LgBA12 Formal and experimental semantics I

Faculty of Arts
Autumn 2024
Extent and Intensity
1/1/0. 5 credit(s). Type of Completion: k (colloquium).
In-person direct teaching
Teacher(s)
doc. PhDr. Mojmír Dočekal, Ph.D. (lecturer), Mgr. Martin Juřen (deputy)
Mgr. Martin Juřen (lecturer)
Mgr. Thomas Edwin Kissel (lecturer)
Guaranteed by
doc. PhDr. Mojmír Dočekal, Ph.D.
Department of Linguistics and Baltic Languages – Faculty of Arts
Supplier department: Department of Linguistics and Baltic Languages – Faculty of Arts
Timetable
Thu 10:00–11:40 G03, except Mon 18. 11. to Sun 24. 11.
Prerequisites
Basic knowledge of elementary logic.
Course Enrolment Limitations
The course is also offered to the students of the fields other than those the course is directly associated with.
The capacity limit for the course is 40 student(s).
Current registration and enrolment status: enrolled: 33/40, only registered: 0/40, only registered with preference (fields directly associated with the programme): 0/40
fields of study / plans the course is directly associated with
Course objectives
The aim of the course is to teach students to see the natural language meanings from the formal and experimental perspective. The course puts together formal and empirical tools for describing natural language meanings
Learning outcomes
At the end of the course students:
- understand most important notions of formal semantics;
- they grasp principles of formal modeling of natural language meaning;
- they can work with the formal methods and apply them to analysis of words, sentences and basic compositional operations assembling the meanings of units in natural language.
- understand experimental perspective (passive): learn about representative experiments, their design and rationale;
- acquire basic methods of data gathering (passive): acceptability judgments, truth value judgment task
They understand inner working of natural language and distinctions between semantics and pragmatics of natural language expressions.
Syllabus
  • 1. Meaning 2. Compositionality 3. Types of predicates 4. Modifiers 5. Referring expression 6. Quantifiers 7. Extensions vs. intensions 8. Aspectual system of natural languages
Literature
    required literature
  • BAAYEN, Rolf Harald. Analyzing linguistic data : a practical introduction to statistics using R. 1st print. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2008, xiii, 353. ISBN 9780521882590. info
  • PORTNER, Paul. What is meaning? : fundamentals of formal semantics. 1st pub. Malden, Mass.: Blackwell, 2005, ix, 235. ISBN 9781405109178. info
    recommended literature
  • Heim, Irene & Kratzer, Angelika (1998): Semantics in Generative Grammar. Cambridge, MA: Blackwell.
  • Lepore, Ernest (2000): Meaning and Argument. An Introduction to Logic through Language. Oxford: Blackwell.
  • CHIERCHIA, Gennaro and Sally MCCONNELL-GINET. Meaning and grammar : an introduction to semantics. 2nd ed. Cambridge: MIT Press, 2000, xv, 573 s. ISBN 0-262-53164-X. info
  • PEREGRIN, Jaroslav. Úvod do teoretické sémantiky : principy formálního modelování významu. 1. vyd. Praha: Karolinum, 1998, 206 s. ISBN 8071846856. info
  • PARTEE, Barbara H., Robert E. WALL and Alice ter MEULEN. Mathematical methods in linquistics. Dordrecht: Kluwer Academic Publishers, 1993, xxii, 664. ISBN 90-277-2245-5. info
Teaching methods
lectures
Assessment methods
Lectures, class discussion. Student must successfully write test to complete this course.
Language of instruction
Czech
Follow-Up Courses
Further Comments
Study Materials
The course is taught annually.
The course is also listed under the following terms Autumn 2019, Autumn 2020, Autumn 2021, Autumn 2022, Autumn 2023.
  • Enrolment Statistics (recent)
  • Permalink: https://is.muni.cz/course/phil/autumn2024/LgBA12