-Philosophy COURSENUMBER and Linguistics COURSENUMBER
-SHORT COURSE TITLE?
+# Seminar in Semantics / Philosophy of Language #
or: **What Philosophers and Linguists Can Learn From Theoretical Computer Science But Didn't Know To Ask**
+This course will be co-taught by [Chris Barker](http://homepages.nyu.edu/~cb125/) and [Jim Pryor](http://www.jimpryor.net/). Linguistics calls it "G61.3340-002" and Philosophy calls it "G83.2296-001."
+
+
## Announcements ##
-The course meets starting on XXX, at ZZZ, in room YYY.
+* The seminar meets on Mondays from 4-6, in
+the Linguistics building at 10 Washington Place, in room 104 (back of the first floor).
+
+* One student session will be held every Wednesday from 3-4. The other will
+be arranged to fit the schedule of those who'd like to attend but can't
+make the Wednesday time. (We first proposed Tuesdays from 11-12, but this
+time turns out not to be so helpful.) If you're one of the students who
+wants to meet for Q&A at some other time in the week, let us know.
+
+ You should see the student sessions as opportunities to clear up lingering
+issues from material we've discussed, and help get a better footing for what
+we'll be doing the next week. It would be smart to make a serious start on that
+week's homework, for instance, before the session.
+
+* There is now a [[lambda evaluator]] you can use in your browser (no need to
+install any software). It can help you check whether your answer to some of the
+homework questions works correctly.
+
+ There is also now a [library](/lambda_library) of lambda-calculus
+arithmetical and list operations, some relatively advanced.
+
+ An evaluator with the definitions used for homework 3
+preloaded is available at [[assignment 3 evaluator]].
+
+* Henceforth, unless we say otherwise, every homework will be "due" by
+Sunday morning after the Monday seminar in which we refer to it.
+(Usually we'll post the assignment shortly before the seminar, but don't
+rely on this.) However, for every assignment there will be a "grace
+period" of one further week for you to continue working on it if you
+have trouble and aren't able to complete the assignment to your
+satisfaction by the due date. You shouldn't hesitate to talk to us---or
+each other!---about the assignments when you do have trouble. We don't
+mind so much if you come across answers to the assignment when browsing
+the web, or the Little Schemer book, or anywhere. So long as you can
+reason yourself through the solutions and experience for yourself the
+insights they embody.
+
+ We reserve the privilege to ruthlessly require you to
+explain your solutions in conversations at any point, in section or in
+class.
+
+ You should always *aim* to complete the assignments by the "due" date,
+as this will fit best with the progress of the seminar.
+
+ The assignments will tend to be quite challenging. Again, you should by
+all means talk amongst yourselves, and to us, about strategies and
+questions that come up when working through them.
+
+ We will not always be able to predict accurately which problems are
+easy and which are hard. If we misjudge, and choose a problem that is
+too hard for you to complete to your own satisfaction, it is still
+very much worthwhile (and very much appreciated) if you would explain
+what is difficult, what you tried, why what you tried didn't work, and
+what you think you need in order to solve the problem.
+
+
+## Lecture Notes and Assignments ##
+
+(13 Sept) Lecture notes for [[Week1]]; [[Assignment1]].
+
+> Topics: [[Applications]], including [[Damn]]; Basics of Lambda Calculus; Comparing Different Languages
+
+(20 Sept) Lecture notes for [[Week2]]; [[Assignment2]].
+
+> Topics: Reduction and Convertibility; Combinators; Evaluation Strategies and Normalization; Decidability; [[Lists and Numbers]]
+
+(27 Sept) Lecture notes for [[Week3]]; [[Assignment3]];
+an evaluator with the definitions used for homework 3
+preloaded is available at [[assignment 3 evaluator]].
+
+> Topics: [[Evaluation Order]]; Recursion with Fixed Point Combinators
+
+(4 Oct) Lecture notes for [[Week4]]; [[Assignment4]].
+> Topics: More on Fixed Points; Sets; Aborting List Traversals; [[Implementing Trees]]
-## Overview ##
+
+(18 Oct) Lecture notes for [[Week5]] (in progress).
+
+> Topics: Types, Polymorphism
+
+[[Upcoming topics]]
+
+[Advanced Lambda Calculus Topics](/advanced_lambda)
+
+
+##[[Offsite Reading]]##
+
+There's lots of links here already to tutorials and encyclopedia entries about many of the notions we'll be dealing with.
+
+
+
+## Course Overview ##
The goal of this seminar is to introduce concepts and techniques from
theoretical computer science and show how they can provide insight
the Curry-Howard isomorphism(s)
monads in category theory and computation
-->
-
+
## Who Can Participate? ##
The course will not presume previous experience with programming. We
modifying, and writing computer programs.
The course will not presume lots of mathematical or logical background, either.
-However, it will demand a certain amount of comfort working with such material.
-And it wouldn't be especially well-suited to be a first graduate-level course
+However, it will demand a certain amount of comfort working with such material; as a result,
+it will not be especially well-suited to be a first graduate-level course
in formal semantics or philosophy of language. If you have concerns about your
background, come discuss them with us.
-It hasn't yet been decided whether this course counts for satisfying the logic requirement for
-Philosophy PhD students.
+This class will count as satisfying the logic requirement for Philosophy
+PhD students; however if this would be your first or only serious
+engagement with graduate-level formal work you should consider
+carefully, and must discuss with us, (1) whether you'll be adequately
+prepared for this course, and (2) whether you'd be better served by
+taking a logic course (at a neighboring department, or at NYU next year)
+with a more canonical syllabus.
-Faculty and students from outside of NYU Linguistics and Philosophy are wlecome
+
+Faculty and students from outside of NYU Linguistics and Philosophy are welcome
to audit, to the extent that this coheres well with the needs of our local
students.
## Recommended Software ##
-During the course, we'll be encouraging you to try out various things in Scheme and Caml, which are prominent *functional programming languages*. We'll explain what that means during the course.
-
-* **Scheme** is one of two major dialects of *Lisp*, which is a large family of programming languages. The other dialect is called "CommonLisp." Scheme is the more clean and minimalistic dialect, and is what's mostly used in academic circles.
+During the course, we'll be encouraging you to try out various things in Scheme
+and Caml, which are prominent *functional programming languages*. We'll explain
+what that means during the course.
+* **Scheme** is one of two major dialects of *Lisp*, which is a large family
+of programming languages. Scheme
+is the more clean and minimalistic dialect, and is what's mostly used in
+academic circles.
Scheme itself has umpteen different "implementations", which share most of
their fundamentals, but have slightly different extensions and interact with
the operating system differently. One major implementation used to be called
This is what we recommend you use. (If you're already using or comfortable with
another Scheme implementation, though, there's no compelling reason to switch.)
-* **Caml** is one of two major dialects of *ML*, which is another large family of programming languages. The other dialect is called "SML" and has several implementations. But Caml has only one active implementation, OCaml, developed by the INRIA academic group in France.
+ Racket stands to Scheme in something like the relation Firefox stands to HTML.
+
+* **Caml** is one of two major dialects of *ML*, which is another large
+family of programming languages. Caml has only one active implementation,
+OCaml, developed by the INRIA academic group in France.
-* Those of your with some programming background may have encountered a third prominent functional programming language, **Haskell**. This is also used a lot in the academic contexts we'll be working through. Its surface syntax differs from OCaml, and there are various important things one can do in each of Haskell and Ocaml that one can't (or can't as easily) do in the other. But these languages also have a lot in common, and if you're familiar with one of them, it's not difficult to move between it and the other.
+* Those of you with some programming background may have encountered a third
+prominent functional programming language, **Haskell**. This is also used a
+lot in the academic contexts we'll be working through. Its surface syntax
+differs from Caml, and there are various important things one can do in
+each of Haskell and Caml that one can't (or can't as easily) do in the
+other. But these languages also have a lot in common, and if you're
+familiar with one of them, it's not difficult to move between it and the
+other.
[[How to get the programming languages running on your computer]]
-
-## Recommended Readings ##
-* *An Introduction to Lambda Calculi for Computer Scientists*, by Chris Hankin...
+[[Family tree of functional programming languages]]
+
+
+## Recommended Books ##
-* *The Little Schemer, Fourth Edition*, by Daniel P. Friedman and Matthias Felleisen, currently $23 on [Amazon](http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/0262560992/ref=pd_sim_books/103-5471398-9229403#reader_0262560992).
-This is a classic text introducing the gentle art of programming, using the functional programming language Scheme.
-Many people love this book, but it has an unusual dialog format that is not to everybody's taste.
-**Of particular interest for this course** is the explanation of the Y combinator, available as a free sample chapter
-[at the MIT Press web page for the book](http://www.ccs.neu.edu/home/matthias/BTLS/).
+It's not necessary to purchase these for the class. But they are good ways to get a more thorough and solid understanding of some of the more basic conceptual tools we'll be using.
-* *The Seasoned Schemer*", also by Daniel P. Friedman and Matthias Felleisen...
+* *An Introduction to Lambda Calculi for Computer Scientists*, by Chris
+Hankin, currently $17 on
+[Amazon](http://www.amazon.com/dp/0954300653).
-* *The Little MLer*, by Matthias Felleisen and Daniel P. Friedman... This covers some of the same introductory ground as The Little Schemer, but this time in ML. The dialect of ML used is SML, not OCaml, but there are only superficial syntactic differences between these languages.
-
+* (Another good book covering the same ground as the Hankin book, but
+more thoroughly, and in a more mathematical style, is *Lambda-Calculus and Combinators:
+an Introduction*, by J. Roger Hindley and Jonathan P. Seldin, currently $52 on [Amazon](http://www.amazon.com/dp/0521898854). If you choose to read
+both the Hankin book and this book, you'll notice the authors made some different
+terminological/notational choices. At first, this makes comprehension slightly slower,
+but in the long run it's helpful because it makes the arbitrariness of those choices more salient.)
+* (Another good book, covering some of the same ground as the previous two, but also delving much deeper into typed lambda calculi, is *Types and Programming Languages*, by Benjamin Pierce, currently $61 on [Amazon](http://www.amazon.com/dp/0262162091). This book has many examples in OCaml.)
+
+* *The Little Schemer, Fourth Edition*, by Daniel P. Friedman and Matthias
+Felleisen, currently $23 on [Amazon](http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/0262560992).
+This is a classic text introducing the gentle art of programming, using the
+functional programming language Scheme. Many people love this book, but it has
+an unusual dialog format that is not to everybody's taste. **Of particular
+interest for this course** is the explanation of the Y combinator, available as
+a free sample chapter [at the MIT Press web page for the
+book](http://www.ccs.neu.edu/home/matthias/BTLS/).
+
+* *The Seasoned Schemer*, also by Daniel P. Friedman and Matthias Felleisen, currently $28
+on [Amazon](http://www.amazon.com/Seasoned-Schemer-Daniel-P-Friedman/dp/026256100X)
+
+* *The Little MLer*, by Matthias Felleisen and Daniel P. Friedman, currently $27
+on [Amazon](http://www.amazon.com/Little-MLer-Matthias-Felleisen/dp/026256114X).
+This covers some of the same introductory ground as The Little Schemer, but
+this time in ML. It uses another dialect of ML (called SML), instead of OCaml, but there are only
+superficial syntactic differences between these languages. [Here's a translation
+manual between them](http://www.mpi-sws.org/~rossberg/sml-vs-ocaml.html).
-## Schedule of Topics ##
-To be added.
----
All wikis are supposed to have a [[SandBox]], so this one does too.
This wiki is powered by [[ikiwiki]].
+
+