LIN 435/PHI 435 Advanced Semantics

Fall Term 2009-2010

Meeting 11:00-12:20 PM Tuesdays and Thursdays in 209 Aaron Burr Hall

Edwin Williams and Gilbert Harman

Tentative schedule of topics with reading. The latest version of this syllabus is on Blackboard. Unless otherwise indicated, articles from journals can be accessed from Firestone Library from the Princeton campus network.

1. Presupposition projection (1.5 weeks)

Soames, S. 1989. ‘Presupposition’. as reprinted in Soames, Philosophical Essays. Volume 1. (2008). PDF on Blackboard.

Kripke, S. A. (2009) "Presupposition and Anaphora: Remarks on the Formulation of the Projection Problem." Linguistic Inquiry 40: 367-386.

Heim I. 1992. "Presupposition Projection and the Semantics of Attitude Verbs," Journal of Semantics 9: 183-221; especially sections 1-2, pp. 183-186. The rest is optional.

Schlenker P. 2007. "Presupposition and Local Contexts" available online from <https://files.nyu.edu/pds4/public/>. Optional: "Local Contexts," from same place.

2. Questions (1 week)

Higginbotham, J. (1996) "The Semantics of Questions," in Shalom Lapin, The Handbook of Semantic Linguistic Theory, pp. 361-384. Available online at <http://www.blackwellreference.com/subscriber/uid=50/tocnode?id=g9780631207498_chunk_g978063120749817>.

Ginzburg, J. (1996). "Interrogatives: Questions, Facts, and Dialogues," in Shalom Lapin, The Handbook of Contemporary Semantic Theory, pp. 385-422. Available online at <http://www.blackwellreference.com/subscriber/uid=50/tocnode?id=g9780631207498_chunk_g978063120749818>

Additional optional reading:

Groenendijk, J., and Stokhof, M. (1990) Partitioning Logical Space. <http://staff.science.uva.nl/~stokhof/pls.pdf>

Fiengo, R. (2007) Asking Questions. MIT Press. [One copy in Firestone Library]

Bach, K. (2007)., review of Fiengo, Asking Questions, in Notre Dame Philosophical Reviews, available online at <http://ndpr.nd.edu/review.cfm?id=11623>.

3. information structure (1.5 weeks)

Partee, B. (1991) "Topic, Focus, and Quantification" <http://semanticsarchive.net/>.

Rooth, M. (1992) "A Theory of Focus Interpretation" Natural Language Semantics 1 : 75-116. at <http://www.springerlink.com/content/k57211207j40p176/fulltext.pdf>.

Buring, D. (2007) "Semantics, Intonation and Information Structure" in Oxford Handbook of Linguistic Interfaces, essay available at <http://www.linguistics.ucla.edu/people/buring/>

Williams E. (ms) "The Locality of Focusing and the Coherence of Anaphors." To be made available.

4. Implicatures, pragmatics (3 weeks)

Part 1. Locality of Implicatures

Chierchia, Gennaro (2006) "Broaden Your Views: Implicatures of Domain Widening and the "Logicality" of Language" Linguistic Inquiry - Volume 37, Number 4

Geurts, B. (2009) Scalar Implicatures and Local Pragmatics, Mind and Language

Part 2. Context and Indexicals

Kaplan, David (1978) "Dthat" Syntax and Semantics 9, ed. P. Cole, Academic Press 221-253; reprinted in A P. Martinich The Philosophy of Language (1985) Oxford University Press. Available on Blackboard.

Schlenker P. () "A Plea for Monsters" Linguistics and Philosophy 26: 29–120 [also available at <http://homepages.nyu.edu/~pds4/Monsters.pdf>]

MacFarlane, J. (2005) "The Assessment Sensitivity of Knowledge Attributions." Oxford Studies in Epistemology, 1, 197-233, Online at <http://johnmacfarlane.net/relknow.pdf>.

MacFarlane, J. (2009) "Nonindexical Contextualism," Synthese 166: 231-250.

5. Tense, Modal interpretation (3 weeks)

Kratzer A. "Conditionals" available from http://www.semanticsarchive.net/Archive/Tc2NjA1M/. (The other chapters there are optional.)

David Lewis )1973). Counterfactuals and comparative possibility. Journal of PhilosophicalLogic,2(4):418–446,1973. [A fuller discussion is in Lewis' 1973 book, Counterfactuals.]

Abusch, D. (1997). "Sequence of Tense and TEmporal De Re," Linguistics and Philosophy 20: 1-50.

Schlenker, "Sequence Phenomena and Double Access Readings Generalized: Two Remarks on Tense, Person, and Mood," The Syntax of Time, MIT Press, 2004, pp. 555-595. This is on Blackboard.

6. Event Structure (2 weeks)

Tenny C and J Pustejovsky (2000) "A History of Events" Available online at <http://www.linguist.org/History-of-Events.pdf>.

Kratzer A (2007) "On the Plurality of Verbs. Event Structures" in Linguistic Form and Interpretation, ed. by Tatjana Heyde-Zybatow and Johannes Dölling. Berlin (Mouton Walter de Gruyter). 269-299 at <http://semanticsarchive.net/Archive/jI4YWRlO/PluralityKratzer.pdf>

Kratzer A (2002) Chapter 2 "Schein's Argument.pdf" - Available on semanticsarchive.

Pustejovsky, J. (1991) "The Syntax of Event Structure" Cognition 41:47

Levin, B. (1999) "Objecthood: An Event Structure Perspective." CLS 35, The Main Session 1 <http://www.stanford.edu/~bclevin/cls99.pdf>