Course Description and Course Requirements
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. As
much material as possible will be made available for download from the
web: go to the page Materials. I will make a course CD with copies for everyone in March.
III. Structure of Course and Requirements
Every week there will be one lecture and one seminar. There will be
five homework assignments, one every two or three weeks. The seminars
will be an opportunity to ask questions, to discuss examples and issues
from the lectures, 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. One short class presentation in April, with a handout (=
Assignment #4).
Requirements to receive a 5: Very good attendance, at least 80% of
lectures and seminars. Assignments completed on time and in a
satisfactory manner; no assignments missing.
Requirements to receive a 4 or zachet: Good attendance, at least 60%
of lectures and seminars. Most written homework assignments completed
on time and in a satisfactory manner; not more than two assignments
missing.
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.
IV. Short description of the course
The course will begin with a brief introduction to formal semantics,
including a review of basic logic and an introduction to the lambda
calculus and its applications in semantics. Then we will study some
themes which are central in formal semantic analyses of noun phrases
and their parts. No previous familiarity with formal semantics will be
presupposed.
Some of the topics to be discussed include:
- the principle of compositionality,
- the concept of meaning as truth-conditions,
- introduction to lambdas and their usefulness for semantics,
- types of noun phrase meanings (referential, quantificational, predicational, generic, anaphoric, demonstrative, ...)
- "strong" and "weak" NPs, referentiality, incorporation; existential sentences and tests for 'weakness',
- modifiers, arguments, and specifiers: syntax and semantics
- restrictive and non-restrictive relative clauses: semantics and pragmatics
- quantifiers, scope, variable binding; semantic typology,
- "anti-quantifiers": syntax and semantics of distributive expressions like Korean -ssik (Choe),
- lexical semantics of relational and non-relational nouns; genitives, possessives, and have.
The course is intended principally for 3rd and 4th year students of OTiPL; others are welcome as well.
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