LSA 314: Semantics

Chris Barker | six-week course | TuTh 10:30 – 12:15, 155 Donner Lab

Introduction to the goals and methods of formal semantics. Entailment, implicature, presupposition, predicate calculus, lambda calculus, compositionality, scope, binding, focus, and wh-questions.

Reading: Selected materials available online.

Prerequisites: Some exposure to linguistics will be helpful, especially simple syntax (trees, relative clauses, etc.).

Areas of linguistics: Syntax, semantics, and morphology