-# 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 is 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."
-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 on the
-fourth floor at 10 Washington Place.
-
-## Announcements ##
-
-<!--
-* This is the time of the semester when some people start slipping
-behind with the homework. Don't.
--->
-
-* We've added a page on [[Translating between OCaml Scheme and Haskell]]
-
-* We've added some [commentary](/hints/assignment_6_commentary) on some common issues in your solutions to [[Assignment6]].
-
-* We've added a [[Monad Library]] for OCaml.
-
-* We've posted a [[State Monad Tutorial]].
-
-[[Older Announcements]]
-
-##[[Lambda Evaluator]]##
-
-Usable in your browser. 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.
-
-##[[Monad Library]]##
-
-
-## 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]]
-
-
-(18 Oct, 25 Oct) Lecture notes for [[Week5]] and [[Week6]]; [[Assignment5]].
-
-> Topics: Types, Polymorphism, Unit and Bottom
-
-(1 Nov) Lecture notes for [[Week7]]; [[Assignment6]].
-
-> Topics: Monads; [[Reader Monad for Variable Binding]]; [[Reader Monad for Intensionality]]
-
-(8 Nov) Lecture notes for [[Week8]].
-
-> Topics: Reader Monad for Jacobson's Variable-Free Semantics
-
-(15 Nov) Lecture notes for [[Week9]]; [[Assignment7]]. Everyone auditing in the class is encouraged to do this assignment, or at least work through the substantial "hints".
-
-> Topics: Mutable Variables; Passing by Reference; [[State Monad Tutorial]] (added recently)
-
-(22 Nov) Lecture notes for [[Week10]]
-
-> Topics: Calculator Improvements, including mutation
-
-(30 Nov) Lecture notes for [[Week11]]; [[Assignment8]].
-
-> Topics: [[Tree and List Zippers]]; [[Coroutines and Aborts]]; [[From List Zippers to Continuations]]
-
-(6 Dec) Lecture notes for [[Week12]]; [[Assignment9]].
-
-> Topics: [[List Monad as Continuation Monad]]; [[Manipulating Trees with Monads]] (updated); [[Monad Transformers]] (added recently)
-
-(13 Dec) Lecture notes for Week13; [[Assignment10]].
-
-> Topics: [[CPS and Continuation Operators]]; Curry-Howard
-
-[[Advanced Topics]]
-
-> Topics: Version 4 lists, Monads in Category Theory
-
-##Scheme and OCaml##
-
-See [below](#installing) for how to get the programming languages running on your computer.
-
-* Links for help [[learning Scheme]]
-
-* Links for help [[learning OCaml]]
-
-* [[Translating between OCaml Scheme and Haskell]]
-
-
-##[[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
-into established philosophical and linguistic problems.
-
-This is not a seminar about any particular technology or software.
-Rather, it's about a variety of conceptual/logical ideas that have been
-developed in computer science and that linguists and philosophers ought to
-know, or may already be unknowingly trying to reinvent.
-
-Philosphers and linguists tend to reuse the same familiar tools in
-ever more (sometime spectacularly) creative ways. But when your only
-hammer is classical logic, every problem looks like modus ponens. In
-contrast, computer scientists have invested considerable ingenuity in
-studying tool design, and have made remarkable progress.
-
-"Why shouldn't I reinvent some idea X for myself? It's intellectually
-rewarding!" Yes it is, but it also takes time you might have better
-spent elsewhere. After all, you can get anywhere you want to go by walking, but you can
-accomplish more with a combination of walking and strategic subway
-rides.
-
-More importantly, the idiosyncrasies of your particular
-implementation may obscure what's fundamental to the idea you're
-working with. Your implementation may be buggy in corner cases you
-didn't think of; it may be incomplete and not trivial to generalize; its
-connection to existing literature and neighboring issues may go
-unnoticed. For all these reasons you're better off understanding the
-state of the art.
-
-The theoretical tools we'll be introducing aren't very familiar to
-everyday programmers, but they are prominent in academic computer science,
-especially in the fields of functional programming and type theory.
-
-Of necessity, this course will lay a lot of logical groundwork. But throughout
-we'll be aiming to mix that groundwork with real cases
-in our home subjects where these tools play central roles. Our aim for the
-course is to enable you to make these tools your own; to have enough
-understanding of them to recognize them in use, use them yourself at least
-in simple ways, and to be able to read more about them when appropriate.
-
-Once we get up and running, the central focii of the course will be
-**continuations**, **types**, and **monads**. One of the on-going themes will
-concern evaluation order and issues about how computations (inferences,
-derivations) unfold in (for instance) time. The key analytic technique is to
-form a static, order-independent model of a dynamic process. We'll be
-discussing this in much more detail as the course proceeds.
-
-The logical systems we'll be looking at include:
-
-* the pure/untyped lambda calculus
-* combinatorial logic
-* the simply-typed lambda calculus
-* polymorphic types with System F
-* some discussion of dependent types
-* if time permits, "indeterministic" or "preemptively parallel" computation and linear logic
-
-
-<!--
-Other keywords:
- recursion using the Y-combinator
- evaluation-order stratgies
- normalizing properties
- the Curry-Howard isomorphism(s)
- monads in category theory and computation
--->
-
-## Who Can Participate? ##
-
-The course will not presume previous experience with programming. We
-will, however, discuss concepts embodied in specific programming
-languages, and we will encourage experimentation with running,
-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; 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.
-
-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 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. 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
-PLT Scheme, and has just in the past few weeks changed their name to Racket.
-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.)
-
- 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 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.
-
-<a name=installing></a>
-[[How to get the programming languages running on your computer]]
-
-[[Family tree of functional programming languages]]
-
-[[Translating between OCaml Scheme and Haskell]]
-
-## What is Functional Programming? ##
-
-Here's a [survey conducted at Microsoft](http://research.microsoft.com/apps/pubs/default.aspx?id=141506) asking programmers what they understand "functional programming" to be. Don't take their responses to be authoritative... this is a just a "man in the street" (seat?) poll.
-
-Read more about the [uptake of Haskell](http://steve-yegge.blogspot.com/2010/12/haskell-researchers-announce-discovery.html) among programmers in the street.
-
-
-## Recommended Books ##
-
-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.
-
-* *An Introduction to Lambda Calculi for Computer Scientists*, by Chris
-Hankin, currently $17 on
-[Amazon](http://www.amazon.com/dp/0954300653).
-
-* (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).
-
-
-
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