Semantics

Budapest University of Technology and Economics, 2010/2011 spring

Reading Seminar

1. Introduction

What is meaning and why is this important for us? The place of semantics in the order of sciences. Reading: Montague 1973 Schubert and Pelletier 1982. Grammar, interpretation, arithmetics.

2. Knowledge representation

What does a computer have to know? Quillian 1969 Belnap 1977 semantic networks, multiple-valued logic.

3. The lexicon

What does a human know? Reading: Katz and Fodor 1963 Kiparsky 2002 Lexicon, morphosyntax.

4. Hierarchy

How do we arrange things? Aristotle Kennedy and McNally Properties, adjectives.

5. Ontology

What can be known? Smith and Casti 1994 Lakoff 1969 Naive physics, naive logic. Generative Semantics.

6. Machines

How to calculate semantic structures? Eilenberg 1975

Additional Readings

1. Barendregt: The lambdta calculus Lambda calculus, Scott domains. Motivation: Raymond Turner (1983): Montague semantics, nominalisations and Scott's domains. Linguistics and Philosophy 6, 259-288
2. Huck, Geoffrey J.; & Goldsmith, John A.. (1995). Ideology and Linguistic Theory: Noam Chomsky and the deep structure debates. New York: Routledge.
3. Ronald Brachman and Hector Levesque (2004) Knowledge Representation. Morgan Kauffman
4. Nicholas Findler (1979) Associative Networks. Academic Press
5. RJ. Nelson (1982) The logic of mind. Reidel
6. Schank 1972