Syllabus

NB: Readings are listed on the day by which they should be completed.

1. F 1/3: Course prospectus. HW 1 distributed

Week 1: Sentence meaning vs. Utterance Understanding

2. M 1/6: Interpreting events, actions, and utterances. Four parables.

3. W 1/8: Expression meaning vs. utterance understanding. Reading: Loebner, Chapter 1. HW 1 due.

4. F 1/10: Deniable and Undeniable Implications. Implicature vs. Entailment.
Reading: Loebner, Chapters 2. HW 2 distributed.

Week 2: Deniable and Undeniable Implications

5. M 1/13: Lexical meanings and compositionality Reading: Loebner, chapters 1-3. .

6. W 1/15: Satisfaction conditions and communicative meaning . HW 2 due.

7. F 1/17: Diagnosing conditions presumed vs. at issue. Reading: Loebner, Chapter 4. HW 3 distributed.

Week 3: Satisfaction Conditions and Entailment

8. M 1/20 - MLK Holiday (No class, no sections)

9. W 1/22: Overview of diagnostics. The big picture.
HW 3 due. Reading: Loebner, Chapter 5.

10. F 1/24: Representing expression meanings: event descriptive sentences.
HW 4 distributed.

Week 4: Situations, Participant Roles and Verb Meanings

11. M 1/27: Participant Roles and grammatical relations. Reading: Loebner, Chapter 6.

12. W 1/29: Simple event description logical forms. HW 4 due.

13. F 1/31: Other types of basic logical forms. Take-home exam problem distributed.

Week 5: Connecting Structure and Meaning.

14. M 2/3: Linking semantics and syntactic structure.

15. W 2/5: Midterm Exam in-class. Take-home part of Midterm due..

16. F 2/7: Back to the big picture: concepts, reality, truth, culture, stuff like that..

Week 6: Complex Logical Forms

17. M 2/10: Predication logical forms.

18. W 2/12 Quantificational Logical forms. Scope ambiguities.

19. F 2/14: Scope ambiguities continued. Meaning below the level of LF predicates.
Reading: Loebner, Chapter 7, sections 3 and 4. HW5 distributed.

Week 7: More on Logical Forms

20. M 2/17: President’s Day Holiday. No class.

21. W 2/19: Adverbial quantification. Scope of negation. Predicates on Propositions. HW5 due.

22. F 2/21: Other kinds of ambiguities: de dicto/de re. Optional reading: Loebner, Chapter 10.
HW6 distributed.

Week 8: Tracking Reference in Discourse

23. M 2/24: The Bluejay Story: Novelty and Familiarity.

24. W 2/26:. Tracking things referred to. HW 6 due.

25. F 2/28. Categorization. Reading: Loebner, chapter 9. HW 7 distributed.

Week 9: Communicative Meaning

26. M 3/3: Goals of discourse; types of Moves. Re-reading: Loebner, Chapters 1-2.

27. W 3/5: Questions and Answers. HW 7 due.

28. F 3/7: Focus and Background. HW 8 distributed.

Week 10: Far Horizons

29. M 3/10: Beyond English. Reading: Loebner, Chapter 8.

30. W 3/12: Bias and Expressive Meaning. HW 8 due.

31. F 3/14: The Last Class. Take-home part of final distributed. Course evaluation.

Final

32. T 3/18 12-3 pm (Thimann 1). Final examination. Take-home part of final due.
Same routine as midterm: Bring two fresh blue books.