Course Descriptions

Fundamentals of Syntactic Analysis

Nikita Bezrukov

This introductory-level course will acquaint you with some of the key topics in contemporary syntactic theory, a subfield of linguistics that explores complex hierarchical structures such as words and sentences. For example, how do we explain the fact that unlockable can both mean 'not capable of being locked' and 'capable of being unlocked'? Or what is the function of 'it' in a sentence like It snowed heavily yesterday? These are some of the topics to be addressed. As an integral part of this course, we will also focus on more hands-on techniques of how to analyze the natural language data, with examples drawn from English, Armenian, and Russian. Although there are multiple approaches to syntax on the market right now, this class will focus on doing syntactic analysis using a transformational framework such as Minimalism (Chomsky 1993).

Discourse Semantics

Julian Schlöder

Linguists who study meaning do so on multiple levels. One can study the meaning of words (such as “someone” or “walk”) or study how words compose to form meaningful sentences (like “Someone walks.”). In discourse semantics, we study how multiple sentences compose to form meaningful narratives. For example, there are some words and sentences that require other sentences to be meaningful. The sentence “He walks there” is only meaningful if preceded by a sentence like “John just left for work”, in which case a narrative is formed about how John is going about his day.

This course introduces students to problems and methods in the scientific analysis of discourse semantics, with a particular focus on the methodology called Discourse Representation Theory. This general method will allow us to analyze simple narratives and explain the meanings of pronouns (“he”, “she”, ...), time adverbs (“now”, “then”, “before”, ...), and determiners (“the”, “every”, “someone”, ...).

Discourse Pragmatics

Daniel Altshuler

The discourses "Arnold left. Bertha cried" and "Bertha cried. Arnold left" contain identical sentences, but trigger different inferences. Why should this be? And why is a discourse like "Phil tickled Stanley. Sue poked him" ambiguous as to whether "him" refers to Phil or Stanley? What sort of contexts force an interpretation in which "him" refers to Phil or to Stanley? Finally, why is the discourse "I went to Aparan . I have family there" coherent, while the following discourse is incoherent: "I went to Aparan. I have a pair of shoes"?

Such questions are at the heart of discourse pragmatics and the goal of the class will be to learn a theory that addresses them. Key to the theory is the idea that psychological primitives, called coherence relations, characterize the different ways in which sentences can attach to one another (Hobbs, 1979; Mann & Thompson, 1987; Kehler, 2002; Asher & Lascarides, 2003). Another key idea is that these coherence relations impose a particular discourse structure. The course will equip students with a working understanding of the formal and informal theory of coherence relations and show how the theory can be applied to narratives of different kind (literary text, sequential art and film).

Computational Linguistics

Karine Megerdoomian

The course offers an introduction to Computational Linguistics, which incorporates research and techniques for processing language using computers at all levels of linguistic structure - including morphology, morpho-syntax, syntax and lexical semantics. The class will provide an overview of various topics and tasks in computational linguistics, from a linguist's perspective. These include applications such as machine translation, social media analytics, and sentiment analysis. We will discuss knowledge-based approaches in building morphological analyzers and Part-of-Speech taggers, as well as statistical approaches (e.g., n-gram analysis, syntactic parsing, classification with machine learning). The goal of the class is to provide a sense of the state of the art in the field, the main approaches used, and an understanding of how to conceptualize and solve problems in computational linguistics. No computer or programming knowledge is required.

Virtue Ethics

Arshak Balayan

What kind of a person should one aspire to become? Virtue ethics attempts to answer this question. In this crash course we will start with Aristotle’s answer. Then we will consider contemporary interpretations/developments of virtue ethics. We will cover Alasdair McIntyre's relativistic and Martha Nussbaum's non-relativistic account of virtues. We will also discuss challenges to virtue ethics put forward by Friedrich Nietzsche and John Doris’s moral situationism.

Things and Stuff

Ned Markosian

This advanced course in contemporary metaphysics will explore a number of related issues concerning the metaphysics of material objects (things) and the matter that constitutes them (stuff). Topics will include (1) the distinction between the physical and the non-physical, (2) the nature of fundamentality, (3) different theories of the mereology of physical objects, (4) the distinction between things and stuff, (5) the main reasons for positing stuff, (6) the metaphysics of time, and (7) a defense of a dualist ontology of both things and stuff. No previous familiarity with these topics will be presupposed.

Philosophy of Art

Daniel Altshuler, Maria Baghramian, Arshak Balayan, Ned Markosian, Julian Schlöder

This course will cover a variety of topics in Philosophy of Art, perhaps including: (i) the nature and purpose of art; (ii) disagreement about taste; (iii) the nature of fiction and fictional characters; (iv) ontological questions about works of art from the different genres of art; (v) imaginative resistance (the phenomenon that occurs when one reads, for example, “Once upon a time there was a powerful girl who could make round squares and silent noises”); and (vi) the nature of aesthetic properties (are they in the world or in our heads?). The course will be team-taught by four different instructors, so it is likely to be a general free-for-all, but in principle the method of instruction will be lecture and discussion, with different instructors responsible for the lecture/discussion on different days .

The Philosophies of Wittgenstein

Maria Baghramian

Ludwig Wittgenstein (1889—1951) is one of the most significant and influential philosophers of recent times. But his unique philosophical approach and distinctive style of writing have also made him a cult-like figure in wider intellectual and artistic circles. Indeed, probably more than any contemporary philosopher, Wittgenstein’s life and work have been a source of inspiration for film-makers, painters, novelists and composers alike. Wittgenstein is also unusual because of at least two, some would say three, radical changes in his philosophical thinking and approach.

This short course covers key aspects of early and later Wittgenstein’s views on language and meaning and also examines their connections with the metaphilosophical question of “Is there a best method for doing philosophy?”