Goal

The goal of the course is to provide an overview of some recent and exciting research within the following three research topics in semantics: anaphora, stativity and indexicality. Registered students will have a chance to investigate these topics in detail through:

• Voluntary lab sessions with the semantics guru
• In-class presentations of key ideas in assigned articles
• The development of research statements
• A conference abstract and a research squib

Students and faculty sitting-in will be exposed to outstanding questions concerning the aforementioned research topics and some proposed solutions. Everyone will have the opportunity to interact with several planned visitors throughout the semester.

Timeline description (subject to change)

The seminar will begin by exploring the structure of discourse and its effects on anaphora resolution. A brief overview of psycholinguistic research by Andy Kehler, Hannah Rohde and colleagues will motivate the hypothesis in (1), first proposed by Jerry Hobbs:

(1) Resolving the interpretation of a pronoun and the establishment of rhetorical relations are correlated and mutually constraining tasks.

We will then ask whether (1) holds of context sensitive expressions more generally.

Based on ongoing research with Una Stojnić, I will argue that (1) extends to the temporal indexical, now. In this way, we explore a further parallel between nominal and temporal anaphora (Partee 1983, Krazter 1998). Registered students will be asked to write up their first research proposal in which they explore temporal indexicals and/or anaphors in other languages (hopefully ones which are understudied and underrepresented) in light of (1). Subsequently, Sam Carter will join us to present an analysis in which now is treated as a dyadic, temporal connective. We will then discuss what a typology of temporal connectives (e.g. when/while; before/after) may look like.

The analysis of now that we motivate leads to the conclusion that states are not reducible to mere temporal intervals; we should distinguish (in our ontology) between events, states and times. This conclusion is controversial and registered students will be asked to write up their second research proposal in which they take a position with respect to the competing literature on the existence of underlying states in the semantics of verb phrases (see, e.g., Theoretical Linguistics 31(3); GLOW 2015 workshop).

The analysis of now that we motivate will also lead us to ask what counts as a pure indexical. An answer to this question depends on which theory of context and prominence one adopts. We will first look at recent work by Craige Roberts on indexicality and then compare it with recent work by Una Stojnić, Matthew Stone and Ernie Lepore. Craige and Una will visit us (before and after spring break respectively) to discuss their research. Registered students will be asked to write their third (and final) research proposal in which they interact with the research and take a position.

After exploring indexicality, Hans Kamp hopes to visit us (to be confirmed) to talk about his forthcoming work on definite NPs, as they occur in discourse. Subsequently, we will have a tutorial from Dag Haug, who will teach us his pioneering theory, PCDRT, which allows us to model anaphora resolution without syntactic coindexation. If time allows, we will attempt to apply this theory to model temporal cataphora in Sylvie.

Finally, we will look at some work in progress by Gillian Ramchand on events and situations. Gillian will visit us on the final Monday of the semester.