Semantics and Philosophy of Language
Program
Syntax, Semantics and Pragmatics at Chicago
Department of Linguistics
Department of Philosophy
Spring 2007
Spring quarter meetings will be held on Fridays, 11am - 1pm, in Classics 47.
- April 6: Chris Potts, University of Massachusetts, Amherst
Expressive content and semantic theory
- April 27: Aidan Gray, Chicago
Having your cake and also eating it: Quantification and non-contradiction in 'On denoting'
- May 11: TBD
- May 25: Chris Barker, New York University
The case against E-type donkey pronouns
- June 1: Jason Stanley, Rutgers University
Winter 2007
Winter quarter meetings will be held on Fridays, 11am - 1pm, Cobb 119.
- January 12: Discussion of Kratzer's paper
'Minimal pronouns: Fake indexicals
as windows into the properties of bound variable pronouns' led
by Yaron McNabb
- January 17: Angelika Kratzer, University of Massachusetts, Amherst
- February 16: Discussion of Elbourne's book Situations
and Individuals. We should focus on
chapters 2 and 3, though it will probably also be useful to
look at chapter 1 (the intro).
- February 23: Paul Elbourne, University of London
Fall 2006
Fall quarter meetings will be held Wednesdays, 4pm-6pm.- October 3: Organizational meeting
- October 17: E-type pronouns and donkey anaphora
Evans, G (1980) 'Pronouns'
Evans, G (1977) 'Pronouns, quantifiers and relative clauses (I)'
Evans, G (1977) 'Pronouns, quantifiers and relative clauses (II)'
- October 24: Kent Bach, San Francisco State University
Perspectives on Possibilities: Contextualism, Relativism, or What?
Background reading
Lasersohn, P (2005) 'Predicates of Personal Taste'
MacFarlane, J (2006) 'Epistemic Modals Are Assessment Sensitive'
- November 7: Dynamic models of anaphora
Heim, I. (1983) 'File change semantics and the familiarity theory of definiteness'
King, J (2006) 'Context dependent quantifiers and donkey anaphora'
- November 17: Jeff King, USC
- November 28: Nat Hansen, Chicago
Wittgensteinian Contextualism
Background reading
Searle, J (1983) 'The Background' in Intentionality, Cambridge University Press. Travis, C (2001) 'The Making of Sematnic Fact' in The Uses of Sense, Oxford University Press.