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Syllabus()(Spring(2013(LING)GA(3340.002(Seminar(in(Seman<cs:
Algebraic(seman<cs(and(mereology
Note: The system lists LING-GA 2370 (Semantics II) as a prerequisite, but Semantics I or
exposure to an equivalent amount of semantics (e.g. self-study of Heim and Kratzer 1998,
chapter 1-6) is de facto sufficient and will lead to permission being granted.
Auditors are welcome, as are students from other departments, schools, and universities.
Course description:
Expressions like John and Mary or the water in my cup intuitively involve reference to
collections of individuals or substances. The parthood relation between these collections and
their components is not modeled in standard formal semantics of natural language, but it
takes central stage in what is known as algebraic semantics, a subfield that relies on
mereology (the theory of parts) as its formal underpinning.
This course starts with a gentle introduction into algebraic semantics, and presents selected
applications involving plural, mass reference, measurement, aspect, and distributivity. We will
encounter issues involving natural language metaphysics and philosophy of language, and
how these issues interact with semantic theory depending on how they are resolved.
The script of an earlier and shorter version of this course is available at http://www.nyu.edu
/projects/champollion/champollion-esslli-2012.pdf. This course will be based on recent and
current research by the instructor, in particular Champollion (2010), a summary of which is
available at http://www.nyu.edu/projects/champollion/champollion_dissertation_summary.pdf.
For the complete manuscript, please email champollion@nyu.edu.
Students will be asked to write and present one 10-15 page paper, one 2-page abstract of that
paper, and three short reviews of abstracts of their fellow students. Submission of these
abstracts to a semantics conference will be encouraged.
Selected topics:
Mereology - algebraic semantics; axiomatization of classical extensional mereology;
comparison to set theory
Metaphysics - events, intervals, degrees; thematic roles, measure functions,
homomorphisms; sums and groups
Nouns - semantic theories of singular and plural; dependent plurals; cumulative reference,
divisive reference, quantized reference; group nouns; mass nouns; atomicity
Measurement - temporal and spatial trace; measure functions and degrees; measure nouns;
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References:
Champollion (2010). Parts of a whole - Distributivity as a bridge between aspect and
measurement. Penn Ph.D. dissertation.
Heim and Kratzer (1998). Semantics in generative grammar. Blackwell.
Tentative syllabus with recommended readings:
(Required)readings)will)be)announced)in)class.)
)
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generalizations; aspectual
composition
Spring ) ) )
Break
14 May)16 miniconferences )
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