G61.2370 Semantics II

Prof. Anna Szabolcsi

Fall 1998
(212)998-7956
Office Hours Tue/Thurs 11:00-11:40, or by appointment

The course will use interrogatives as a pretext for (i) reviewing some fundamental concepts and techniques of formal semantics, (ii) examining how syntax and semantics work together in a compositional theory, and (iii) studying some instances of purely semantic explanation.

Requirements: weekly assignments and a take-home final or a term paper.

Issue One: Semantics for non-declaratives
Review: intensions, categorial grammar, lambdas

  • Karttunen, Syntax and semantics of questions
  • Dayal, Scope-marking as indirect wh-dependency

    Issue Two: Type multiplicity
    Review: Boolean semantics

  • Partee-Rooth, Generalized conjunction and type ambiguity
  • Partee, Type-shifting principles
  • Winter, The square of individuals
  • Groenendijk-Stokhof, Type-shifting principles and the semantics of interrogatives
  • Groenendijk-Stokhof, Semantics of wh-complements

    Issue Three: Quantification into questions
    Review: generalized quantifier theory

  • Karttunen, Syntax and semantics of questions
  • Groenendijk--Stokhof, Type-shifting principles and the semantics of interrogatives
  • Chierchia, Questions and quantifiers
  • Szabolcsi, Quantifiers in pair-list readings

    Issue Four: Semantic reconstruction
    Review: lambdas

  • Cresti, Extraction and reconstruction
  • Romero / Fox / Honcoop?

    Issue Five: Semantic constraints on syntax (if we have time)
    Review: algebraic semantics, discourse representations

  • Szabolcsi, Strong and weak islands
  • Szabolcsi--Zwarts, Weak islands and an algebraic semantics of scope taking
  • Honcoop, Dynamic excursions on weak islands

    Last Modified: July 23, 2000