Time: Fall 2023, Tuesday 14-16h (CET), starting October 17 (online and in person), October 10: in-person session only, 2023, 

Format: hybrid 

ZOOM link: https://univ-cotedazur.zoom.us/j/84547929892?pwd=ZmN6SUg5MWgyZmNOOCtvcFhpRFZQUT09

The semantics of events - walks, rain, jumping and thinking, has become a central topic in natural language semantics ever since the seminal 1967 paper of Donald Davidson on the topic caught the interest of linguists. This course first of all gives an overview of the ontology and semantics of events as well as the role events have come to play in syntactic theories. A second part of the course critically assesses standard event semantics in view of challenges coming from metaphysics (the distinction between events and actions, the distinction between actions and their 'products'), semantics (the full range of adverbial constructions) and generative syntax (cartographic syntactic theories). The course will also address questions such as why verbs are restricted to describing events when nouns allow reference to entities of any ontological category.

SCHEDULE

Handout 1 Preliminaries on Events, Ontology, Semantics, and Syntax

Handout 2: Davidsonian Semantics: The Semantics of Adverbials and Its Challenges

Handout 3: Events, States, and Facts

Handout 4: Classifications of Events and Event Predicates

Handout 5: The Part Structure of Events

Handout 6: Events and the Mass-Count Distinction

Handout 7: On the Ontology of Acts

Handout 8: The Ontology of Acts Continued