LANGUAGE, POWER & ACTION: A SEMINAR ON HIDDEN MEANING

Hans Kamp/David Beaver

Prerequisites

Graduate Standing and Consent of Graduate Advisor or instructor required.

Course Description

This class will cover a central topics in Philosophy of Language and Linguistics: the effects of context on meaning, and the way in which meanings index that context. We will construe indexicality†broadly, to refer to all aspects of meaning that are dependent on context. Thus indexicality covers a huge range of expression types and usages. It includes:

● paradigmatically indexical expressions like I† and now,

● expressions described as demonstrative or deictic,

● anaphoric expressions,

● modals and quantifiers for which the domain is contextually restricted,

● predicates of personal taste,

● discourse and dialogue markers that index aspects of the utterance situation or discourse, and

● various markers of perspective, subjective attitude and social relationship among interlocutors.

What all these phenomena have in common is that they challenge a simplistic view of meaning as a mapping from form to meaning. Meaning isn’t determined by form alone but by a combination of form and context. The general question this gives rise to is: What aspects of meaning are affected by context, and what aspects of meaning are invariant? And even more generally, what do indexical phenomena tell us about the use and interpretation of language, and the nature of the semantic/pragmatic interface?

We will consider these issues from both philosophical and linguistic perspectives, discussing both philosophical frameworks (e.g. two dimensional approaches to meaning, centered worlds), and linguistic generalizations (e.g. about pronominal systems, spatial deixis, and temporality).

Topics

1. Indexicality, Deixis and Anaphora: Demarcation of the notions and introduction to major accounts of them: Kaplan, Stalnaker (& Dynamic Semantics), Nunberg (1993).
2. Context Dependence: Forms it takes + nature of context and contextual information
3. Dimensions of indexicality: temporal, spatial, domain restriction, scalarity (e.g. the adverbs ‘too’, ‘enough’), empathy, honorifics, expressives,’’
4. ‘Reference’ to the self
5. Predicates of personal taste: non-truth conditional? Also: Contextualism vs. relativism.
6. Implicit arguments.

The purpose of this course is to teach about and encourage graduate research in syntax and semantics.   Students and faculty give presentations of work in progress, past research and research proposals.  Matters of professionalism are also discussed, such as ethics, IRB clearance, preparing proposals and finding funding, applying for jobs and giving job talks, writing style, and identifying topics to work on.  In addition, we read and discuss dissertations, papers, and books, and host outside speakers.

A graduate level introduction to the study of cognition, computation, mind and brain from an interdisciplinary perspective. We will study contemporary views of how the mind works, the nature of reason, and how mental processes are reflected in behavior. Central to the course will be the modern computational theory of mind. We will study the embodiment of that theory in a few pounds of grey meat, what we know about how that lump of meat processes language, thinks thoughts, and develops consciousness, and the relationships between brains and modern computational architectures and between human intelligence and artificial intelligence. 

Although there are no specific course prerequisites, you will be expected to think, read, and write about topics that involve a very broad range of disciplines and methodologies. Thus you will need to be flexible. You will read discursive philosophical material, historical accounts, and descriptions of experiments in psychology and neuroscience, but you will also need to be comfortable learning about relatively formal methods, for example involving basic statistics, probability theory, and theory of computation. However, it must be emphasized that you do not need to know any of this in advance, you just need to be fearless.

The purpose of this course is to teach about and encourage graduate research in syntax and semantics.   Students and faculty give presentations of work in progress, past research and research proposals.  Matters of professionalism are also discussed, such as ethics, IRB clearance, preparing proposals and finding funding, applying for jobs and giving job talks, writing style, and identifying topics to work on.  In addition, we read and discuss dissertations, papers, and books, and host outside speakers.

Seminars in Cognitive or Perceptual Systems. Three lecture hours a week for one semester. May be repeated for credit when the topics vary. Prerequisite: Graduate standing and consent of instructor.

This course is an introduction to the modern study of how the mind works. We will explore how humans perceive the world, how they acquire and represent knowledge, and how they reason, understand language and make decisions. Central to the course will be the computational theory of mind and the embodiment of thought and consciousness in a few pounds of grey meat. All these topics are central to the inter-disciplinary field of Cognitive Science, an area in which UT boasts enormous strength. The course will incorporate presentations and small panel discussions from faculty across Computer Science, Linguistics, Neuroscience, Philosophy, and Psychology.

Co-Instructors:

Prof. David Beaver

Prof. Zenzi Griffin

Prerequisites

Graduate Standing and Consent of Graduate Advisor required.

Course Description

An introduction to cognitive science, the new discipline emerging from the interaction of psychology, artificial intelligence, linguistics, philosophy, neuroscience, and evolutionary biology. The course will range broadly, examining a variety of approaches to the study of how humans and other intelligent systems represent, reason, understand, perceive, use language, learn, and plan purposeful actions. The central assumption is that the human mind is fundamentally a computational organ and that cognitive processes can be explicitly modeled. The course will cover the basic issues and contributions in the field, with particular emphasis on current research at UT. There will be frequent lectures by faculty from the relevant disciplines who are engaged in such research. Major topics in the course will include: * Neuroscience: systems neuroscience, functional brain mapping, relating localized brain damage to spared and damaged abilities, evolutionary biology. * Reasoning, Concepts, and Conceptual Development: categorization, children's theories of mind, nonmonotonic reasoning, qualitative reasoning, problem solving, mental models, schemas. * Computational Approaches: modularity, connectionism, symbol manipulation, knowledge representation, machine learning. * Language: speech perception, sentence parsing, natural language understanding, discourse representation, language acquisition, syntax. * Vision: computational theory, psychology of visual perception, visual imagination, attention, spatial reasoning. * Other Topics: Memory, Philosophy of Mind, Robotics, Implicit Knowledge, Emotion, Learning. Class will meet once a week for three hours with a break. Often we will have guest lecturers from around the University who are interested in Cognitive Science. These researchers will present aspects of their own work and its relationship to Cognitive Science as a whole. In addition, we will have periodic classes devoted to discussions of foundational issues in Cognitive Science. Class participation is important to this class, as it is to most seminars. Students are expected to do the readings each week and to come prepared to talk about issues related to those readings. While there will be guest speakers each week, it will always be appropriate to ask questions.

Grading Policy Grades will be assigned based on these factors: * 50%: Class attendance and participation, questions inspired by readings, and commentaries. Over the course of the semester, each student may miss 1.5 classes without penalty. Not participating in the class discussion is only marginally better than not attending class. Each class you will bring in two questions related to the assigned readings along with a short paragraph discussing what motivates the questions. * 10%: Homework and quizzes * 40%: Final project - cogsci grant application Policy on incompletes. No incompletes will be given. Policy on independence of work and plagiarism: You are encouraged to discuss the material presented in class with other students. All written work turned in by a student must be the independent work of that student. In the case of the collaborative projects, of course, the work must be the work only of the members of the group. Obviously, you are not to include text that you have not written without clear quotations and attributions of the original source.

Texts None.  Additional Materials Every week there will be additional readings. These readings will be available online as pdf files.

LIN 389S RSCH IN SYNTAX AND SEMANTICS

Prerequisite: Graduate standing.

May be repeated for credit.

Prerequisites

Graduate Standing and Consent of Graduate Advisor required.

Course Description

An introduction to cognitive science, the new discipline emerging from the interaction of psychology, artificial intelligence, linguistics, philosophy, neuroscience, and evolutionary biology. The course will range broadly, examining a variety of approaches to the study of how humans and other intelligent systems represent, reason, understand, perceive, use language, learn, and plan purposeful actions. The central assumption is that the human mind is fundamentally a computational organ and that cognitive processes can be explicitly modeled. The course will cover the basic issues and contributions in the field, with particular emphasis on current research at UT. There will be frequent lectures by faculty from the relevant disciplines who are engaged in such research. Major topics in the course will include: * Neuroscience: systems neuroscience, functional brain mapping, relating localized brain damage to spared and damaged abilities, evolutionary biology. * Reasoning, Concepts, and Conceptual Development: categorization, children's theories of mind, nonmonotonic reasoning, qualitative reasoning, problem solving, mental models, schemas. * Computational Approaches: modularity, connectionism, symbol manipulation, knowledge representation, machine learning. * Language: speech perception, sentence parsing, natural language understanding, discourse representation, language acquisition, syntax. * Vision: computational theory, psychology of visual perception, visual imagination, attention, spatial reasoning. * Other Topics: Memory, Philosophy of Mind, Robotics, Implicit Knowledge, Emotion, Learning. Class will meet once a week for three hours with a break. Often we will have guest lecturers from around the University who are interested in Cognitive Science. These researchers will present aspects of their own work and its relationship to Cognitive Science as a whole. In addition, we will have periodic classes devoted to discussions of foundational issues in Cognitive Science. Class participation is important to this class, as it is to most seminars. Students are expected to do the readings each week and to come prepared to talk about issues related to those readings. While there will be guest speakers each week, it will always be appropriate to ask questions.

Grading Policy Grades will be assigned based on these factors: * 50%: Class attendance and participation, questions inspired by readings, and commentaries. Over the course of the semester, each student may miss 1.5 classes without penalty. Not participating in the class discussion is only marginally better than not attending class. Each class you will bring in two questions related to the assigned readings along with a short paragraph discussing what motivates the questions. * 10%: Homework and quizzes * 40%: Final project - cogsci grant application Policy on incompletes. No incompletes will be given. Policy on independence of work and plagiarism: You are encouraged to discuss the material presented in class with other students. All written work turned in by a student must be the independent work of that student. In the case of the collaborative projects, of course, the work must be the work only of the members of the group. Obviously, you are not to include text that you have not written without clear quotations and attributions of the original source.

Texts None.  Additional Materials Every week there will be additional readings. These readings will be available online as pdf files.

This is a graduate introduction to Semantics and Pragmatics, introducing students to basic logic, compositional interpretation, and the strategic reasoning involved in deciding what people mean by what they say. By the end, you should be able to follow a substantial portion of current work in the area. Topics covered include different notions of inference and entailment, presupposition, implicature, ambiguity, set theory, propositional logic, first order logic, lambda calculus for compositional interpretation, extraction and binding, quantification and generalized quantifiers , pronouns and ellipsis, basic dynamic semantics, basic intensionality and modality, event semantics, and tense and aspect.Grading PolicyThere will be assignments each week (40%), two reviews of recent journal papers (20%), and a take-home final (30%), plus a class participation component (10%).TextsIrene Helm and Angelika Kratzer. Semantics in Generative Grammar. Blackwell 1998.

Prerequisites

Graduate Standing and Consent of Graduate Advisor required.

Course Description

An introduction to cognitive science, the new discipline emerging from the interaction of psychology, artificial intelligence, linguistics, philosophy, neuroscience, and evolutionary biology. The course will range broadly, examining a variety of approaches to the study of how humans and other intelligent systems represent, reason, understand, perceive, use language, learn, and plan purposeful actions. The central assumption is that the human mind is fundamentally a computational organ and that cognitive processes can be explicitly modeled. The course will cover the basic issues and contributions in the field, with particular emphasis on current research at UT. There will be frequent lectures by faculty from the relevant disciplines who are engaged in such research. Major topics in the course will include: * Neuroscience: systems neuroscience, functional brain mapping, relating localized brain damage to spared and damaged abilities, evolutionary biology. * Reasoning, Concepts, and Conceptual Development: categorization, children's theories of mind, nonmonotonic reasoning, qualitative reasoning, problem solving, mental models, schemas. * Computational Approaches: modularity, connectionism, symbol manipulation, knowledge representation, machine learning. * Language: speech perception, sentence parsing, natural language understanding, discourse representation, language acquisition, syntax. * Vision: computational theory, psychology of visual perception, visual imagination, attention, spatial reasoning. * Other Topics: Memory, Philosophy of Mind, Robotics, Implicit Knowledge, Emotion, Learning. Class will meet once a week for three hours with a break. Often we will have guest lecturers from around the University who are interested in Cognitive Science. These researchers will present aspects of their own work and its relationship to Cognitive Science as a whole. In addition, we will have periodic classes devoted to discussions of foundational issues in Cognitive Science. Class participation is important to this class, as it is to most seminars. Students are expected to do the readings each week and to come prepared to talk about issues related to those readings. While there will be guest speakers each week, it will always be appropriate to ask questions.

Grading Policy Grades will be assigned based on these factors: * 50%: Class attendance and participation, questions inspired by readings, and commentaries. Over the course of the semester, each student may miss 1.5 classes without penalty. Not participating in the class discussion is only marginally better than not attending class. Each class you will bring in two questions related to the assigned readings along with a short paragraph discussing what motivates the questions. * 10%: Homework and quizzes * 40%: Final project - cogsci grant application Policy on incompletes. No incompletes will be given. Policy on independence of work and plagiarism: You are encouraged to discuss the material presented in class with other students. All written work turned in by a student must be the independent work of that student. In the case of the collaborative projects, of course, the work must be the work only of the members of the group. Obviously, you are not to include text that you have not written without clear quotations and attributions of the original source.

Texts None.  Additional Materials Every week there will be additional readings. These readings will be available online as pdf files.

This is a graduate introduction to Semantics and Pragmatics, introducing students to basic logic, compositional interpretation, and the strategic reasoning involved in deciding what people mean by what they say. By the end, you should be able to follow a substantial portion of current work in the area. Topics covered include different notions of inference and entailment, presupposition, implicature, ambiguity, set theory, propositional logic, first order logic, lambda calculus for compositional interpretation, extraction and binding, quantification and generalized quantifiers , pronouns and ellipsis, basic dynamic semantics, basic intensionality and modality, event semantics, and tense and aspect.Grading PolicyThere will be assignments each week (40%), two reviews of recent journal papers (20%), and a take-home final (30%), plus a class participation component (10%).TextsIrene Helm and Angelika Kratzer. Semantics in Generative Grammar. Blackwell 1998.

Prerequisites

Graduate Standing and Consent of Graduate Advisor required.

Course Description

An introduction to cognitive science, the new discipline emerging from the interaction of psychology, artificial intelligence, linguistics, philosophy, neuroscience, and evolutionary biology. The course will range broadly, examining a variety of approaches to the study of how humans and other intelligent systems represent, reason, understand, perceive, use language, learn, and plan purposeful actions. The central assumption is that the human mind is fundamentally a computational organ and that cognitive processes can be explicitly modeled. The course will cover the basic issues and contributions in the field, with particular emphasis on current research at UT. There will be frequent lectures by faculty from the relevant disciplines who are engaged in such research. Major topics in the course will include: * Neuroscience: systems neuroscience, functional brain mapping, relating localized brain damage to spared and damaged abilities, evolutionary biology. * Reasoning, Concepts, and Conceptual Development: categorization, children's theories of mind, nonmonotonic reasoning, qualitative reasoning, problem solving, mental models, schemas. * Computational Approaches: modularity, connectionism, symbol manipulation, knowledge representation, machine learning. * Language: speech perception, sentence parsing, natural language understanding, discourse representation, language acquisition, syntax. * Vision: computational theory, psychology of visual perception, visual imagination, attention, spatial reasoning. * Other Topics: Memory, Philosophy of Mind, Robotics, Implicit Knowledge, Emotion, Learning. Class will meet once a week for three hours with a break. Often we will have guest lecturers from around the University who are interested in Cognitive Science. These researchers will present aspects of their own work and its relationship to Cognitive Science as a whole. In addition, we will have periodic classes devoted to discussions of foundational issues in Cognitive Science. Class participation is important to this class, as it is to most seminars. Students are expected to do the readings each week and to come prepared to talk about issues related to those readings. While there will be guest speakers each week, it will always be appropriate to ask questions.

Grading Policy Grades will be assigned based on these factors: * 50%: Class attendance and participation, questions inspired by readings, and commentaries. Over the course of the semester, each student may miss 1.5 classes without penalty. Not participating in the class discussion is only marginally better than not attending class. Each class you will bring in two questions related to the assigned readings along with a short paragraph discussing what motivates the questions. * 10%: Homework and quizzes * 40%: Final project - cogsci grant application Policy on incompletes. No incompletes will be given. Policy on independence of work and plagiarism: You are encouraged to discuss the material presented in class with other students. All written work turned in by a student must be the independent work of that student. In the case of the collaborative projects, of course, the work must be the work only of the members of the group. Obviously, you are not to include text that you have not written without clear quotations and attributions of the original source.

Texts None.  Additional Materials Every week there will be additional readings. These readings will be available online as pdf files.

This is a graduate introduction to Semantics and Pragmatics, introducing students to basic logic, compositional interpretation, and the strategic reasoning involved in deciding what people mean by what they say. By the end, you should be able to follow a substantial portion of current work in the area. Topics covered include different notions of inference and entailment, presupposition, implicature, ambiguity, set theory, propositional logic, first order logic, lambda calculus for compositional interpretation, extraction and binding, quantification and generalized quantifiers , pronouns and ellipsis, basic dynamic semantics, basic intensionality and modality, event semantics, and tense and aspect.Grading PolicyThere will be assignments each week (40%), two reviews of recent journal papers (20%), and a take-home final (30%), plus a class participation component (10%).TextsIrene Helm and Angelika Kratzer. Semantics in Generative Grammar. Blackwell 1998.

We will consider how social traits are marked (or betrayed) by the language we use, and how corpus and computational methods can be employed to study such marking. Topics will include markers of a wide range of social and psychological factors, such as Politeness, Sentiment, Deception, Status, Gender, Depression, and Group Cohesion. As well as discussing and presenting theoretical literature on these topics, participants will be encouraged to engage in hands-on statistical and computational analysis of corpora or web sources.

Prerequisites

Graduate Standing and Consent of Graduate Advisor required.

Course Description

An introduction to cognitive science, the new discipline emerging from the interaction of psychology, artificial intelligence, linguistics, philosophy, neuroscience, and evolutionary biology. The course will range broadly, examining a variety of approaches to the study of how humans and other intelligent systems represent, reason, understand, perceive, use language, learn, and plan purposeful actions. The central assumption is that the human mind is fundamentally a computational organ and that cognitive processes can be explicitly modeled. The course will cover the basic issues and contributions in the field, with particular emphasis on current research at UT. There will be frequent lectures by faculty from the relevant disciplines who are engaged in such research. Major topics in the course will include: * Neuroscience: systems neuroscience, functional brain mapping, relating localized brain damage to spared and damaged abilities, evolutionary biology. * Reasoning, Concepts, and Conceptual Development: categorization, children's theories of mind, nonmonotonic reasoning, qualitative reasoning, problem solving, mental models, schemas. * Computational Approaches: modularity, connectionism, symbol manipulation, knowledge representation, machine learning. * Language: speech perception, sentence parsing, natural language understanding, discourse representation, language acquisition, syntax. * Vision: computational theory, psychology of visual perception, visual imagination, attention, spatial reasoning. * Other Topics: Memory, Philosophy of Mind, Robotics, Implicit Knowledge, Emotion, Learning.

Class will meet once a week for three hours with a break. Often we will have guest lecturers from around the University who are interested in Cognitive Science. These researchers will present aspects of their own work and its relationship to Cognitive Science as a whole. In addition, we will have periodic classes devoted to discussions of foundational issues in Cognitive Science. Class participation is important to this class, as it is to most seminars. Students are expected to do the readings each week and to come prepared to talk about issues related to those readings. While there will be guest speakers each week, it will always be appropriate to ask questions.

Grading Policy
Grades will be assigned based on these factors: * 50%: Class attendance and participation, questions inspired by readings, and commentaries. Over the course of the semester, each student may miss 1.5 classes without penalty. Not participating in the class discussion is only marginally better than not attending class. Each class you will bring in two questions related to the assigned readings along with a short paragraph discussing what motivates the questions. * 10%: Homework and quizzes * 40%: Final project - cogsci grant application Policy on incompletes. No incompletes will be given. Policy on independence of work and plagiarism: You are encouraged to discuss the material presented in class with other students. All written work turned in by a student must be the independent work of that student. In the case of the collaborative projects, of course, the work must be the work only of the members of the group. Obviously, you are not to include text that you have not written without clear quotations and attributions of the original source.

Texts
None.  Additional Materials Every week there will be additional readings. These readings will be available online as pdf files.

This is a graduate introduction to Semantics and Pragmatics, introducing students to basic logic, compositional interpretation, and the strategic reasoning involved in deciding what people mean by what they say. By the end, you should be able to follow a substantial portion of current work in the area. Topics covered include different notions of inference and entailment, presupposition, implicature, ambiguity, set theory, propositional logic, first order logic, lambda calculus for compositional interpretation, extraction and binding, quantification and generalized quantifiers , pronouns and ellipsis, basic dynamic semantics, basic intensionality and modality, event semantics, and tense and aspect.
Grading Policy

There will be assignments each week (40%), two reviews of recent journal papers (20%), and a take-home final (30%), plus a class participation component (10%).
Texts

Irene Helm and Angelika Kratzer. Semantics in Generative Grammar. Blackwell 1998.

For detailed Course Schedule, download attachment.

Topics of contemporary interest that may vary from semester to semester. Three lecture hours a week for one semester. May be repeated for credit when the topics vary. Prerequisite: For psychology majors, upper-division standing and Psychology 301 and 418 with a grade of at least C in each; for nonmajors, upper-division standing, Psychology 301 with a grade of at least C, and one of the following with a grade of at least C: Biology 318M, Civil Engineering 311S, Economics 329, Educational Psychology 371, Government 350K, Mathematics 316, Psychology 317, Sociology 317L, Social Work 318, Statistics 309.

This course is an introduction to formal syntax, which refers to the use of a mathematically precise formalism to model the syntax of human languages.  Formulating precise models allows us to study the properties of particular human languages empirically, testing our theories against the challenge of new data.  The course will introduce students to Head-Driven Phrase Structure Grammar (HPSG).  In HPSG, the words of a language are equipped with information about the way they combine with other words and phrases and the meaning of the resulting combination.   The forms and meanings of the parts of a sentence are combined bit by bit until we derive a meaning for the whole sentence. The lexicon also encodes the systematic relations between word forms, such as voice alternations and derivational cognates.  Since HPSG is a complete, fully explicit framework for grammatical description, students will be able to grasp the workings of an entire language, from morphemes to words to sentences, including a formal semantic system for representing meaning.  This is a hands-on course in which we will tackle syntax puzzles of increasing complexity.  LIN 372L is not an official prerequisite, but it is recommended as background to this course.

Textbook: Ivan Sag, Thomas Wasow, and Emily Bender. 2003. Syntactic Theory: A Formal Introduction, 2nd Edition. Stanford: CSLI Publications.

Basis for grading:  Class participation (10%), Problem sets (60%), Tests (30%)

Prerequisites:  LIN 306

LANGUAGE, POWER & ACTION: A SEMINAR ON HIDDEN MEANING

Hans Kamp/David Beaver

Prerequisites

Graduate Standing and Consent of Graduate Advisor or instructor required.

Course Description

This class will cover a central topics in Philosophy of Language and Linguistics: the effects of context on meaning, and the way in which meanings index that context. We will construe indexicality†broadly, to refer to all aspects of meaning that are dependent on context. Thus indexicality covers a huge range of expression types and usages. It includes:

● paradigmatically indexical expressions like I† and now,

● expressions described as demonstrative or deictic,

● anaphoric expressions,

● modals and quantifiers for which the domain is contextually restricted,

● predicates of personal taste,

● discourse and dialogue markers that index aspects of the utterance situation or discourse, and

● various markers of perspective, subjective attitude and social relationship among interlocutors.

What all these phenomena have in common is that they challenge a simplistic view of meaning as a mapping from form to meaning. Meaning isn’t determined by form alone but by a combination of form and context. The general question this gives rise to is: What aspects of meaning are affected by context, and what aspects of meaning are invariant? And even more generally, what do indexical phenomena tell us about the use and interpretation of language, and the nature of the semantic/pragmatic interface?

We will consider these issues from both philosophical and linguistic perspectives, discussing both philosophical frameworks (e.g. two dimensional approaches to meaning, centered worlds), and linguistic generalizations (e.g. about pronominal systems, spatial deixis, and temporality).

Topics

1. Indexicality, Deixis and Anaphora: Demarcation of the notions and introduction to major accounts of them: Kaplan, Stalnaker (& Dynamic Semantics), Nunberg (1993).
2. Context Dependence: Forms it takes + nature of context and contextual information
3. Dimensions of indexicality: temporal, spatial, domain restriction, scalarity (e.g. the adverbs ‘too’, ‘enough’), empathy, honorifics, expressives,’’
4. ‘Reference’ to the self
5. Predicates of personal taste: non-truth conditional? Also: Contextualism vs. relativism.
6. Implicit arguments.