Handouts, slides, and lecture notes from weekly lab sessions and guest course lectures
GUEST LECTURES:
Lecture on science writing and the first writing project
- Lecture handout
- Goals of writing project: Show that you understand what the Principle of Compositionality is and how it is a crucial part of human language. Show that you can determine whether a purported “language” in fact exhibits compositionality. Show that you can read primary literature critically. Gain understanding of a particular style of writing and explanation. Even if you never intend to be a science writer, the ability to explain a complex topic in more manageable terms is a very valuable skill to have.
Lecture on semantic fieldwork and the second writing project
LAB MATERIALS:
Week One: Introduction to set theory
Week Two: Introduction to ordered pairs, relations, and functions
Week Three: Reviewing homework 1 (on set theory, functions, and relations)
Week Four: Schoenfinkelization and writing functions for transitive verbs with lambda notation
Week Five: Reviewing lambda notation and determining truth conditions
Week Six: Midterm review on set theory, functions, lambda notation, intensions vs. extensions, plus additional discussion about adjectives
Week Seven: Presuppositions vs. entailments and the semantics of definite descriptions
Weeks Eight through Eleven: Combined lab and main class sections to conduct fieldwork on mica