Introduction to Semantics SoSe 2022

The goal of this course is to introduce students to the practice of doing formal semantics of natural languages. The class is intended to help students learn the required skills to do semantic analysis. The semantic system that we will develop has two central tenets. First, following the long tradition initiated by logicians like Frege, Tarksi, Carnap and Montague, it aims at developing a truth-conditional semantic system, one where the meanings of a sentence is determined by stating the conditions under which it is true in the world. Second, the semantic system is compositional, i.e. it determines a systematic procedure that allows us to obtain the meaning of each sentence from the meaning of its parts. In the first half of the course we will learn standard formal tools which we will then apply and develop during the second half to a analyze a range of empirical phenomena, including adjectival modification, quantifiers and (in)definites, pronouns, attitude verbs, etc. This course has a heavy hands-on component, including in-class exercises as well as homework assignments.