May 15

The last session of the workshop will feature Andrew McKenzie on switch reference in Kiowa, Jan Anderssen on telescoping, and Florian Schwarz on the typology of definites.

Situation Semantics

Situation semantics was developed as an alternative to possible worlds semantics. In situation semantics, linguistic expressions are evaluated with respect to partial, rather than complete, worlds. There is no consensus about what situations are, just as there is no consensus about what possible worlds or events are. According to some, situations are structured entities consisting of relations and individuals standing in those relations. According to others, situations are particulars. In spite of unresolved foundational issues, the partiality provided by situation semantics has led to some genuinely new approaches to a variety of phenomena in natural language semantics. This course will start out by looking at a few selected areas where situation semantics has been particularly successful: implicit quantifier domain restrictions, donkey pronouns, and exhaustive interpretations. Other possible topics include attitude ascriptions, questions, tense, aspect, nominalizations, implicit arguments, point of view, counterfactual conditionals, switch reference, and discourse relations.

This seminar will be taught as a research seminar with all the uncertainties that come with it: We'll start somewhere and won't know where we'll end up. The goal is to bring together phenomena that aren't usually looked at together. There will be more to read than anybody can manage. We will be groping in the dark most of the time. You have to develop survival skills. Registered students will focus on their semester project right from the start and will be guided and monitored all the way through.

Requirements: Attendance, readings, participation. A semester project on a topic that is - in some way or other - relevant for situation semantics, or any kind of semantics based on partiality like interval semantics or event semantics. This includes explorations of genuine alternatives to situation semantics.

Office hours, chat room times and emergency services: M, W, F from 9:00 to 11:00.

Overview article on situations in the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy.