Midterm Review

The Midterm Review Handout is now posted. Please let me know if you haven any specific topics or questions you’d like me to go over tomorrow.

Looking for Summer Research Opportunities?

The Penn Undergraduate Research Mentoring Program once again provides students with the opportunity to work on a research project with a faculty member over the summer. I have a project in there on presupposition processing – please contact me if you’re interested in learning more about the project and are thinking about applying! Here are some of the details from the PURM website:

Eligibility

All full-time undergraduates from Penn’s four undergraduate schools who are completing their first- or second-year of college are eligible to apply.

Procedures

Eligible projects can be viewed in this document. Please take note of the project titles so that you do not apply to the wrong project.

Students must apply via the Application Form no later than 4:00pm, February 20, 2012. Students may apply for up to three projects and will be required to indicate their first, second, and third choices.

Predicates Notes & HW 2

• Lecture 6 on Predicates (and Modification) is now up. You may want to review this before Thursday
• Homework 2 is also posted. It’s due 2/16. Take a look before class on Thursday so that we can address any questions you might have

Week 4; Homework 1

• The schedule has been updated for week 4
• The first homework assignment is posted (due Thursday 2/2)

Did you know about Penn’s Cognitive Science Major?

Check out the details in the new flyer for the major. Also see the major’s homepage

LanguageLog post on multiplicity of meanings

Just in time for our class discussion next week, a nice discussion of the many meanings words can have!

Week 2: Semantic Properties of Words and Sentence Meanings

The schedule for week 3, including assigned readings, is now posted.

Chomsky and Putnam on Internalism vs. Externalism

Putnam: Externalism – Its Motivation And Its Critics

Chomsky: ‘On Referring’ reconsidered

Information on Experiment Participation

The Psychology department’s subject pool has made available some detailed instructions on signing up for experiments on Experimetrix, which you will have to do to satisfy one of the class requirements. They can be found here.

Welcome to LING 255

Welcome to LING 255 – Formal Semantics and Cognitive Science, Spring 2012 edition. Watch this space for announcements throughout the semester. The first are these:

• The Syllabus is now online.
• The first readings are available (including chapter 1 of the textbook) online (see Schedule & Readings)
• I will use Zotero for making available readings and references. Please go ahead and join the class group there: http://www.zotero.org/groups/ling255
  • If you already have a zotero account, go to thegroup site and click on ‘join group’
  • If you don’t have one, either create one first, then do the above, or
  • send me an email with the email address you’d like to use to set up an account. I’ll send you a group invitation, and you’ll have to click on the link in the email to create an account.

  Please due this ASAP: the initial synching with Zotero can take some time.

Also, I’d like to have an idea of what background you have. Please fill out the brief class survey ASAP.