LING233B: Resource Accounting at the Syntax-Semantics Interface
Ash Asudeh (asudeh@csli.stanford.edu), Dick Crouch (crouch@parc.xerox.com), and Mary Dalrymple (dalrymple@parc.xerox.com)
Winter 2002
Monday 10:00-12:00, 60/62L; Tuesday 10:00-12:00, Meyer 143

Overview

This course provides an introduction to the "glue" theory of semantic composition, a theory of the syntax-semantics interface which pairs meaning representations and syntactic structures with linear logic. We explore logical and computational aspects of meaning composition and discuss the semantic treatment of a variety of linguistic phenomena, including ellipsis, control, and modification. More information and background on glue theory is available at http://www.parc.xerox.com/istl/groups/nltt/semantics.

Requirements

Readings

Readings for the class are available in http://www.stanford.edu/class/linguist233b/restricted/, accessible only to class participants.

Timetable

Week 1, Wed, Jan 9: introduction, motivation

Week 2, Mon, Jan 14: introduction to basics of LFG, glue approach. Readings: Falk (2001, Chapter 1), Dalrymple (2001, Chapter 2). Handout: A Brief Introduction to LFG.

Week 2, Wed, Jan 16, 11-1, 60/62L (note exceptional meeting time/place): basics of proof theory. Readings: Crouch and van Genabith (2000). Handout: Basics of Proof Theory.

Week 3, Mon, Jan 21: no class (Martin Luther King Day).

Week 3, Tues, Jan 22: Review. Lab exercise: semantics for simple sentences; due Feb 5 (10%). Handouts: LFG Review, Using XLE at Stanford, Using X Windows (MI/X) on Macs in Meyer 143.

Week 4, Mon, Jan 28: Modification/quantification. Readings: Dalrymple (2001), Chapters 9, 10. Handout: Modification and quantification.

Week 4, Tues, Jan 29: Modification/quantification. Handouts: Lab & More on Quantification, How to Run the Glue Semantics. Lab exercise: modification and quantification; due Feb 12 (20%).

Week 5, Mon, Feb 4: Modification/quantification. Readings: Gupta and Lamping (1998). Handout: Quantifiers as Modifiers.

Week 5, Tues, Feb 5: Glue in HPSG. Readings: Asudeh and Crouch (2002).

Week 6, Mon, Feb 11: Raising and control. Readings: Dalrymple (2001), Chapter 12, Sections 1&2; Falk(2001), Chapter 5. Handout: Equi and raising verbs.

Week 6, Tues, Feb 12: Lab exercise: raising/equi (control) ; due Feb 29 (10%).

Week 7, Mon, Feb 18: no class (President's Day).

Week 7, Tues, Feb 19: Raising and control. Readings: Asudeh (2000). Handout: Issues in the syntax and semantics of equi.

Week 8, Mon Feb 25: Coordination. Readings: Dalrymple (2001), Chapter 13. Handout: Coordination.

Week 8, Tues, Feb 26: Ellipsis. Readings: Lappin (1996). Handout: Ellipsis.

Week 9, Mon, Mar 4: Ellipsis and glue. Readings: Crouch (1999), Asudeh and Crouch (unpublished).

Week 9, Tues, Mar 5: Relative clauses. Readings: Dalrymple (2001), Chapter 14. Handout: Relative clauses. Lab exercise: relative clauses; due Mar 12 (10%).

Week 10, Mon, Mar 11: Relative clauses, resumptive pronouns. Readings: Asudeh dissertation proposal, section 5.

Week 10, Tues, Mar 12: Wrapup. Final exercise, student's choice: Lab or paper exercise (to be assigned), paper.

References

Asudeh, Ash. 2000. Functional identity and resource sensitivity in control. In Miriam Butt and Tracy Holloway King (editors), On-line Proceedings of the LFG2000 Conference.

Asudeh, Ash and Richard Crouch. 2002. Glue semantics for HPSG. In Dan Flickinger and Andreas Kathol (editors), On-line Proceedings of the HPSG '01 Conference. Stanford, CA: CSLI Publications. To appear.

Crouch, Richard. 1999. Ellipsis and glue languages. In Shalom Lappin and Elabbas Benmamoun (editors), Fragments: Studies in Ellipsis and Gapping. Oxford: Oxford University Press.

Crouch, Richard and Josef van Genabith. 2000. Linear Logic for Linguists: ESSLLI-2000 course notes. Birmingham, UK: ESSLLI. MS in preparation with CSLI Press.

Dalrymple, Mary. 2001. Lexical Functional Grammar, volume 34 of Syntax and Semantics. New York: Academic Press.

Falk, Yehuda N. 2001. Lexical-Functional Grammar: An Introduction to Parallel Constraint-Based Syntax. Stanford University: CSLI Publications.

Gupta, Vineet and John Lamping. 1998. Efficient linear logic meaning assembly. In Proceedings of COLING/ACL98: Joint Meeting of the 36th Annual Meeting of the ACL and the 17th International Conference on Computational Linguistics, Montréal. Association for Computational Linguistics.

Lappin, Shalom. 1996. The interpretation of ellipsis. In Shalom Lappin (editor), Handbook of Contemporary Semantic Theory, pp. 145-175. Oxford: Blackwell Publishers.