Semantic Theory

Lecturer:	Manfred Pinkal
Place:	Building C72, seminar room (1.12)
Time:	Tue 10-12, Thu 10-12
Starts:	2014-04-22

Re-sit Exam: Thursday, Oct 16, 10:00 a.m.

Overview

This course provides knowledge about phenomena, formalisms and methods in natural-language semantics, which form the basis for deep semantic processing and provide the theoretical background for semantic processing in general. Topics of this course include:

Sentence semantics: Higher-order logic and type-theoretical semantics (Montague Grammar); semantics construction and the syntax-semantics interface; quantifier scope and generalized quantifiers
Lexical semantics: Event semantics and tense; semantic roles and frames; plurals, mass terms, and collective predicates
Discourse semantics: Definite and indefinite noun phrases, anaphora, Discourse Representation Theory (DRT)

Exercises and Exam

There will be several take-home exercises, and you have to achieve a certain number of points to be admitted to the final exam. More details can be found here.

Prerequisites

Familiarity with first-order predicate logic

Literature

Gamut, Logic, Language, and Meaning, Vol. 2, University of Chicago Press, 1991

Kamp/Reyle, From Discourse to Logic, Kluwer, 1993

Role in the degree programmes

M.Sc.: Required course for specialisation “computational linguistics,” 6 LP