Talks

We are happy to announce a talk by Bartosz Więckowski (GU Frankfurt) at the Semantics Colloquium. Please register beforehand (s.walter@em.uni-frankfurt.de) to receive the access data to zoom on Thursday shortly before the talk starts. Title: Counterfactual implication and counterfactual possibility Date: June 10 Time: 2 pm – 4 pm ct Abstract: Counterfactual inference is usually studied in terms of proof systems defined on the basis of a model-theoretic semantics (e.g., similarity semantics). Typically, the systems extend classical logic. In this talk, I shall (continue to) motivate and outline an intuitionistic proof-theoretic approach that aims to explain the logic and semantics of counterfactuals directly in terms of suitably defined rules of inference.  I will first present elementary intuitionistic subatomic natural deduction systems which make use of various modes of making assumptions. The systems admit a formulation of a proof-theoretic semantics for elementary would-counterfactuals that is based on normalization. I will then extend these systems with possibility operators which are sensitive to assumption-modes, and consider, how, in the intuitionistic setting (no...

We are happy to announce a talk by Florian Schwarz (University of Pennsylvania) at the Semantics Colloquium. Please register beforehand (s.walter@em.uni-frankfurt.de) to receive the access data to zoom on Thursday shortly before the talk starts. Title: Presupposition Projection and Linear Order – Variation Across Connectives Date: May 27 Time: 4 pm – 6 pm ct Abstract: The role of linear order for presupposition projection is a long-standing matter of theoretical controversy and empirical confusion. On the one hand, there’s a natural association of the `left-to-right’ unfolding of the linguistic signal and the gradual update of the contexts relative to which subsequent expressions are interpreted. On the other hand, connectives seem to display varying behavior in terms of whether later material can affect presuppositions of earlier expressions. In particular, conjunction has often been taken to be asymmetric with regards to projection, only allowing `left-to-right’ filtering (e.g., with the first conjunct supporting a presupposition in the second conjunct), whereas disjunction seems to also allow the reverse `right-to-left’ filtering (as in Partee’s `bathroom sentences’)....

We are happy to announce a talk by Rick Nouwen (Utrecht University) at the Semantics Colloquium. Please register beforehand (s.walter@em.uni-frankfurt.de) to receive the access data to zoom on Thursday shortly before the talk starts. Title: Intensified vagueness: semantics and pragmatics Date: May 20 Time: 4 pm – 6 pm ct Abstract: What, if anything, is the semantic content of intensifiers like 'very', 'extremely', 'pretty', etc.? In this talk, I'll explore this question from the perspective of recent probabilistic approaches to degree semantics (Lassiter and Goodman, 2017). According to such approaches, vague predicates involve lexical uncertainty that is partially resolved through pragmatic reasoning. A sentence like "Scarlett is tall" is interpreted as `height(s)>=t`, where the value of t is inferred. How can a framework like this be extended to deal with sentences like "Scarlett is very / extremely / surprisingly tall"? Starting point is the model of Bennett and Goodman (2018). In this model, the intensifier is semantically vacuous, but its presence in the utterance triggers a manner implicature, which constitutes the...