683.01 Semantics I U G 5
Prereq: 680 or equivalent knowledge of logic and set theory
Problems and methods of analysis in linguistic semantics and pragmatics; use of formal logic and semantic model theory in analyzing natural languages.
The goal of the course is to acquaint students with some basic concepts and problems central to the study of semantics within current linguistic theory. This introduction should provide them with the necessary background to approach the fairly diverse literature on this subject, especially that with a model-theoretic, truth-conditional perspective. Topics to be addressed include: sense, reference, quantification and the relevance of logic to semantic analysis, the use of set theory in semantic modeling, the role of syntactic structure in interpretation (compositionality), and important pragmatic
topics such as presupposition, Gricean implicature, and speech act theory.
Offered 2007-2008:
Offered 2008-2009 (projected):
Instructor's Course Pages:
David Dowty (WI 05)
Last modified 2005-01-02
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