Introduction to Semantic Theory

Instructor: Graham Katz (gkatz@uos.de)

Office: Kolpingstr. 7, Room 310

Time: Thursday, 10-12 Uhr

Office Hours: Tuesday 14-16

Place: 04/E01

Homepage: http://www.cogsci.uni-osnabrueck.de/~gkatz/SS03/semantics.htm

Overview

What is meaning? How do we use words to convey meanings? How does our grammatical knowledge interact with the interpretive system. This seminar will provide answers to these and other questions while providing a gentle introduction to the formal techniques used in research on the semantics of natural language. A basic foundation will thus be built for any further courses in linguistics or computational linguistics that concern themselves with problems of meaning and interpretati

Requirements:

Doing semantics (rather than just talking about it) requires practice. For this reason half of the grade for the course will consist of homework assignments. Additionally, a (brief) referat will be required, in which the basic ideas from a classic paper from Portner & Partee are presented. Finally, in the last weeks of the course, we will develop a small question answering system.

Textbooks:

Bach, Emmon (1989) Informal Lectures on Formal Semantics

Heim and Kratzer (1998) Semantics and Generative Grammar

Portner, Paul and Partee, Barbara H. (2002) Formal Semantics: The Essential Readings

Löbner, Sebastian (2001) Understanding Semantics

Schedule

Week 1	April 10	Introduction: What is a semantic theory?
Week 2	April 17	Syntax, Semantics and Compositionality	Bach Ch. 1-2 H&K Ch. 1-2, 3.1-3.2
Week 3	April 24	Noun Phrases	H & K Ch. 4, 5.1-5.3
	May 1	Tag der Arbeit	HW 1 Due HW 1 Solutions
Week 4	May 7 [Wed!]	Lexical Semantics	Löbner Ch. 5, 10
Week 5	May 15	Quantification	Bach Ch 3-4 H&K Ch. 6.1-6.6, Ch 7
Week 6	May 22	Intensionality	H&K Ch 12
	May 29	Christi Himmelfahrt	HW 2 Due
Week 7	June 05	Context [Referat:Hoberg, Sebastian; Scholz, Jan]	Stalnaker Lewis (in P & P)
	June 12	Pfingstferien
Week 8	June 19	Definites and Indefinites [Referat:Diwold, Konrad; Schepers, Inga; Bitzer, Sebastian]	Lewis, Kamp & Heim (in P&P)
Week 9	June 26	Negative Polarity Items [Referat: Elbers, Michael; Ghori, Adnan]	Ladusaw (in P&P) Giannakidou  (2002)
Week 10	July 03	Bare Plurals and Generics [Referat: Haddad, Maximus; Tichacek, Klaus;  Lindgren, Ida]	Bach Ch 5 Carlson (in P&P) Kratzer (1995)
Week 11	July 10	Aspect and Aspectual Class [Referat: Land, Rüdiger; Kunkemöller, Jens; Giesbrecht, Eugenie]	Vendler (1967) Dowty (in P&P) Zucchi (1999)
Week 12	July 17	Adverbs [Referat:Nilsson, Björn; Kolomeyets, Oleksander]	Thomason/Stalnaker (1973) Davidson (1967)