Ling 470: Semantic Analysis

NU graduate core course (latest Spring 2017): This is an advanced graduate-level course in formal semantics. It presupposes knowledge of the material covered in the Heim & Kratzer (1998) textbook at least through chapter 8, including basic set theory, propositional logic, predicate logic, type theory, and the lambda calculus. The course has a bipartite structure: half is focused on expanding the student's basic semantic toolkit, and half is focused on discussing classic papers. Throughout, we focus on a small subset of the major areas of interest to classic and contemporary research in formal semantics. The topics can be broadly categorized according to the types of new entities they introduce, namely worlds, times, pluralities, eventualities, and… stuff.