nyu18

Foundational Topics in Semantics - 2018

Philippe Schlenker

(LINGUAE, Institut Jean-Nicod, CNRS; New York University)

September-October 2018 - NYU

Instructor: Philippe Schlenker (E-mail: philippe.schlenker@gmail.com)

Note: P. Schlenker will be present at NYU for 8 weeks in September-October 2018. In addition, he will be at NYU for advising purposes for 3 weeks in May 2019 (tentatively starting on May 13, 2019).

Remark: Lucas Champollion is teaching on Wednesdays a seminar that is highly relevant to some foundational topics discussed below, especially concerning the semantics/pragmatics interface.

Topic

Research on meaning from the last 15 years has redefined several foundational issues in semantics, bringing new light to old questions and raising new ones as well. Old questions include the basic ontology of natural language semantics, the nature of context dependency, the division of labor between semantics and pragmatics, the relation between natural language semantics and semantic paradoxes, etc. New questions pertain to the role of sign language in universal semantics, the proper treatment of iconic effects and gestures, and the extension of semantics beyond its usual confines (animal semantics, music semantics, …). We will usually discuss one topic per week (with a main session and a discussion session); most topics will be drawn from the list below, depending in part on participants' interests (but the list contains more topics than can be covered in any given year).

Note: Italicized topics were discussed in a related seminar in September-October 2017. If some students who attended the 2017 seminar wish to take the 2018 seminar, (i) they should let the instructor know when they register (here), and (ii) overlaps will be minimized: whenever possible, the italicized topics will not be discussed, or will be discussed in a new form.

• Is the typology of linguistic inferences encoded in the lexicon?

• Are there monsters in natural language?

• Do we refer to times and possible worlds?

• How are presuppositions triggered?

• Is presupposition dynamic?

• Is anaphora dynamic?

• Are implicatures Gricean?

• Do expressives require a bidimensional semantics?

• Do supplements require a bidimensional semantics?

• How does sign language illuminate Universal Semantics?

• How do iconic and logical semantics interact in sign and in spoken language?

• What kind of meaning do gestures have?

• What kind of grammar do gestures have?

• Can there be an animal semantics?

• Can there be a music semantics?

• Is there a natural language perspective on semantic paradoxes?

Syllabus: [pdf]

Honor Code

To foster learning and discussion, students are discouraged from using phones, tablets or laptops during class, unless this is solely to take notes or to refer to papers assigned for the class.

[Summary of some data on this topic]

[Effects of laptop multitasking on users and nearby students]

Important

(i) Please sign up here if you plan to attend some or all of the seminar (irrespective of whether you plan to enroll or not; this is just so that the instructor has your email address, can assess how many people will attend, and which topics will be of particular interest to the audience).

(ii) The discussion sessions were scheduled by way of this Doodle poll.

[Please add to your name: (i) your affiliation, and (ii) E if you plan to formally enroll, and otherwise n % in case you plan to attend n% of the discussion sessions (we take Week 2 to be representative of any seminar week.]

Requirements

Besides active class participation, at least:

(i) 1 squib/mini-literature review + 1 additional squib or class presentation

(ii) 1 mini-term paper (to be emailed 10 days after the seminar end; ideally the mini-term paper will have been prepared by the two squibs/presentations in (i))

The squib and mini-term paper should be connected to the broad questions that will be addressed in the seminar.

Please contact the instructor soon after the beginning of the term to discuss (i) and (ii).

Readings

If they are not linked below, they will be made available in this Dropbox folder.

Schedule and topics [to be adapted as we go]

8 weeks in September-October 2018 - see below for sessions and readings.

–General sessions (2 hours 45 per week) are open to everyone

–Discussion sessions (1 hour 45 per week) are open to all students and postdocs (whether registered or not for the course).

Main sessions are in red; normal schedule: Tuesdays 3:30pm-6:10pm, 10 Washington Place Room 104

Discussion sessions are in blue; normal schedule: Mondays 1-2:45pm, 10 Washington Place 4th floor syntax/semantics lounge

(Readings that are no linked below are in this Dropbox folder.)

Background reading for sessions 1-4: Schlenker, The Semantics/Pragmatics Interface, without Section 2.

Tuesday, September 4, 2018 (3:30pm): Is the typology of linguistic inferences encoded in the lexicon?

(see above for the instructor's recommendations on phone, tablet and laptop use in class)

Main reading: Schlenker to appear, Gestural Semantics

Optional: Tieu et al. 2018 Linguistic inferences without words

Monday, September 10 (1pm): discussion session Alex Warstadt on 'just'

Tuesday, September 11, 2018: Presuppositions 1. Presupposition projection: an introduction 2. Triggering standard presuppositions (I)

Main reading: Abrusán 2011 Predicting the presuppositions of soft triggers

Optional: Schlenker Two Theories of Local Contexts, only Part I [= presentation of dynamic semantics]

Monday, September 17: discussion session Kyle Blumberg

Tuesday, September 18, 2018: How are presuppositions triggered? 2. Triggering standard presuppositions (II)

Friday, September 21, 12:30-2pm, Room 104: ad hoc special session with Josh Knobe: The Statistical, the Prescriptive, and the Undifferentiated.

Abstract: Some linguistic expressions are used to express statistical claims (e.g., quantificational adverbs like usually), while others are used to express prescriptive claims (e.g., deontic modals like should). Strikingly, however, a series of recent studies indicate that people's use of certain expressions is actually governed by a mix of the statistical and very prescriptive. This same basic result has been obtained in research on a number of very different sorts of linguistic expressions: impersonal pronouns, generics, gradable adjectives, and root modals. I will be discussing research on all four of these types of expressions, and on an attempt to understand why people's use of all of them involved this same statistical/prescriptive mixture.

Monday, September 24: discussion session Ben Holguín

Tuesday, September 25, 2018: Presuppositions vs. Cosuppositions

Optional readings:

Tieu et al., to appear

Schlenker, Iconic Presuppositions [gesture/sign comparison] or Gesture Projection and Cosuppositions [semantics of co-speech gestures]

Squib #1 due [by email]: Wednesday, September 26, 9pm EST.

Monday, October 1: discussion session Anna Alsop on gestures (1st hour); Masha Esipova on gestures (2nd hour)

=> articles and slides related to Anna Alsop's presentation are the shared folder.

Tuesday, October 2, 2018: How does sign language illuminate Universal Semantics?

Main reading: Schlenker to appear Visible Meaning

Links: Kuhn's 2018 lectures on sign language linguistics

Kuhn's NASSLLI lectures on sign language semantics

Monday, October 8: No class – NYU holiday.

Tuesday, October 9, 2018: No class – NYU classes are on a Monday schedule, and the discussion session is replaced earlier in the semester with a special session with Josh Knobe

Monday, October 15: discussion session Haoze Li on echo questions

Squib #2 due [by email]: Monday, October 15, 9pm EST.

Tuesday, October 16, 2018: What kind of grammar do gestures have?

Main reading: Abner et al. 2015 Gestures for Linguists: a Handy Primer

Optional (redundant with the content of the class presentation): Schlenker, Gestural Grammar

Friday, October 19 2:15-4:05pm, room 103 [note the time and place!!] Replacement session for October 22. Ioana Grosu

Monday, October 22: No class – this discussion session is moved to October 19.

Tuesday, October 23, 2018 [last general session]: Can there be a primate semantics?

Main readings:

Long version: Schlenker et al. Formal Monkey Linguistics

Short version: Schlenker et al. What do monkey calls mean?

Mini-term paper due [by email]: Friday, November 3, 2018, 9pm EST.

Instructions for the mini-squib(s)

Choose between A, B, and C. In either case, please consult with the instructor ASAP. Registered students should write 1 squib and give a class presentation or write an additional squib.

Note: Your squib can be very short. Ideally, it should present one very clear argument or empirical problem.

A. Write a brief review of an article that concerns one of the topics that will be discussed in the seminar.

Consult with the instructor on the choice of the paper. Your squib should be empirically and formally precise. Be sure to specify in your review:

(i) the empirical problem that is addressed, and the generalizations that are discussed [state them precisely];

(ii) what the main formal proposal is;

(iii) how the formal analysis is applied to several selected examples;

(iv) what some strengths and weaknesses of the proposal are.

B. Write a squib related to one of the topics that will be discussed in the seminar. Your squib should be empirically and formally precise. The squib should be very focused, and it should:

(i) define a clear problem, which could be:

(a) an empirical problem [interesting patterns of projection for connectives we haven’t discussed; empirical problems for the analyses we have discussed, etc.];

(b) a formal problem that arises in some of the theories we have discussed;

(ii) give a precise analysis of the relevant data and formalisms;

(iii) discuss one or several possible solutions.

C. Give a class presentation, to be discussed with the instructor.

Instructions for the mini-term paper

The mini-term paper should be a more elaborate version of B. above. The key is to find some crisp empirical and/or formal result, not to write something long. Approximate length: 6-10 pages.