Skip Navigation

Formal Semantics of Noun Phrases Barbara H Partee RGGU 2010
Course home Description Schedule & Materials Resources Partee home

Course Materials for Formal Semantics of Noun Phrases --
Schedule, Handouts, Readings, Assignments

SCHEDULE SUBJECT TO CHANGE -- this is the version of May 18, 2010.

WEEK	TOPIC	HANDOUTS AND READINGS	ASSIGNMENTS
Week 1 Feb 9	Intro to Formal Semantics - 1	Handout [1-up] [2-up] Seminar handout: a sample exercise Readings: Larson (1995) "Semantics" Partee (1999) "Semantics" Partee (in press) "Formal semantics"	Homework #0: Anketa Due Week 2
Week 2 Feb 16	Intro to Formal Semantics - 2	Handout [1-up] [2-up] Readings: No new ones.	Homework #1: Lambdas Due March 5
!!!	!!!	No class February 23!	!!!
Week 3 Mar 2	Intro to Formal Semantics - 3	Handout [1-up] [2-up] Extra handout: Keywords for Lectures 1-3 Readings: All optional: Heim & Kratzer (1998). Semantics in Generative Grammar. Chapters 1-3. Partee (1978) Bound variables and other anaphors See other suggestions on Reading List	HW #1 due March 5! (Ask BHP for a copy of answers to HW #1. )
Week 4 Mar 9	NPs and Generalized Quantifiers Weak and Strong NPs	Handout [1-up] [2-up] Readings: Larson (1995) "Semantics" Partee, ter Meulen, Wall (1990), Chapter 14: Generalized Quantifiers Keenan (2003). The definiteness effect: semantic or pragmatic? Optional: Barwise & Cooper (1983), Partee (1989). See other suggestions on Reading List	Homework #2: See class handout of Week 4. Due April 2
!!!	!!!	No class March 16, March 23!	!!!
Week 5 Mar 30	Modifiers, arguments, numerals, and determiners: NP-internal syntax and semantics	Handout [1-up] [2-up] Appendix on orange juice and chicken soup Readings: Partee (1995) Lexical semantics and compositionality Optional: Partee (1986), Pereltsvaig (2006), Matushansky (2008)
Week 6 Apr 6	NP/DP interpretation, quantification, and type-shifting	Handout [1-up] [2-up] Readings: Partee (1986) Noun phrase interpretation and type-shifting principles. Optional: Heim (1982, 1983); Partee & Rooth (1983) on conjunction and type-shifting; Matushansky & Spector (2005)	Homework #3: Quantification, NP types. Due April 16 or proposal for Alternative Hw #3-4-5: Project.
Week 7 Apr 13	Indefinite Noun Phrases and their uses and interpretations. Heim and Kamp. Landman's Adjectival Theory of Indefinites.	Handout [1-up] [2-up] Indefinite NPs/DPs; Predicate nominals; Issues in the correspondence of syntactic categories and semantic types. Heim's Chapter II theory of indefinites as novel discourse referents with no quantificational force of their own. Indefinites as type e variables plus 'open sentence' semantics. Landman: indefinites are born at type <e,t>; Landman's "Adjectival Theory of Indefinites" vs "Montague-Partee" theory. Readings: Heim (1982), Ch. 2; Landman (2003). Optional: Heim (1983); Kamp (1981); Mikkelsen (2004); McNally (to appear).
Week 8 Apr 20	Plural nouns and mass nouns. Interpretation of bare plurals. Semantic typology of bare plurals.	Handout [1-up] [2-up] Mass/count, singular/plural; kinds, individuals, stages; collective and distributive plurals, groups. Classifier languages. Typology issues, especially about bare singulars and bare plurals. Readings: Link (1983), Krifka (1995), Dayal (2004), Bronnikov (2006), Bittner and Hale (1995) Optional: Carlson (1977), Bronnikov (2007)	Homework #4, DUE May 10
Week 9 Apr 27	Bare plurals and bare singulars in languages with and without articles. NP-DP debates. Hypotheses about bare NPs. Semantic typology. Including a guest lecture by Vadim Kimmelman on Bošković's claims that Russian has NP and no DP, and debate between Bošković and Pereltsvaig about whether Russian has DPs.	Handout [1-up] [2-up] Note: This is the same handout as week 8: it's a 2-week handout. There will also be a handout by Vadim Kimmelman on the Bošković-Pereltsvaig debate about whether Russian has DPs. Readings: Krifka (1995) Common nouns: a contrastive analysis of Chinese and English; Chierchia (1998) Reference to kinds across languages; Bošković (to appear) on DP - NP parameter; Pereltsvaig (2007) arguing that Russian does have DPs;
Week 10 May 4	Semantics of English, Chinese, and Russian numeral phrases. Definiteness in languages without articles. More typology.	Handout [1-up] [2-up] Readings: Rullmann and You (2006) General number and Mandarin Indefinites; Partee (2006) A note on Mandarin possessives, demonstratives, and definiteness; Dayal (to appear) Bare NPs cross-linguistically; von Fintel and Matthewson (2008) Universals in semantics.
Week 11 May 11	Introduction to Pragmatics. Pragmatic issues in the interpretation of NPs and DPs.	Handout [1-up] [2-up] Referentiality; definiteness and specificity; familiarity vs. novelty. Kinds of definites and indefinites. Presuppositions and implicatures. Expressives. Non-restrictive modifiers. NP speech acts. Readings:	Homework #5 Due 5 days before you want your ocenka or zachet, absolutely by May 31.
Week 12 May 18	Semantics of Possessives and Genitives. Relational nouns; Arguments vs. modifiers. Two kinds of possessives?	Handout [1-up] [2-up] Readings: Partee & Borschev (2003) Genitives, relational nouns, and argument-modifier ambiguity Optional: Vikner & Jensen (2002) A semantic analysis of the English genitive
Week 13 May 25	Genitives and Possessives, continued. Russian genitive constructions as modifiers or arguments	Two presentations: In lecture para: Masha Rozhnova on DP-NP discussions in Russian syntax group In seminar: Katya Garmash on Russian sam Same handout as Week 12: [1-up] [2-up] Readings: Nikolaeva (2007a) RGGU diploma thesis: Genitiv Kačestva v Russkom Jazyke; Nikolaeva (2007b) English summary of diploma thesis.
Week 14 June 1	Implicit arguments (or possibly a different topic)	Handout [1-up] [2-up] Implicit arguments with adjectives and nouns like local and enemy. Readings: Partee (1989) Binding implicit variables in quantified contexts Condoravdi and Gawron (1996) The context-dependency of implicit arguments