Situation-Based Approaches in Semantics fall 2025 (handouts)

Teaching

Friederike Moltmann » Teaching » Situation-Based Approaches in Semantics fall 2025 (handouts)

Date: November 10, 2025

Situation-Based Approaches in Semantics

In this hybrid course, we will discuss conceptions of situations and similar entities (states, states of affairs, events, tropes, and facts) and their roles in the semantics of natural language. We will discuss the various semantic roles of situations and similar entities in situation-based semantic approaches, in particular truthmaker semantics, and how those roles bear on the ontology of those entities. We will particularly focus on the part-whole structure of entities, taking into account recent research on the metaphysics of relations, ontological dependence, and part-whole structure in general

This is both an introductory course and a very advanced course, presenting new research, especially on part-whole structure

Time:

Mondays 17h-19h, R. 009 (MSHS Sud Est)

September 22, 2025: preliminary in person meeting for local students

September 29, 2025:

Situations, Facts, and States of Affairs, and their Roles in Semantics

Handout 1

Reading:

A. Kratzer: 'Situations in Natural Language Semantics'. Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy, 2007/2021.

M. Textor: 'States of Affairs'. The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy. (Summer 2021 Edition)

K. Mulligan and F. Correia: 'Facts'. The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy. (Winter 2021 Edition)

Further reading:

F. Moltmann: 'Modes, Disturbances, and Spatio-Temporal Location'. To appear in C. Rossi and A. Moran (eds.): Objects and Properties. Oxford UP, Oxford.

F. Moltmann: Reference to Properties in Natural Language'. In A. Fisher and A. S. Maurin et al. (eds.): Routledge Handbook of Properties, Routledge, New York, 2023, 369-382.

F. Moltmann: 'Tropes, Bare Demonstratives, and Apparent Statements of Identity'. Nous 47.2., 2013, 346-370.

D.C. Williams: 'On the elements of being'. Review of Metaphysics 7, 1953, 3 -18

October 13

The Metaphysics of Relations 1: Types of Relations and Bradley's Regress

Handout 3

Reading:

F. McBride: 'Relations'. The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy (Fall 2025 Edition),

T. S. Dixon: 'Plural Slot Theory'. In K. Bennett et al. (eds.): Oxford Studies in Metaphysics 11. Oxford University Press. 2018, 193-223

October 20

The Metaphysics of Relations 2: The Problem of the Order of Arguments and Thematic Relations and Theta Roles

Handout 4

Readings:

K. Fine: 'Neutral Relations'. The Philosophical Review 109,1, 2000, 1-33.

R. Jackendoff: 'The status of thematic relations in linguistic theory'. Linguistic Inquiry 18. 3, 1987, 369-411

T. Parsons: 'Thematic Relations and Arguments'. Linguistic Inquiry 26. 4, 1995), 635-662

November 3

Notions of Truthmaking and Candidates for the Truthmaker Role

Handout 5

Readings:

F. Moltmann: Tropes and Events as Truthmakers. Appendix to Chap. 2 (p. 89-94) of Abstract Objects and the Semantics of Natural Language, Oxford University Press, Oxford, 2013 (predates Finean Truthmaker Semantics!)

F. Moltmann: 'Nominals and Event Structure'. In R. Truswell (ed.): Oxford Handbook of Event Structure. Oxford University Press, Oxford, 2019

K. Fine: 'Truthmaker Semantics'. In B. Hale and C. Wright (eds.): Blackwell Handbook of Philosophy of Language. Blackwell, New York, 2017, 556-577.

F. Silva: 'What the States of Truthmaker Semantics Could (Not) Be'. Topoi 44, 259- 272 (2025)

November 10

Concrete Objects as Truthmakers? Completions of Relations as Truthmakers?

Handout 6:

Take-home exam (due: January 16, 2026)

Upcoming workshop (sping 2026):

Situations, Situation-Like Entities and their Composition

Workshop Description:

Situations have become an important notion in current semantic theory, playing a central role not only in situation-based approaches such as Kit Fine’s influential and rapidly evolving truthmaker semantics, but also in semantic analyses of particular semantic phenomena. Situations in many ways appear more plausible entities for the analysis of meaning than entire possible worlds, which had been at the center of formal semantics since the 1970s (Montague Grammar). Despite the plausibility and fruitfulness of situations in place entire possible worlds, there are important issues that are left unaddressed in current uses of situations in natural language semantics. These include questions such as: What is the internal structure of situations; are situations composed of entities and properties or relations; and how is such a composition possible, given notorious metaphysical problems with relations, such as Bradley’s regress (How can entities even connect to relations without the help of subsidiary relations?) and the problem of the order of arguments (How can several entities complete a relation when there are no grounds for an ordering or direction among its arguments?) Do those relations and their arguments count as parts of situations, or do situations have only subsituations as parts?  How do situations relate to similar entities such as events, states, tropes (particularized properties), states of affairs, and facts, ontologically and in terms of their semantic roles?  For example, can situations as well as events and tropes act as truthmakers or are fully concrete entities exempt from the notion of exact truthmaking that centers in Fine’s truthmaker semantics. These issues also connect with linguistic topics, connections that have so far been largely been ignored: how do the metaphysical issues about relations bear on the lexical argument structure of predicates as discussed in linguistics, on recent theories of lexical decomposition of predicates in syntax, and theories of thematic relations commonly adopted in generative syntax? This workshop will include both contributions to the metaphysics of relations and of situations and similar entities and contributions that concern the connection between the metaphysical and linguistic issues.