The third survey session will be devoted to discussing the foundational issues that most textbooks in formal semantics seem to care about. Our review of the Chomsky-Partee debate focused on one: the compositionality principle — the requirement that the meaning of an expression be determined only as a function of the meaning of its parts. What other properties will we require the semantic component of grammar to have? To find out, we proposed browsing through the introductory chapters of several textbooks on formal semantics.
The goal for tomorrow is to put together a list of methodological assumptions, theoretical constraints, theoretical desiderata, and the like, that you may have come across in your readings. We will see if any coherent picture arises. To the extent that it does, we will locate ourselves in the space of possible methodologies for building a semantics for natural languages. And in searching for methodological constraints we will face foundational issues that we will not be able to face when doing semantics in the general sessions — we will be too busy.
We are mostly interested in hearing what you have to say, so grab your notes and get ready for some fun discussion! If you are looking for inspiration, we have uploaded a handout that may help you with the readings.
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This entry was posted by fintel on Thursday, September 22nd, 2005, at 1:00 pm.
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