LIGN 230 – Semantics

SPRING 2026

Course Details
Course Schedule
Useful Links

Brief course description

This course is a graduate level introduction to formal semantics for natural languages. It introduces students to the following topics:

  • the meaning of ‘meaning’ and the goals of semantic theory
  • the main data semantics aims to account for
  • some of the logical/mathematical formal tools semantics makes use of
  • syntax and semantics: how sentence meaning is built up compositionally
  • the meaning of different constructions
  • a quick look at some recent issues at the semantics/pragmatics interface

Instructor

Ivano Caponigro
E-mail: [email protected]
Office hours: by appointment

Lectures

Tue and Thu
9 – 10:50 am,
APM 4301

The following words of warning/wisdom are borrowed from my friend, colleague, and former advisor Daniel Büring:

Especially those of you unacquainted with formal semantics (I guess that’s most of you) will find (some of) the material we [cover] quite technical and challenging. It is important that you keep up with the reading and the discussion in class, and don’t fall behind, promising yourself to catch up next week. My own experience is that semantic formalism is acquired through excessive practice more than through deep thinking. As with any workout, you want to make sure you exercise the right muscles in the right way from the start. Tackle the homework and exercises while we discuss the material they are related to, discuss and work in groups, and take the opportunity to ask questions immediately, be it in class or in my office hours.

Course Details

Prerequisites

  • No previous knowledge of semantics nor logic is required
  • Basic knowledge of syntax is required (phrases, phrase structure rules, syntactic structures/trees)

Lecture Structure

Each lecture is roughly devided into two parts:

Part I

Core facts and notions and basic formal tools are introduced by means of slides (that are then posted) and readings (already posted on the course webpage); this part is a slightly more challenging version of the undergraduate semantic course

Part II

More complex formal tools (e.g, a formal logic) are introduced to handle more advanced issues (e.g., quantification, binding, and scope interaction); the class discussion is based on the assigned relevant readings from the course textbook

Textbook

Gennaro Chierchia & Sally McConnell-Ginet,
Meaning and Grammar,
2nd ed, MIT Press, 2000

Please, purchase the textbook ASAP; the PDFs of the assigned readings from the textbook are made available only for the first two weeks

PDF file Click here to download the list of typos in the textbook (please let me know if you find more).

The textbook is very comprehensive, dense at times. Make sure you allot enough time to work through the assigned readings.

We will only touch upon a fraction of the material covered in the book and rarely explore a given topic in such depth as the textbook does. Depending on your interests, you will find it useful to consult the parts not dealt with in this course as background readings.

Evaluation

The final grade is determined by students’ performance according to the following 4 factors, which are discussed one by one below:

  1. Class participation and readings ALL THE TIME (about 10%)
  2. Leading 1 class discussion (about 15%)
  3. 7 homework assignments (about 50%)
  4. 1 paper/puzzle presentation with handout/slides (about 25%)

1. Readings & Participation

The readings listed on the schedule below should be done prior to the class they are assigned to, in order to make the class discussion richer, deeper, and more lively.

Feel free to prepare a list of questions and remarks to ask:

  1. by emailing them to everybody in the class before class
  2. by writing them on the white board right before class starts
  3. by raising them right at the beginning of class

2. Leading class discussion

  • Each student is expected to lead the discussion in 1 class
  • “Leading the discussion” means to come to the class prepared with questions and/or remarks about the readings that were assigned for that class
  • The discussion leader will ask their questions and make their comments before anybody else
  • Questions/comments can be about specific details or broader issues the lecture and related readings touch on
  • Quality of the questions/comments matters more than quantity
  • E-mail Ivano a written version of your questions/comments with a brief written summary of the answers/feedback you received right after the class whose discussion you lead
  • You can choose to be a discussion leader for any class with the symbol ” Discussion leader“, starting from Week 2 until Week 9 included
  • E-mail Ivano to book the class you want to be a discussion leader of (first come first served!)

3. Homework

  • Posting: The 7 homework assignments are posted on this website (see Schedule below) by Friday at the latest
  • Submittion: Homework assignments are due one week later, by 6 pm on Friday (see Schedule below)
  • Collaboration: Homework can be discussed in group, but the answers must be written down individually (please indicate on your assignment which classmate you worked with, if any).

4. Paper/puzzle presentation

  • Each student is expected to give a presentation to the whole class on Finals week (date TBD)
  • The presentation has to be about 1 of the following 2 options:
    • one of the semantic papers listed below (first come first served) OR
    • one of the semantic puzzles linked below (no more than 2 students can present the same puzzzle and they can do so only in two separate presentations that were prepared independently without working together; first come first served)
      PDF file List of semantic puzzles with instructions ID and password are needed
      – Puzzle 2.12, “Verbs of propositional attitude” (presenter: Yage)
      (If you want to work on a specific puzzle that is not included in the list, please discuss it wth Ivano first no later than Thursday May 21)
  • E-mail Ivano and let him know about your presentation choice no later than Thursday May 21
  • Each presenter has 15 mins maximum for their presentation, with at least 3 mins for questions
  • Each presenter has to prepare a well-organized and detailed handout or slides with all the key data and arguments (see the list of semantic puzzles with instructions ID and password are needed)
  • E-mail Ivano a copy of your (possibly revised) handout/slides after your presentation

Papers

PDF file Bach, The algebra of events ID and password are needed

PDF file Carlson, A unified analysis of the English bare plural ID and password are needed

PDF file Chierchia, Scalar implicatures and their interface with grammar ID and password are needed

PDF file Chierchia, Scalar implicatures, polarity phenomena, and the syntax/pragmatics interface ID and password are needed

PDF file Chierchia, Reference to kinds across languages ID and password are needed

PDF file Dowty, Towards a semantic analysis of verb aspect and the English ‘imperfective’ progressive ID and password are needed [presenter: Michael]

PDF file Enç, The semantics of specificity ID and password are needed [presenter: Hongao]

PDF file Grice, Logic and conversation ID and password are needed [presenter: Alexis]

PDF file Ladusaw, On the notion of ‘affective’ in the analysis of Negative-polarity items ID and password are needed

PDF file Lewis, Adverbs of quantification ID and password are needed [presenter: Jiaang]

PDF file Lewis, Scorekeeping in a language game ID and password are needed [presenter: Drae]

PDF file Partee, Some structural analogies between tenses and pronouns in English ID and password are needed [presenter: Yufei]

PDF file Partee, Noun phrase interpretation and type-shifting ID and password are needed [presenter: Kun]

PDF file Reichenbach, The tenses of verbs ID and password are needed [presenter: Travis]

PDF file Stalnaker, Assertion ID and password are needed [presenter: Cassie]

Schedule

: ID and password are required

Week 1

DAY

TOPICS & MATERIALS

3/31

LECTURE 1

Introduction and overview

Slides slides ID and password are needed

  • Overview of the class, its structure, and its requirements
  • Intro to the complexity of language meaning
  • Intro to next class’ readings

4/2

LECTURE 2

What’s not lost in translation

Slides slides ID and password are needed

  • Core components of meaning that are preserved across languages
  • “Meaning” in different languages

Required readings:

Quick touch on Lexical Semantics: Basic meaning relations among words

Required reading:

Optional readings:

Week 2

DAY

TOPICS & MATERIALS

4/7

LECTURE 3

Which meaning?

Slides slides ID and password are needed

  • What is meaning?
  • What is semantics?

Required readings:

Discussion leader: Cassie

4/9

LECTURE 4

Slides slides ID and password are needed

Basic features of semantic theory

  • Main questions on semantic knowledge
  • Main properties of semantic knowledge:
    • compositionality
    • creativity
    • recursion

Core semantic facts/intuitions (I):

  • semantic ambiguity

Required reading:

Discussion leader: Hongao

Week 3

DAY

TOPICS & MATERIALS

4/14

LECTURE 5

Core semantic facts/intuitions (II)

Slides slides

  • Synonymy
  • Contradiction
  • Entailment
  • Reference
  • Truth
  • Truth Conditions
  • Paradox

Required readings:

Optional on paradoxes:

Discussion leader: Drae

4/16

LECTURE 6

Basic conceptual tools

Slides slides

  • Sets and some simple related notions
  • Possible worlds

Required reading:

Optional readings on sets:

Further basic conceptual tools: functions

Required reading:

  • Schwarzschild: Intro to functions (pp 1-9; the remaining pages are optional)
    (don’t worry too much about the formalism or whether you grasp every detail; try to get the gist and prepare lots of questions for our class discussion)

Optional reading:

  • TEXTBOOK, Appendix, pp. 534-539
    (only for lovers of formally rigorous definitions)

Fragment F1 (I): syntax

Required reading:

  • TEXTBOOK, Ch.2, pp. 73-75

Discussion leader: Travis

Friday 4/17

Homework 1 is due as a PDF by email by 6 pm

Hw 1 – Part 1 PDF file (fillable); Answer Key

Hw 1 – Part 2 PDF file Docx file; Answer Key

Week 4

DAY

TOPICS & MATERIALS

4/21

LECTURE 7

Modelling semantic intuitions with sets and worlds

Slides slides

  • Accounting for the core semantic intuitions
  • New definitions of:
    • synonymy
    • tautology
    • contradiction

Fragment F1 (II): semantics

Required readings:

  • TEXTBOOK, Ch.2, pp.75-87

Discussion leader: Jiaang

4/23

LECTURE 8

The meaning of logical words

Slides slides

  • negation (not)
  • conjunction (and)
  • disjunction (or)

Fragment F1 (III): types

Required reading:

  • TEXTBOOK, Ch.2, pp.87-98

Optional reading:

  • TEXTBOOK, Ch.2, pp. 99-110
    (it touches on various important issues our semantic theory raises that we won’t be able to address)

Discussion leader: Michael

Friday 4/24

Homework 2 is due as a PDF by email by 6 pm

Hw 2 – Part 1 PDF file (fillable); Answer Key

Hw 2 – Part 2 PDF file Docx file; Answer Key

Week 5

DAY

TOPICS & MATERIALS

4/28

LECTURE 9

Composing sentence meaning

Slides slides

  • Syntactic structure & semantic rules
  • The meaning of names
  • The meaning of verbs

Meanings as sets or as functions, and semantics types

Slides slides

Quantification (I) – Introduction

Required reading:

  • TEXTBOOK, Ch.3, pp.113-117

Discussion leader: Alexis

4/30

LECTURE 10

The meaning of common nouns and “the”

Slides slides

  • The basic meaning of common nouns
  • The meaning of the Determiner the
  • Meaning distinctions among common nouns:
    • count vs mass
    • collective vs atomic

Optional reading:

Quantification (II) – Predicate calculus: lexicon and syntax

Required reading:

  • TEXTBOOK, Ch.3, pp.117-122

Discussion leader: Jay

Friday 5/1

Homework 3 is due as a PDF by email by 6 pm

Hw 3 – Part 1 PDF file (fillable) Answer Key

Hw 3 – Part 2 PDF file Docx file Answer Key

Week 6

DAY

TOPICS & MATERIALS

5/5

LECTURE 11

Referential NPs vs. Quantificational NPs

Slides slides

  • The meaning of Referential NPs
  • The meaning of Quantificational NPs
  • On the meaning of Quantificational Determiners
  • Semantic ambiguity & Quantificational NPs

Quantification (III) – Predicate calculus: lexicon and syntax

Slides slides

Required reading:

  • TEXTBOOK, Ch.3, pp.122-141

Discussion leader: Yufei

5/7

LECTURE 12

Quantification (III) – Predicate calculus: semantics

Slides slides

Quantification (IV) – Quantification in English

Required reading:

  • TEXTBOOK, Ch.3, pp.142-157

Discussion leader: Jay

Friday 5/8

Homework 4 is due as a PDF by email by 6 pm

Hw 4 PDF file (fillable only; no part 2 this time!)

Week 7

DAY

TOPICS & MATERIALS

5/12

LECTURE 13

The meaning of adjectives

Slides slides

  • The basic meaning of adjectives
  • Meaning distinctions among adjectives:
    • intersective vs non-intersective
    • attributive vs predicative
    • gradable vs non-gradable

Quantification (V) – Fragment F2: syntax

Required reading:

  • TEXTBOOK, Ch.3, pp.158-159

Discussion leader: Andrea

5/14

LECTURE 14

Quantification (VI) – Fragment F2: semantics

Slides slides

Required reading:

TEXTBOOK, Ch.3, pp.159-168

Discussion leader: [available]

Friday 5/15

Homework 5 is due as a PDF by email by 6 pm
*Deadline for this homework is extended one week, to Friday 5/22*

Hw 5 – Part 1 PDF file (fillable) [extended deadline: by 6 pm, 5/22]

Hw 5 – Part 2 PDF file Docx file [extended deadline: by 6pm, 5/22]

Week 8

DAY

TOPICS & MATERIALS

5/19

LECTURE 15

The meaning of VPs/predicates

Slides slides

  • stage-level predicates vs. individual-level predicates
  • collective predicates vs. distributive predicates
  • kind predicates

Summary so far + quick touch on tense, aspect, modality, and conditionals

Slides slides

Quantification (VII): Pronouns and bound variables

Required reading:

  • TEXTBOOK, Ch.3, pp.168-187

Discussion leader: Kun

5/21

LECTURE 16

Lambda operator: introduction

Required reading:

  • TEXTBOOK, Ch.7, pp. 391-397

Lambda operator: applications

  • VP conjunction
  • relative clauses

Required reading:

  • TEXTBOOK, Ch.7, pp. 407-412, pp. 415-420

Discussion leader: Yage

Deadline to let Ivano know which paper or puzzle you are presenting on Finals Week

Week 9

DAY

TOPICS & MATERIALS

5/26

LECTURE 17

Generalized quantifiers and the meaning of NPs

Required reading:

  • TEXTBOOK, Ch. 9, pp. 501-51

Discussion leader: Tessa

5/28

LECTURE 18

Slides slides

From semantics to pragmatics

  • Context and context-sensitive expressions: pronouns, demonstratives, locatives, and others

Context-sensitive inferences (I)

  • Introducing context-sensitive inferences: presuppositions and implicatures
  • 4 tests to distinguish between entailments, presuppositions, and implicatures
  • More on presuppositions: P-family Test and presupposition triggers

Friday 5/29

Homework 6 is due as a PDF by email by 6 pm

Hw 6 – Part 1 PDF file (fillable)

Hw 6 – Part 2 PDF file Docx file

Week 10

DAY

TOPICS & MATERIALS

6/2

LECTURE 19

Slides slides

Context-sensitive inferences (II): more on implicatures

  • Main features
  • Grice’s rules of conversation
  • Scalar implicatures

6/4

LECTURE 20

Intensionality: The problematic data

Required reading:

  • TEXTBOOK, Ch.5, pp. 257-266

Optional reading:

Broad remarks and conclusions

Slides slides

Friday 6/7

Homework 7 is due as a PDF by email by 6 pm

Hw 7 – Part 1 PDF file (fillable)

Hw 7 – Part 2 PDF file Docx file

Finals week

DAY

TOPICS & MATERIALS

Wednesday 6/10
Thursday 6/11

Paper/Puzzle presentations

  • Each presenter has 15 mins maximum for their presentation, with at least 3 mins for questions
  • Each presenter has to prepare a well-organized and detailed handout or slides with all the key data and arguments
  • E-mail Ivano a copy of your (possibly revised) handout/slides after your presentation

Wednesday 6/10, 12pm-2pm, in person (AMP 4301) and on Zoom

  • Presentation 1
  • Presentation 2
  • Presentation 3
  • Presentation 4
  • BREAK
  • Presentation 5
  • Presentation 6
  • Presentation 7

Thursday 6/11, 9-11am, on Zoom only

  • Presentation 8
  • Presentation 9
  • Presentation 10
  • BREAK
  • Presentation 11
  • Presentation 12
  • Presentation 13