Time and location
Tuesday, 12-14, room 0.21, Ludwigstraße 31
Basic course material
Formal semantics boot camp
By Elizabeth Coppock and Lucas Champollion
Assessment
Term paper. Guidelines. Suggestions.
Deadline: 25/3
Program and material
(the program is tentative; material will be assigned as the course proceeds)
16 Oct. Introduction. What is formal semantics?
Material: Ch. 1 of the textbook + Handout
(if you are not familiar with predicate logic, read also Ch. 3)
23 Oct. Logical toolkit: the typed lambda-calculus.
Material: Ch. 4 of the textbook
30 Oct. Compositional semantics for a basic fragment of English
Material: Ch. 5 up to Section 5.2 (excluded)
06 Nov. Adjectives as modifiers. Quantification.
Material: Ch. 5.2 and 5.3.
13 Nov. Definite descriptions
Material: Ch. 6 + handout
20 Nov. Relative clauses. Pronouns.
Material: Ch. 8
27 Nov. Anaphora and dynamic semantics
Material: Ch. 9 up to and including section 9.3
Dynamic Predicate Logic (up to 3.2; rest is optional)
11 Dec. Intensional semantics
Material: Ch. 10.1 and 10.3
(Optional: Montague 1973)
18 Dec. Modals
Material: handout + Chapter 3 of von Fintel and Heim’s lecture notes
08 Jan. Indexicals
Material: handout + Ch. 10.6 + Kaplan 1979
15 Jan. Presuppositions: the projection problem
Material: handout + Karttunen 1974 + Heim 1983
(both papers can be found in the LSF page of this course)
22 Jan. Questions
Material: slides + Ch. 1-4 of the inquisitive semantics textbook
29 Jan. Questions
Material: Ch. 5 of the inquisitive semantics textbook
5 Feb. Topics for term paper
Material: handout