When a human being knows a language, he/she knows that certain sounds are paired with certain meanings. In your syntax classes, you've basically learnt that certain sounds are paired with certain tree structures. The aim of this course is to complete the picture by looking at how those tree structures relate to meanings, and look at why the syntax-centric approach that you have been exposed to has become popular.
Some background readings on set theory, functions and relations (from Partee et al., Mathematical Methods in Linguistics). The first two chapters in particular will probably be useful for the course. The third is less important but may be useful for practising thinking about the concepts of functions and relations.
For lambda notation:
And in case you've tried some exercises from any of these chapters of the Partee et al. book, I've scanned the relevant solutions.
This is subject to change, as stated on the syllabus.
| Date | Topic | Student presenting |
Readings | Notes/Extras |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Mon 26 Jan | Course intro/Big picture | |||
| Wed 28 Jan | Cancelled — Tim in Chicago | |||
| Mon 2 Feb | Big picture/CG Basics |
Steedman 1996, ch.2 (ignore 2.1.3, 2.1.4, 2.1.5; but see p.23 for the $ notation) |
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| Wed 4 Feb | CG Basics | |||
| Mon 9 Feb | Semantics and Quantification in CGs |
General semantics: Steedman 1996, ch.2, pp.12-15 Quantification: Steedman 2000, section 4.4 |
Understanding slashes and lambdas |
|
| Wed 11 Feb | Semantics and Quantification in CGs | |||
| Mon 16 Feb | Semantics and Quantification in CGs | |||
| Wed 18 Feb | Locality restrictions: CG accounts |
Steedman 1996, ch.3 (as a start, try sections 3.4.1 and 3.5.1) |
Overview: Locality in CG Semantics of relative clauses |
|
| Mon 23 Feb | Locality restrictions: CG accounts | |||
| Wed 25 Feb | Locality restrictions: Transformational accounts | Michael | Haegemann 1994 excerpts: Subjacency and ECP | |
| Mon 2 Mar | Cancelled — Snow | |||
| Wed 4 Mar | Locality restrictions: Evidence from Chinese | Ryan | Huang 1982 (mainly sections 1 and 3) |
More on CG: see bottom of this page More Huang on LF Pietroski on Logical Form (section 8) |
| Mon 9 Mar | Interim Summary/CG Wrap up | |||
| Wed 11 Mar | Quantification in Transformational Grammar | Claire | Heim and Kratzer 1998, ch.6, ch.7 (focus on 6.3, 6.4, 7.1, 7.3) | |
| Mon 16 Mar | Spring Break | |||
| Wed 18 Mar | ||||
| Mon 23 Mar | Conservativity of determiners | Josh | Hunter and Conroy 2008 (Easy reading! Written for non-linguists!) | Barwise and Cooper 1981 |
| Wed 25 Mar | Quantification summary | |||
| Mon 30 Mar | Event semantics | Ederlyn | Parsons 1990, ch.1-2 | Pietroski 2005 introduction (mainly section 2) |
| Wed 1 Apr | Event semantics | |||
| Mon 6 Apr | Event semantics | |||
| Wed 8 Apr | Adjunction: X-bar theory | Lyndsay | Carnie 2007, ch.6, ch.7 on DPs | All of Carnie 2007, ch.7 |
| Mon 13 Apr | Adjunction: X-bar theory | Hornstein et al., ch. 6, sections 6.1 to 6.3 | ||
| Wed 15 Apr | Adjunction: Bare phrase structure | |||
| Mon 20 Apr | Paper topic brainstorming | |||
| Wed 22 Apr | Adjunction: Bare phrase structure | Laura | Hornstein and Nunes 2008 (Don't worry about section 5) | Pietroski 2006: conjunction everywhere |
| Mon 27 Apr | Paper topic presentations/discussions | |||
| Wed 29 Apr | Paper topic presentations/discussions | |||
| Mon 4 May | Meaning and verification | Sara |
Hunter et al. 2008 |
Pietroski et al. to appear |
| Wed 6 May | Copying (and perhaps mass/count distinctions) | Hornstein et al., ch. 6, section 6.4 | ||
| Mon 11 May | Wrap up | What we've done (I hope) | ||
| Mon 18 May | Final paper due, 9am | |||
This is beyond what we will talk about in this class, but if you're curious to know more about categorial grammar you might be interesting in reading about "type-logical" categorial grammar (TLG). It differs from the "combinatory" categorial grammar (CCG) that we have studied in taking the mathematical/logical interpretation of slashes very seriously: for example, thinking of A/B meaning "A divided by B" or "B implies A". (If you find yourself confused about logical implication and introduction and elimination rules when reading this stuff, have a look at Partee et al., chapter 6.)
One word of warning: in the TLG literature, the meaning of the backslash is different from its meaning in CCG, so A\B is looking for an A to its left, in order to then make up a B. The idea behind this is that B/A and A\B both have A "underneath" B, because in both cases it's a form of "B divided by A".