Brief description
Linguistic meaning and its role in communication. Topics include logical semantics, conversational implicature, presupposition, speech acts. Applications to issues in politics, the law, philosophy, advertising, and natural language processing. Those who have not taken logic, such as PHIL 150 or 151, should attend section. Prerequisites: Linguist 1, SymSys 1 (Linguist 35), consent of instructor, or graduate standing in Linguistics. 4 units.
Requirements
Participation (10%)
There are 16 participation points in total. These are earned by doing in-class exercises. There will be one such exercise per class meeting, which means there are a total of 20 points possible. You earn 1 point of extra credit towards the participation grade for each exercise you complete beyond 16.
Participation credit can be earned only by doing in-class exercises in class, because their primary role is to create an incentive for people to come to class. If you anticipate missing more than 4 class meetings, then you should talk with Chris immediately.
Participation scores will be updated every other week on Canvas to help you track them.
Quizzes (20%)
These will be administered via Canvas. We will have about 10 in total. Each one will be about 5 short questions designed to make sure that you're keeping up with the material. They will always be open notes, open book, etc., but no collaboration will be permitted. Quizzes cannot be completed for credit after their due date. Your lowest two quiz grades (including 0s from missed quizzes) will be dropped from your final grade calculation.
Readings and associated assignments (50%)
Assignments will be distributed on Tuesdays and due one week later. They will often have readings associated with them. All readings will be distributed electronically via the website.
All assignments should be submitted via Canvas.
Assignments must arrive before the start of class on the day they are due. After 10:30 am Pacific, they are 1 day late, and so on for subsequent calendar days. Late assignments will be graded as though they were not late, but then 2% of the grade earned will be deducted for each day the assignment is late, with a maximum penalty of 35%. All late work must be turned in by Mar 21, 6:30 pm Pacific. (This is the end of our scheduled exam period, though we will not be using that period.)
A special note about collaboration: you are permitted to work together on the assignments (but not on the take-home exam). However, you must write up and hand in your own unique assignment, and it must list at the top all the students with whom you worked.
Midterm exam, and final exam or final project (20%)
There will be two take-home exams, one distributed on Feb 13 and due by the start of class on Feb 20, and the other distributed on Mar 12 and due at the end of the class's scheduled exam period (which we will not use): Mar 21, 6:30 pm. Both will mainly involve questions like those from the in-class exercises and weekly assignments. The exams are open notes, open book, but no consultation or collaboration with others is permitted.
Students enrolled in 230a will be required to submit a final project instead of taking the final exam. This will involve a number of preliminary steps that will be incorporated into optional questions on assignments 5, 6, and 7.
Collaborative final projects are an option with a group-size limit of two. They require special permission from Chris, and the final submission must include a short section explaining how the work was divided among the project members.
The final project is an option for everyone (a requirement only for the groups just mentioned). Doing a final project is highly recommended for students who think they might want a recommendation letter from Chris.
Exams and final projects must be turned in on time. (The policy on late work described above for assignments is only for assignments.)
Map from numerical final grades to letter grades
| Grade range | Letter grade |
|---|---|
| ≥ 100 | A+ |
| ≥ 94 | A |
| ≥ 90 | A− |
| ≥ 87 | B+ |
| ≥ 84 | B |
| ≥ 80 | B− |
| ≥ 77 | C+ |
| ≥ 74 | C |
| ≥ 70 | C− |
| ≥ 67 | D+ |
| ≥ 64 | D |
| ≥ 60 | D− |
| < 60 | No pass |
Academic honesty
Please familiarize yourself with Stanford's honor code. We will adhere to it and follow through on its penalty guidelines.
Important: the policy on plagiarism says,
For purposes of the Stanford University Honor Code, plagiarism is defined as the use, without giving reasonable and appropriate credit to or acknowledging the author or source, of another person's original work, whether such work is made up of code, formulas, ideas, language, research, strategies, writing or other form(s). Moreover, verbatim text from another source must always be put in (or within) quotation marks.
We intepret "another person's original work" to include content that was produced by an AI writing assistant like ChatGPT. This follows either by treating the AI assistant as a person for the purposes of this policy (controversial) or acknowledging that the AI assistant was trained directly on people's original work. Thus, while you are not forbidden from using these tools, you should consider the above policy carefully and quote where appropriate. Assignments that are in large part quoted from an AI assistant are very unlikely to be evaluated positively. In addition, if a student's work is substantially identical to another student's work, that will be grounds for an investigation of plagiarism regardless of whether the prose was produced by an AI assistant.
Students with documented disabilities
From Stanford's Office of Accessible Education:
Stanford is committed to providing equal educational opportunities for disabled students. Disabled students are a valued and essential part of the Stanford community. We welcome you to our class.
If you experience disability, please register with the Office of Accessible Education (OAE). Professional staff will evaluate your needs, support appropriate and reasonable accommodations, and prepare an Academic Accommodation Letter for faculty. To get started, or to re-initiate services, please visit oae.stanford.edu.
If you already have an Academic Accommodation Letter, we invite you to share your letter with us. Academic Accommodation Letters should be shared at the earliest possible opportunity so we may partner with you and OAE to identify any barriers to access and inclusion that might be encountered in your experience of this course.
