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schedule
requirements
academic
integrity
Links:
linguistics
club
cognitive
science
club
linguistics
department
RuCCS
colloquia
Conferences:
Nels 32
Oct 19-21
New York
Multilingualism
Oct 26-27
Busch Campus
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Course description
This course covers subjects that lie between the fields
of semantics and pragmatics, that is between the literal
interpretation of sentences and interpretation that involves
a wider context. We will concentrate on three main topics:
- Discourse representation: anaphora and reference across
sentences, referential properties of definite and indefinite
noun phrases, and the temporal structure of discourse.
- Presupposition and accomodation: language use in relation
to the context of utterance.
- Intonational focus: the use of intonation to signal
relations between an utterance and its context, e.g. whether
a particular part is new or already given.
Homework and announcements
- Second midterm is on Monday, November 19.
You should review
your own notes from the class, the textbook chapters we read
(1.4-1.7, 5, 7, 8, 9.1, 9.2, 11, 12, 13, 16, 17.1, 17.2, 17.3),
the article from the second writeup,
and the homework answer sheets (links appear below).
- Friday, November 16: Anna Szabolcsi colloquium, linguistics
department, room 108, 3 pm.
- Read the following information regarding the
final paper,
- Seventh homework answers
are now available (was due Nov 14).
- Reading: chapter 16 and sections 17.1-17.3 in the textbook.
- Reading: section 13.4 in the textbook.
- Sixth homework answers
are now available (was due Nov 7).
- Readings: chapters 11 (presupposition triggering), 12 (phonology of
prosody), and sections 13.1-13.3 (focus and focus identification) in
the textbook.
- Fifth homework answers
are now available (was due Oct 30).
- For Wednesday, Oct. 24: Read section 1.7 (pp. 17-21) and
chapters 7, 8, 9.1, 9.2 (pp. 144-158) in the textbook.
Don't spend too much effort over section 9.2.2 (pp. 156-158),
but try to get the gist of that argument.
- Fourth homework answers
are now available (was due Oct 23).
- For Wednesday, Oct. 17: Read sections 1.4-1.6 (pp. 8-17) and
chapter 5 (pp. 115-131) in the textbook.
- Second write-up
was due Friday, October 12.
- Class canceled
on Wednesday, October 10.
- Tuesday, October 9, at 1:00 pm:
RuCCS colloquium by
Michael Spivey (Psychology, Cornell).
- Tuesday, October 9, at 6:30 pm:
Cognitive Science Club
talk by
Jeffrey Mark Siskind (NEC Research Institute).
- First midterm was on Monday, October 8.
Answers are now available (in
PDF format).
- Third homework answers
are now available (was due Oct 2).
- Second homework answers
are now available (was due Sep 25).
- First write-up
was due Friday, September 21.
- Thursday, September 20:
Sandro Zucchi's colloquium talk is canceled.
- First homework answers
are now available (was due Sep 19).
- For Wednesday, Sep. 19: Read chapter 2 in the text book, up
to the end of section 2.1.3 (pp. 26-40).
- Tuesday, September 11:
RuCCS colloquium by
Barry C Smith (Philosophy, Birkbeck College, U. of London).
- For Monday, Sep. 10: Read sections 1.1, 1.2 (pp. 3-7) and
chapter 3 (pp. 68-76) in the textbook.
Try to understand the intuition behind the diagrams in
chapter 3 but don't spend too much time trying to crack
the formalism---this is what we will do in the upcoming weeks.
Some notes about the terminology in chapter 3: the abbreviation
CN stands for ``common noun'' (e.g. cat), and
n CN stands for the combination of a numeral and a common
noun (e.g. three cats); DRT is an acronym for Discourse
Representation Theory, and a DRS is a Discourse Representation
Structure (the box diagrams that appear throughout the chapter).
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