, Irene, "File Change Semantics and the Familiarity Theory of Definiteness", in Bauerle, Rainer, Christoph Schwarze and Arnim von Stechow (eds.), Meaning, Use, and Interpretation of Language, de Gruyter, 1983.

Kadmon, Nirit, Uniqueness, Linguistics and Philosophy (XXXX).

Partee, Barbara H., Nominal and Temporal Anaphora, Linguistics and Philosophy 7, pp.243-286, 1984

Roberts, Craige, Modal Subordination and Pronominal Anaphora in Discourse, Linguistics and Philosophy 12:683-721, 1989.

Last modified: Thu Mar 26 18:22:49 PST 1998

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