Linguistics 406 and 802, Spring Semester 2005

Linguistics 406 is a second semantics course, building on the material from Ling 324. It will cover material involved in the notion of intensionality and the various uses that this notion has been put to in the recent semantic literature. The material covered in the course will be mainly from G. Chierchia and S. McConnell-Ginet Meaning and Grammar (2^nd Edition), Chapters 5-9. We will also read some material from research journals, which will be assembled for you. (Probably electronically). Students in Ling 802 will have additional material to master and will have extra assignments to do.

Here is a course syllabus outlining the work for the course. This is a pdf document, so you need Acrobat Reader to view them. (They will be downloaded onto your computer when you click on them, and then you can view them with your copy of Acrobat Reader). Acrobat Reader is free and can be gotten from here.

You should start your reading by reviewing the formal material introduced in Chapters 1-4 of Chierchia and McConnell-Ginet. Please do not be shy to ask questions in class about this material. It is crucial that you understand it. Here are some background slides relevant to this. When you finish a quick review, you can start reading the material in Chapter 5.

Here and here are a pdf of some overheads used to discuss Chapter 5.1-5.2 of our textbook. There are two parts of these overheads because they were constructed at different times by different programs. Nonetheless, the overheads from one of them should be interspersed at the appropriate places into the other group. (You will have to figure out yourself which order. Or come to class and see how they are presented!)

Here are some slides relevant to Chapter 5.3.1 (on Tense). I have had some troubles getting my tree generating package to work, so you will have to either figure them out yourself or come to class to see.

And here are some slides relevant to a Reichenbachian view of tense. Material here is from Chierchia and McConnell-Ginet (end of Chapter 5.3.1) and Hornstein 1990, Chapters 1 and 2. (Now that I have my tree-generator working, I cannot seem to get this printed in landscape mode!)

Here and here are slides about modality. The first is "the standard view" and the second is about adding an Ordering Source to the framework.

Assignment 1 is due on Feb. 9^th. Normally you will have one week from the time I post it until it is due. For this first assignment you have 10 days.

Here are some slides on Ch. 6, Context. And here are some slides on presupposition. (More slides on presupposition will come soon). And here are those slides, which contain a brief introduction to dynamic semantics.

Here are some overheads about lambda abstraction. Here are some other slides that are examples referred to in the first batch. And here are yet some further slides to introduce the subject. And just to help you with reviewing the material, here are some more review slides. I was told that the last set of slides was a repeat of earlier posted slides, and that what was missing were slides on relative clauses. Here are slides on relative clauses.

Assignment 2 is due on Wednesday March 16^th. On this assignment you can work in pairs (if you want; you are not required to do so). Make sure that both of you know all the answers that are turned in!

The last topic this semester is Generalized Quantifiers. Here are some slides relevant to the first part of Chapter 9. And here are some slides relevant to the second half of Chapter 9.

Finally, here are some slides about negative polarity items and conservativity of generalized quantifiers.

Assignment 3 is due on Monday April 4^th. On this assignment you can work in pairs (if you want; you are not required to do so). Make sure that both of you know all the answers that are turned in!

A few pages of my thoughts on how to get organized to write a paper for this course can be found here. Note that the due date of the paper has been changed from the 'last day of class' (April 6^th) to the 'last day of classes generally' (April 8^th). As the directions say, you can turn your paper in physically to my mailbox in the Philosophy Department, or electronically. If electronically, please use either Word (.doc), .rtf, .dvi, .tex, .ps, .pdf., or .txt. I cannot read WordPerfect (.wpd), so if you use this please save-as rtf or print-as pdf and submit that. If you have a lot of trees and other symbols that you canπt produce electronically, you should draw them and submit your paper physically.

You should consult this page regularly for updates to the readings and other information. There is also an email list for the entire class: ling-406 at-sign sfu period ca. (I write it this way so as to prevent web spiders from finding the address, thereby preventing us from being flooded with spam. Replace the at-sign and period with an at-sign and a period.) I will be using this to make announcements to the class, and so you should check your email regularly to make sure you receive any such information. Additionally, you can use it to ask questions of others in the class. (At least about the course materials!)

If you want to contact me by email, use: jeffpell at-sign sfu period ca. This is the most reliable way of contacting me.

My office hours are: Tue 10:30ã12:00 in WMX 5661. Phone: 604-291-4458.