Description

This course offers a quick introduction to natural language semantics in
the logical tradition initiated by Richard Montague. It is geared towards
students who have a good working knowledge of (classical) logic but no
previous exposure to natural language semantics. After having taken the
course, students will have a good understanding of the essentials of
semantics in the Montague tradition and be familiar with some classical
analyses of semantic phenomena carried out within this tradition. They
will also have a basic understanding of how some offshoots of the
Montagovian paradigm, such as Situation Semantics and Discourse
Representation Theory, relate to the original theory and how results and
ideas developed within such approaches can be brought back into the fold.

Since the challenge of this course consists of explaining the essentials
of the field in five lectures and to bring students to a considerable
level of sophistication within a very short period of time, we will need
to strip Montague's original theory of everything that does not
strictly contribute to the essence of analyses done within the framework.
Students already familiar with Montague's theory therefore may
nevertheless want to take the course in order to see how such radical
streamlining can be carried out.