CS 701:	SEMINAR:  SITUATION SEMANTICS


	  Spring 1986					William	J. Rapaport
	  W 4-6:30					Bell 214
	  Bell 224					636-3193
	  Office Hours:	tba & by appointment


	  TEXTS:

	  Required:

	  (1)  Barwise,	Jon, and John Perry, Situations	and Attitudes (Cam-
	       bridge, Mass.:  MIT Press, 1983).

	  (2)  Linguistics and Philosophy, Vol.	8, No. 1 (February 1985).

		 Recommended:

	  (1)  Dowty, David R.;	Robert E. Wall;	and Stanley Peters,  Intro-
	       duction to Montague Semantics (Boston:  D. Reidel, 1981).


	  TOPICS:  Situation Semantics is a recent theory of semantics	for
	  natural  language,  developed	 by John Perry and Jon Barwise in a
	  series of articles in	Journal	of Philosophy and  Midwest  Studies
	  in  Philosophy  in  1981,  and in their book Situations and Atti-
	  tudes.  Their	theory was developed  in  opposition  to  classical
	  theories of semantics	and to Montague	semantics in particular.  A
	  large	multi-disciplinary (computer science, philosophy,  linguis-
	  tics,	 etc.)	research program has developed around the theory at
	  the Center for the Study of Language and Information at  Stanford
	  University, and it is	being used by the Japanese Fifth-Generation
	  project for  their  natural-language-understanding  and  machine-
	  translation systems.

	  This seminar will focus on Barwise and Perry's  book,	 Situations
	  and Attitudes, on responses to the theory by linguists and philo-
	  sophers, and on subsequent research based on	the  theory.   Some
	  background  on  semantic theories in general,	and Montague seman-
	  tics in particular, will also	be provided in the seminar.

	  TERM PROJECT AND GRADING:  Students will be expected to prepare a
	  term	paper  or  programming	project, and possibly present their
	  results in the seminar.  An extended abstract	or rough  draft	 of
	  the paper or project will be due on March 12.	 The final paper or
	  project will be due April 30.	  The course grade will	be a  func-
	  tion of the project grade and	class participation in the seminar.