Grading

mid-term: 35%

final: 50%

participation: 15%

Two tests

Two tests will be given during the term, one in the middle and one at the end of the term, covering all the material covered up to that point in the course. The tests will be a combination of various types of questions, including true/false and short essay.

Final Review & For Fun

:material-circle-edit-outline: 约 629 个字 :material-clock-time-two-outline: 预计阅读时间 2 分钟

The following parts are written in preparation for the final review but I upload it as well for you to read for fun.

Noble Semanticians

Name	Field	Contribution	Live	Nation	Institution	Fun facts
Noam Chomsky	mainly in syntax	generative grammar, transformational grammar, government and binding theory, minimalist program, productivity of language, recursivity of language	1928-	USA	MIT	Most prominent linguist alive
Ferdinand de Saussure	linguist and semiotician	founder of semiotics. concepts: sign, signifier vs. signified, diachronic vs. synchronic, language vs. parole, paradigmatic vs. syntagmatic	1857-1913	Switzerland	University of Geneva, Switzerland
Charles Sanders Peirce	philosopher, mathematician, logician	founder of semiotics. concepts: index, icon, symbol.	1839-1914	Milford Pennsylvania	JHU
Michel Bréal	comparative grammar	coined the term “semantics”, diachronic focus	1832-1915	born in Rheinlan (Germany), studied in Paris and Berlin	in Paris
Leonard Bloomfield	structural linguistics	structural linguistics, language as a self-regulating system, behaviorism(stimulus-response testing)	1887-1949		Yale University	reject introspection
Aristotle	polymath	term logic, initiator of western scientific tradition	384-322 BC	Stagira, Greece		tutor of Alexander the Great
Gottlob Freg	philosopher, logician, mathematician	predicate logic, sense(sentence’s proposition) vs. reference (its truth value)	1848-1925	German	University of Jena	extreme right-wing views
Peter Geach	philosopher, professor of logic	donkey sentence (1962)	1916-2013	England	Oxford
Richard Montegue	semanticist	Montegue grammar: syntax and semantics go together	1930-1971			student of Alfred Tarski, gay man, killed in his apartment, four influential papers
Gareth Evans	philosopher	philosophy of mind, work on reference, e-type anaphora	1946-1980	England	Oxford
Irene Heim	semanticist	definite and indefinite pronouns	1954-	German, Munich	MIT, phd 1982	advisor: Barbara Partee
Hans Kamp	philosopher and linguist	discourse representation theory (DRT)	1954-	Dutch
Bertrand Russell	philosopher, logician	logic, philosophy of mathematician	1872-1970	Wales, Britain	Cambridge
Henriëtte de Swart	linguist	tense and aspect, negation, bare nominals and indefinite noun phrases. She has also investigated the role of semantics in language evolution, and was involved in the development of bidirectional optimality theory.	1961-	Dutch	director of Netherlands Graduate School of Linguistics and Utrecht Institute of Linguistics

Example questions

What is a donkey pronoun?

A donkey sentence is such that an expected existential is interpreted as universal taking wide scope.

What is a discourse pronoun:

outside the scope of existing quantifier
e.g. No student studies semantics. He is outside.

The scope of a quantifier is always bound in the clause it appears.

 True

What is quantifier raising?

Chmosky and May.
LF,

What are De Morgan’s laws?

~(p or q) <=> (~p) and (~q)
~(p and q) <=> (~p) or (~q)

What are conditional laws

p -> q <=> ~p or q

When is the indefinite “a” not an existential quantifier?

1. donkey sentence
2. generic noun phrase. A woman is difficult to please. \forall x(Wx -> Dx)
3. John is a plumber.pj

2 readings: Some boy smiled at Jane and some boy kissed Molly.

\exist x(Bx and Sx,j and Kx,m)
\exist x(Bx and Sx,j) and \forall y(By and Ky,m)

2 Types of Recursion

embedding and coordination

Contents

Grading

Two tests

Final Review & For Fun

Noble Semanticians

Example questions