Learning objectives
The objective of the course is to introduce to the contemporary debate on logical form and on the logical-philosophical analysis of natural language.
Prerequisites
There are no prerequisites. It is however useful to have a rudimentary knowledge of the logic of propositions and of the calculus of first order.
Course unit content
The purpose of the course is the syntactical and semantic analyses of sentences. Some modern and contemporary theories will be considered offering logical and linguistic analyses; in particular those of Frege, Russell, Quine (with regard to logic tradition), Chomski, Montague, Lambek (regarding the linguistic or logical-linguistic tradition.
Full programme
Course title: Categorial Grammars
In approaching Montague's grammar, we refer particularly to The Proper Treatment of Quantification in Ordinary English, concentrating on certain specific topics. The first point on which the course focuses is the distinction between 'formal' and 'material' meaning of syntactic types; the second area is the concept of the syntactic analysis tree. These aspects are developed further in Montague and by contemporary scholars, in part with regard to (meta) theoretical interaction. In the second part of the course, different approaches to syntactic types are considered. For instance, in Lambek's grammar, the objects of a certain category are seen as 'material' meanings of the syntactic types, whereas the corresponding objects of the semantic meaning (considered as a category) constitute the 'formal' counterparts.
Bibliography
Lecture notess relating to the courses can be downloaded from the website http://www.slprbo.unipr.it in the folder "documents" (password access for course participants).
Teaching methods
Oral lessons
Assessment methods and criteria
short paper + oral examination
Other information
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