This course will introduce students to compositional formal
semantics from a linguist's perspective. This means applying the
techniques of logic to describe how the meanings of sentences 
are built from the meanings of their parts. We will first 
distinguish different sorts of semantic indeterminacy, 
(generality, vagueness, and ambiguity), and different sorts of 
implication (implicature, presupposition, and entailment). This 
will deliver a core of conventional meaning that is amenable to 
truth-conditional analysis, using Frege's idea that predicates 
are functions to truth values, and the more recent idea that 
quantifiers are second-order relations. We will then approach 
at least one of two advanced topics: either intensionality 
(truth-conditional dependence on multiple contexts of 
evaluation), or aspect (the temporal properties of verb 
meanings). Students will have substantial practice with formal 
modeling, and will acquire analytical tools that are central to 
contemporary formal linguistics.

1) Meaning and truth

2) Ambiguity, generality, and vagueness

3) Implicature, presupposition, and entailment

4) Logic and set theory

5) Truth functions and their arguments

6) Generalized quantifiers

7) Intensionality and modal logic

8) Temporal properties of verb meanings