Semantic Theory 2021

Overview

Semantic Theory is a core course of the Master of Science programme in Language Science and Technology (LST), taught at the department of Language Science and Technology at Saarland University.

This course focuses on the theoretical study of natural language meaning, but will also address practical applications. In the first part of the course, we will study sentence-level (Montague) semantics: starting out from first-order predicate logic, moving to (typed) lambda calculus. In the second part of the course, we zoom in to the level of lexical semantics, in particular focusing on verbs (event semantics) and quantified noun phrases (generalized quantifiers). In the third part of the course, we move to discourse-level semantics: we use the framework of Discourse Representation Theory to study discourse-level phenomena such as anaphora and presupposition. In the final part of the course, we discuss recent advances in semantic theory. In particular, we will look at Distributional Formal Semantics, which extends formal semantics with a distributional component, providing compositional and probabilistic meaning representations that are also suitable for use in contemporary deep learning approaches.

Format and Requirements

• The course will be taught online with a strong focus on self-study;
• Slides and suggested reading materials will be made available each week, and lecture sessions will serve to discuss these in an interactive Q&A style manner;
• Exercise sheets will be made available after each lecture, and are due before the next lecture slot. During the exercise sessions, we will discuss questions about open exercises, and solutions to completed exercises in a Q&A syle manner;
• There will be an exam at the end of the semester (22.07.2021). Your grade for this exam will be your grade for the course;
• To be admitted to the final exam, you may skip or fail at most one weekly exercise;
• We strongly encourage active participation during all lectures and exercise sessions.

Prerequisites

Familiarity with first-order predicate logic. Specifically, we expect you to be familiar with the content described in the first two sections of this chapter: Logic in Action, Chapter 4 (Sections 4.1 & 4.2).

Literature

We will provide weekly reading material for each topic, which will be updated throughout the semester. Some important online resources:

• Logic in Action (Ch. 4), Johan van Benthem, Hans van Ditmarsch, Jan van Eijck and Jan Jaspars, 2016.
• Elements of Formal Semantics (Ch. 2 & 3), Yoad Winter, Edinburgh University Press, 2016
• Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy, Edward N. Zalta (princial editor).

Registration:

To register for this course, please send an email to noortjev at coli.uni-saarland dot de. Registration through LSF is not necessary.

Role in the degree programmes

M.Sc. Program: Core course
Area: L (Linguistics)
Standard time slot 2nd semester.
Diplomstudiengang Computerlinguistik: Pflicht; Wahlpflichtveranstaltung für MA-NF

Leistungspunkte

6 CP