Attitude reports: From modal logic to event semantics
Instructor:Tom Robertst.d.h.roberts@uu.nl
Day 1: Introduction to attitude predicates [slides]
Readings:- Pearson, Hazel. (2020). Attitude Verbs. In L. Matthewson, C. Meier, H. Rullmann & T.E. Zimmermann, Companion to Semantics. Wiley. [link]
Day 2: The Hintikkan turn: Modal attitudes [slides]
Readings:- Hintikka, Jaakko. (1969). Semantics for propositional attitudes. In Models for Modalities: 87-111. [link]
- Lewis, David. (1986). On the plurality of worlds. Oxford: Blackwell. [link]
Day 3: Kratzer-Moulton-Elliott semantics: Attitudinal eventualities [slides]
Readings:- Elliott, Patrick. (2017). Elements of clausal embedding. PhD thesis: University College London.[link]
- Kratzer, Angelika. (2006). Decomposing Attitude Verbs (handout). [link]
- Moulton, Keir. (2015). CPs: Copies and Compositionality. Linguistic Inquiry 46(2): 305-342. [link]
- Bondarenko, Tatiana & Patrick Elliott. (2026). Monotonicity via mereology in the semantics of attitude reports. Semantics & Pragmatics 19(2): 1-46. [link]
- Sharvit, Yael. (2024). Standard and non-standard theories of attitudes and NPIs. In G. Baumann, D. Gutzmann, J. Koopman, K. Liefke, A. Renans & T. Scheffler. (eds.): Proceedings of Sinn und Bedeutung 28: 848-865.[link]
Day 4: Attitude check: What attitudes are there? [slides]
Readings:- Bogal-Allbritten, Elizabeth. (2016). Building meaning in Navajo. PhD Thesis: University of Massachusetts, Amherst.[link]
- Maldonado, Mora, Jennifer Culbertson, and Wataru Uegaki. (2022). Learnability and constraints on the semantics of clause-embedding predicates. In J. Culbertson, A. Perfors, H. Rabagliati & V. Ramenzoni (eds.), roceedings of the 44th Annual Conference of the Cognitive Science Society: 237-243.[link]
- Maša Močnik & Rafael Abramovitz. (2019). A variable-force variable-flavor attitude in Koryak. In J.J. Schlöder, D. McHugh, D. & F. Roelofsen (eds.): The Proceedings of the 22nd Amsterdam Colloquium: 494-503. [link]
Day 5: Bad attitudes: Impossible meanings [slides]
Readings:- Roberts, Tom & Deniz Özyıldız. (2026). A causal explanation for the contrafactive gap. Under review. [link]