Semantics etc.

… is now available.

I have put one copy each of Soames’ handbook article and of Lewis’ scorekeeping paper on my filing cabinet. You can borrow them for your own xeroxing but return promptly so that other people have access too.

You can also look at Beaver’s handbook article, which he has online at http://montague.stanford.edu/~dib/Publications/handbook.ps. His article with Henk Zeevat on accommodation (which is on the syllabus for later in the semester) is also available online at http://montague.stanford.edu/~dib/Publications/accommodation.pdf.

A set of notes on presupposition is available.

… is now available.

“The Red Sox win the World Series”. A sentence that over the decades acquired the status of a semantic anomaly is now a simple, delicious truth. Yes!

As all of the more enlightened members of the readership of this web log will know, the Boston Red Sox vanquished their arch-enemies, the New York Yankees, and are now playing in the World Series against the St Louis Cardinals. [To those of you who don’t know what I am talking about or don’t care — I don’t really blame you, you were just not brought up right.]

This victory, which was close to miraculous, was cause for intense jubilation for me and my family. You see, apart from the fact that the Sox are our home town team, the Sox are in a true sense part of our family. My wife’s great grandfather (my father-in-laws’ grandfather) was JJ Lannin, who owned the Red Sox from 1914 to 1916 and won two World Series, more than any other individual Red Sox owner.

JJ was the one who signed Babe Ruth for the Sox. In 1916, he sold the franchise to Harry Frazee, who eventually sold Ruth to the Damn Yankees. The rest is history, as they say: the Sox have been suffering from the Curse of the Bambino ever since. They have come excruciatingly close to winning the World Series a whole bunch of times but always fell short by some kind of freak accident.

As all Sox fans know, this is the year: the Curse has been reversed (or maybe, as some people suspect, it has been trumped by the Curse of A-Rod). Actually, I figure that the turning point was not, as most people might think, the hiring by the new ownership of young whizz kid Theo Epstein, who as the Sox’s general manager put together this year’s team. No, the true turning point was this year’s induction of JJ Lannin to the Canadian Baseball Hall of Fame (JJ was from Quebec but made his fortune in Boston). On the weekend of his induction, our cousin Chris Tunstall threw out the first pitch at Fenway in a game against the Minnesota Twins that the Red Sox proceeded to win 9-2.

Unfortunately, the Red Sox management seems to have forgotten the crucial role our family played in getting the team to the World Series — we have not (yet?) been invited to the games. But no matter, these are exciting times.

Go Sox!

… is now available.

By popular request, we will cancel this Friday’s class meeting so that there is no conflict with NELS. Instead, we will extend the semester by one day and have our last class meeting on Dec 10. The course calendar has been updated.

… is now available.

I just found out that the paper on shifty operators by Anand & Nevins is not where it used to be, because Andrew’s web presence has moved to Harvard. The new location is: . I have updated the syllabus.

There is a short list of readings on the Answering Machine Paradox, in case you want to pursue this issue further.

… is now available.

There is an interesting post and set of comments on Crooked Timber on co-authorship in academia and whether having many co-authored papers is detrimental to one’s tenure prospects. It is clear that there are large variations between fields and among individual institutions.

The notes on referential definites are available. There are some exercises that will be the homework due 10/20.

… is now available.

In the most recent issue of the MIT Faculty Newsletter, one of my colleagues (Mary P. Rowe) reports on the experience of publishing her course materials on MIT’s open courseware site:

“In addition, I am also happy about the fate of my own intellectual property. I am suddenly getting more credit, including acknowledgment for a number of my ideas from the past. So one happy outcome was that I found one can actually get more recognition for one’s work via OCW. … (Of course this new recognition is sometimes expressed in quixotic terms — “you mean you came up with that concept?”)”

Think about the answering machine “paradox” which concerns the outgoing message “I am not here right now”.

The system we have in place says that “I” with respect to c,i denotes the speaker of c (Sc), that “here” denotes the location of Sc at the time of the utterance (tc), that “now” denotes the time of the utterance (tc). Show that we straightforwardly predict that “I am not here now” cannot be uttered truthfully.

Given this system, what could be said to explain why the outgoing message is not in fact useless?

Or, would you argue that the system needs to be changed? If so, how?

Write up to two pages on this topic. Due next Friday 10/8 in class, email submission prior to class ok and even preferred.

Listeners/visitors are welcome to hand in their thoughts as well.

Sappho’s Breathing links to a mostly satisfying rant about how faculty with children are treated in academia — take a look at the comments as well.

This morning, I was asked to review a research proposal for the Netherlands Organisation for Scientific Research (NWO, the Dutch research council). In the instructions, one finds the following statement:

The Governing Board of NWO also feels that it is very important that the assessment of applicants’ CVs and publications lists should take sufficient account of any prolonged periods of leave connected with the birth or upbringing of children or the care of other family members.

I love Holland.

I would like to add that one should of course also take sufficient account of prolonged periods of trying to get work done while not on leave but still engaged with the upbringing of small children or the care of other family members — not an easy lifestyle for sure.

SALT 15 has been announced:

SALT 15 at UCLA, March 25-27, 2005

Invited Speakers:
David Beaver, Stanford University
Scott Soames, University of Southern California
Anna Szabolcsi, New York University

Abstracts due: December 20, 2004, 12pm Eastern time

David Dowty has posted a partial draft and a handout from his legendary talk on same and different:

David Dowty. “Same and Different: A Response to Stump and Carlson”, unpublished talk given at a conference at the University of Texas in 1985.

Note: The HTML code on that page is incorrect. The correct links are for the partial draft and for the handout.