Visiting Professor, RGGU, Feb-May 2003

Fridays, 14 Feb – 30 May (Lecture 2-3:20pm, Seminar 3:40-5pm, Room 906)

LINK TO JOHN BAILYN'S MGU SYNTAX COURSE WEB PAGE:  NEW URL:

http://www.ic.sunysb.edu/Clubs/nels/jbailyn/MGU.html

I. The languages of the course:

Lectures, handouts, and text mostly in English. Seminar sessions and other discussion in Russian and/or English. Homework may be done in Russian.

II. Reading materials: Handouts (mostly in English) and some xeroxed articles (some in English, some in Russian) will be given to all enrolled students.

III. Structure of Course and Requirements: Every week there will be one lecture and one seminar. There will be homework assignments approximately every two weeks. The seminars will be an opportunity to ask questions, to discuss examples, to get help with homework assignments, and to discuss the results of past homework assignments and readings.

Requirements: Attendance, assigned reading, and written homework assignments.

Requirements to receive a 5: Very good attendance, at least 80% of lectures and seminars. Written homework assignments completed on time and in a satisfactory manner. Not more than three assignments late; no assignments missing.

Requirements to receive a 4: Good attendance, at least 60% of lectures and seminars. Most written homework assignments completed on time and in a satisfactory manner. Not more than four assignments late; not more than two assignments missing.

Requirements for zachet:  Same as requirements for a 4.

If more than two assignments are missing, you will not receive a zachet or a grade higher than a 3 unless you do some extra work of a high quality; see me if you wish to negotiate alternative assignments in place of some written homework.

Lecture 1. Feb.14 Basic ideas of formal semantics. Compositionality. The relation between semantics and syntax. Example: Syntax and model-theoretic semantics of predicate logic. Anketa. Reading: R. Larson (1995) Semantics. Chapter 12 in L. Gleitman and M.Liberman, eds. An Invitation to Cognitive Science, Vol I: Language. (D. Osherson, general editor), pp 361-380.

Seminar [same day, after lecture; not listed below.]

Lecture 2. Feb. 21*. Lambda abstraction and the semantics of noun phrases. Ambiguity and logical form. Quantifier scope. Generalized quantifiers (beginning), lexicon and grammar (beginning). Homework #1, Lambda exercises. Due March 7.

[*Note: no "seminar" February 21; class will end somewhat early so that everyone can attend Igor Boguslavsky’s lecture at 4pm in Apresjan’s seminar. Attendance strongly recommended.]

Lecture 3. February 28. Applications of the lambda calculus to linguistic examples. Conjunction and semantic types. Relative clauses. Phrasal negation.

Lecture 4. March 7. Formal semantics and the lexicon. Meaning postulates and the lexicon. Meaning postulates as a formalization of the content of semantic components of lexical meaning. Meaning postulates and the integration of formal semantics and Moscow school lexical semantics. Mel’chuk, Apresjan, and Moscow school lexical semantics. Borschev and Partee on the potential use of meaning postulates to combine the advantages of the explicitness of formal semantics with the "natural" metalanguage of Moscow school lexical semantics. Natural language metaphysics (Bach) and naivnaja kartina mira (Apresjan). Complete vs. partial reducibility of lexical meaning. Some properties of adjective meanings. Reading: (part of) Partee (1995) Lexical semantics and compositionality. Chapter 11 in L. Gleitman and M.Liberman, eds. An Invitation to Cognitive Science, Vol I: Language. (D. Osherson, general editor), pp. 311-360. Homework #2: Russian adjectives. Due March 21.    Optional reading: Partee, Barbara H. in press. Privative adjectives: subsective plus coercion. To appear in Presuppositions and Discourse, eds. R. Bäuerle, U. Reyle and T. E. Zimmermann. Amsterdam: Elsevier.

Lecture 5. March 21. Noun phrases and generalized quantifiers. Weak and strong determiners and existential sentences.  Reading: (1) R. Larson (1995) Semantics. (from Lecture 1. Read it again!) (2): Partee, Barbara H., Alice ter Meulen, and Robert E. Wall. 1990. Mathematical Methods in Linguistics. Dordrecht: Kluwer Academic Publishers. Chapter 14: Generalized Quantifiers.

Lecture 6. March 28. Noun phrase interpretation and type-shifting principles. Noun phrases as referential expressions, predicative expressions, quantificational expressions. The interpretation of NPs in languages (like Russian) without articles. Reading: Barbara H. Partee (1986) "Noun phrase interpretation and type-shifting principles", in J. Groenendijk, D. de Jongh, and M. Stokhof, eds., Studies in Discourse Representation Theory and the Theory of Generalized Quantifiers, GRASS 8, Foris, Dordrecht, 115-143. Homework #3: Quantification and properties of Russian determiners. Due April 11.

Lecture 7. April 4. Semantics and pragmatics. Presuppositions, conversational implicatures, conventional implicatures. Illustrations involving negation and definite descriptions, inclusive and exclusive or, restrictive and non-restrictive relative clauses. Readings: (1) Paducheva, Elena (1985), Vyskazyvanie i ego sootnesennost’ s dejstvitel’nost’ju. (Referencial’nye aspekty semantiki mestoimenij.) Chapter III: Ponjatie presumcii. (pp 48-78) (2) Chierchia and McConnell-Ginet (1990), Meaning and Grammar: An Introduction to Semantics. Chapter 4: Speaking, Meaning, and Doing, Section 4.5: Conversational Implicatures (pp. 187 – 203)

Lecture 8. April 11. Negation and Negative Polarity Items. "Downward monotone" functions and the distribution of "negative polarity" items (any, ever, at all; Russian vovse). Discussion of Asya Pereltsvaig's proposals about the distribution of Russian ni-, -libo, and -nibud' words. Reading: (1) (review from Lecture 1): R. Larson (1995) Semantics. Chapter 12 in L. Gleitman and M.Liberman, eds. An Invitation to Cognitive Science, Vol I: Language. (D. Osherson, general editor), pp 361-380. (2) Pereltsvaig, Asya. 2000. Monotonicity-based vs. veridicality-based approaches to negative polarity: evidence from Russian. In FASL 8: The Philadelphia Meeting 1999, 328-346.    Homework #4: Properties of Russian determiners and negative polarity items. Due April 25.

Lecture 9. April 18. Genitive of Negation 1. Genitive of negation in Russian existential sentences. Introduction to some of the semantic and syntactic puzzles raised by the Gen Neg construction. The role of meaning postulates and other "axioms" in an integrated "theory" of a text. The "semantic bleaching" of intransitive verbs. Genitive of negation and scope of negation. Reading: (1) Borschev and Partee 1998. Bytijnye predloženija i otricanie v russkom jazyke: semantika i kommunika-tivnaja struktura. In Dialogue '98, ed. A.S. Narin'yani, 173-182. (2) Partee and Borschev 2002.  Genitive of negation and scope of negation in Russian existential sentences. In FASL 10, ed. Jindrich Toman, 181-200. Supplementary readings: (i) Adam Werle (2002) A typology of negative indefinites. CLS 38 Parasession on Negation and Polarity. (ii) Adam Werle (2001) A typology of negative indefinites (longer version), Generals Paper, UMass, Amherst. 

Lecture April 25 moved to 12:10 so that everyone can go hear Apresjan in Arutjunova's seminar.

Lecture 10. April 25. Genitive of negation 2. Looking at Russian Subject Gen Neg in the context of theories of existential sentences. "Perspective structure"; temporal and locative perspective. Special problems with byt'. Reading: Borschev, Vladimir, and Barbara H. Partee. 2002a. O semantike bytijnyx predlozhenij. Semiotika i Informatika 37 (Moscow:VINITI):59-78. Optional readings by Babby, Paducheva, Bailyn. Homework #5: There will be some freedom of choice of topics for this homework. Due May 23.

May 2 is a holiday. New time for Lecture 11: 5pm on May 5.

Lecture 11. May 5. Unaccusativity. Most Western syntacticians argue that Subject Gen Neg and Object Gen Neg are a single construction; the unifying key is the Unaccusative Hypothesis: "subject" NPs that can undergo Gen Neg are all "really" objects. We will look at evidence for and against the Unaccusative Hypothesis, and consider what its semantic correlates might be. (Optional readings by Borschev and Partee, Pesetsky, Borik, and Perlmutter and Moore.) Pesetsky handout on Unaccusativity;   Borschev, Vladimir, and Barbara H. Partee. 2002b. The Russian genitive of negation in existential sentences: the role of Theme-Rheme structure reconsidered. In Travaux du Cercle Linguistique de Prague (nouvelle série), eds. Eva Hajicová, Petr Sgall, Jirí Hana and Tomáš Hoskovec, 185-250. Amsterdam: John Benjamins Pub. Co.

Lecture 12. May 23. The semantics of diathesis alternations. In pairs like nagruzit' gruzovik senom/ nagruzit' seno na gruzovik, what’s in the meaning of the verb and what’s in the meaning of the construction, and how are those contributions compositionally combined? What kinds of answers do different theories of lexical semantics give to that question? Optional readings by Krifka, Dowty, Kiparsky, Ackerman and Moore, Levin and Rappaport. (1) Krifka, Manfred. 2000. Manner in dative alternation. In WCCFL 18: Proceedings of the Eighteenth West Coast Conference on Formal Linguistics, eds. Sonya Bird, Andrew Carnie, Jason D. Haugen and Peter Norquest, 1-14 (?). Somerville/Medford, MA: Cascadilla Press. (2) Levin and Rappaport handout 2002 arguing against Krifka. (3) Krifka handout 2001 arguing against Levin and Rappaport. (4) Ackerman and Moore handout 2001.

All homeworks due May 30 (last class). See e-mail of May 22 about late homeworks being OK.

Lecture 13. May 30. Genitive of negation and diathesis alternations. Hypothesis: perhaps we can capture both similarities and differences between Subject and Object Gen Neg by viewing both as instances of diathetic alternations (Ackerman and Moore 2001, Paducheva in press a), involving semantic shifts in verb meaning correlated with a decrease in "proto-Agent" or "proto-Patient" properties (Dowty 1991). The interaction of sentential negation with verbal semantics and diathesis alternation is a key issue to be explored. More on problems of Gen Neg with byt'. Supplemental handouts: Petr Arkadiev's Homework #5: Accusative vs. Genitive under Negation.  Aleksander Letuchiy's Homework #5: Порядок слов в экзистенциальных и локативных предложениях с глаголом быть [Caution: this PDF file is very large because it's in Russian.] Supplemental reading, of which an excerpt, section 4.2.3. 'Examples', was included as an an additional handout today: Borschev and Partee 2002b, also listed under Lecture 11.