Semantics etc.

“John Perry”:http://www-csli.stanford.edu/~john/ has a new paper “Using Indexicals (Draft for Michigan Trip, 2/03)” on his webpage [”html”:http://www-csli.stanford.edu/~john/PHILPAPERS/using.htm, “pdf”:http://www-csli.stanford.edu/~john/PHILPAPERS/using.pdf].

PS: The pdf-file was not available when I just tried the link, but the html document was there.

Date: Wed, 26 Feb 2003 18:19:40 -0500 From: Polly Jacobson Subject: Workshop on Direct Compositionality, Providence RI, USA, June 19-21

There will be an NSF-funded workshop held at Brown University on June 19-21 on the topic of Direct Compositionality. The text of this announcement is followed by a brief description of the focus of the workshop. The conference will consist of talks by invited speakers listed below plus up to three additional slots to be decided by anonymously reviewed abstract. Participants whose abstracts are chosen will be reimbursed for at least a portion of their travel expenses and will be fully funded for housing during the conference. In addition, all participants (both invited and those chosen by abstract) will be requested to not only present a paper but to be a discussant on one additional paper. Papers will typically be 35-40 minutes in length, and at least an outline of the paper will be circulated to the other speakers a few weeks before the conference. Those interested in submitting an abstract should submit an anonymous abstract of NO MORE THAN 2 PAGES (please, in a readable font with reasonable margins).

Abstract deadline: April 1; we will aim for notification within 3 weeks after that. Electronic submission (word or .pdf files) is strongly encouraged; electronic files should be sent to pauline_jacobson@brown.edu with the header: Workshop Abstract Submission

Include your contact information (and abstract title) in the body of the e-mail. If electronic submission is impossible, send 5 copies to:

bq. Pauline Jacobson Attn: Workshop Dept.of Cognitive and Linguistic Sciences Box 1978 Brown University, Providence, RI 02912 USA

The conference will be open to all registered participants (registration fee will be announced in the second announcement), and various housing options (including reasonably priced rooms in the Brown dormitories) will be announced then as well.

Invited Speakers

Chris Barker, UC San Diego (confirmed) Rajesh Bhatt, University of Texas Austin (confirmed) Maria Bittner, Rutgers University Daniel Buring, UCLA (confirmed) Ivano Caponigro, UCLA (confirmed) David Dowty, Ohio State University (confirmed) Danny Fox, MIT (confirmed) Daphna Heller, Rutgers University (confirmed) Pauline Jacobson, Brown University (organizer) Christopher Potts, UC Santa Cruz (confirmed) Maribel Romero, University of Pennsylvania Ken Shan, Harvard (confirmed) Yael Sharvit, University of Connecticut (confirmed) Yoad Winter, Technion Institute, Haifa (confirmed)

Workshop Description

This will be a 3-day workshop to be held at Brown University, June 19-21, 2003 on the feasibility of a particular view of the interaction of natural language syntax and semantics. This view the hypothesis of Direct Compositionality - according to which the syntax and semantics work in tandem . Thus the syntactic system of natural language can be seen as a system of rules which “build” (i.e., prove the well-formedness of) linguistic expressions while the semantics works along with this to assign meanings to these expressions. This view was put forth in, among others, Montague (1973) and was highly influential in much research in formal semantics during especially the 1970s and 1980s.

But this approach has been abandoned in a good deal of more modern research, and the debate on whether or not direct compositionality is possible has to some extent receded into the background. It is quite common in much current work to assume a view of the syntax/semantics interaction according to which the syntax works first to “build” syntactic representations which are then “sent” to the semantics for interpretation. Furthermore, it is often assumed that what inputs the actual semantic (model-theoretic) interpretation is not in fact the surface representation of a sentence, but that this is mapped instead to a more abstract level of Logical Form. Yet the direct compositional view is arguably a much simpler conception of the overall organization of the grammar, and the rationale underlying the proposed workshop is the belief that its abandonment in much current research is premature. The workshop is designed to reopen debate on the feasibility of direct compositionality, bringing together researchers who have studied this question and have approached it with a variety of theoretical and technical tools.

In addition to the invited speakers, slots are reserved for a few papers to be chosen by refereed abstracts. Abstract submissions are encouraged from both sides of the debate. The ideal paper will focus on one or more empirical phenomena and will discuss the implications of this/these phenomena for the hypothesis of direct compositionality. For example, a paper might be on a phenomena which has typically been taken to provide a challenge to direct compositionality and show that the relevant phenomena can indeed be given a direct compositional analysis. On the other hand, equally important are papers which argue that certain phenomena cannot indeed be handled under direct compositionality. The goal of the workshop is to stimulate serious discussion on this issue, and so each presenter will also be a discussant on one other paper.

New at the “semanticsarchive”:http://semanticsarchive.net

bq. Shan, Chung-chieh and Chris Barker. “Explaining crossover and superiority as left-to-right evaluation”:http://semanticsarchive.net/Archive/TBjZDQ3Z/. Date submitted: 2003 02 27

New draft paper by “Graeme Forbes”:http://www.tulane.edu/~forbes/

bq. “Verbs of Creation and Depiction: More Events in the Semantics of English (Draft 5, February 2003)”:http://www.Tulane.EDU/~forbes/pdf_files/CDVerbs.pdf

bq. Abstract. This paper is descended from one written for a symposium on the work of Terence Parsons (Notre Dame University, 7th to 8th February 2003). Creation verbs (’build’, ‘construct’, ‘assemble’ etc.) and depiction verbs (’sketch’, ‘draw’, ’sculpt’, ‘imagine’ etc.) have certain affinities, and my solution to the unfinished object problem for creation verbs in the progressive has consequences for the the semantics I propose for notional readings of depiction verb phrases. The paper ends with a theory about why depiction verbs betray a definiteness effect in DP syntactic complements (”Verrocchio painted two/many/no angels” have notional readings, “Verrocchio painted the two/most/all angels” don’t).

“Chris Gauker”:http://asweb.artsci.uc.edu/philosophy/gauker/, with whom I have had spirited discussions on semantics in the past, has a new book out with MIT Press: “Words without Meaning”:http://mitpress.mit.edu/catalog/item/default.asp?sid=3CC794ED-2E12-4143-AC58-67419A3D8883&ttype=2&tid=9233.

The new issue of the Journal of Pragmatics includes a number of papers on context. Of particular interest to semantics is a new paper by “John Perry”:http://www-csli.stanford.edu/~john/.

bq. Predelli’s threatening note: contexts, utterances, and tokens in the philosophy of language, Journal of Pragmatics Volume 35, Issue 3, March 2003, Pages 373-387.

bq. Abstract: In this paper, I discuss some issues about the concept of context in the philosophy of language. The focus of discussions of context in this field is in the topic of indexicals and demonstratives. The classic account is due to David Kaplan. Lately, Stefano Predelli has developed examples that threaten Kaplan’s account, and suggested some amendments to it. Here, I discuss Predelli’s cases, and relate them to the theory I have recently developed in my book (”Perry, John, 2001. Reference and Reflexivity. CSLI Publications, Stanford”:http://cslipublications.stanford.edu/site/1575863103.html).

The new issue of Linguistics (2003, Volume 41, Issue 1) includes a paper by H.B. Drubig: “Toward a typology of focus and focus constructions”:http://www.degruyter.com/journals/linguistics/ling41_1.html.

Since this is truly a FAQ, I made a page with some remarks and tips on how to treat funny names such as von Fintel in bibliographies etc. Comments welcome.

Stephen Barker: Truth and Conventional Implicature, Mind, Volume 112, Issue 445, January 2003: pp. 1-34.

Daphna Heller: On The Relation of Connectivity and Specificational Pseudoclefts, Natural Language Semantics, 10 (4): 243-284, Winter 2002.

Barbara Abbott: Donkey Demonstratives, Natural Language Semantics, 10 (4): 285-298, Winter 2002.

Maria Aloni has posted some new papers: Free Choice in Modal Contexts, The dynamics of questions and focus (with Robert van Rooy), Individual Concepts in Modal Predicate Logic, Pragmatics for Propositional Attitudes.

Chris Potts has posted his NELS paper on conventional implicatures, work that I have taken some interest in, since it relates to what Sabine Iatridou and I are doing about epistemic modality and also to what I am currently learning about evidentiality. But what the connections are is still hidden in the mists of my confused brain.

Brian Weatherson has some comments on Jeff King’s new paper on using syntactic evidence in support of semantic theories. Brian uses NPI-licensing in conditionals as his example. I posted the following comment on Brian’s site, which I repeat here:

Lisa Matthewson has posted her paper “An Underspecified Tense in St′át′imcets” to the semanticsarchive.

Matthew Stone has two survey-ish papers, which can introduce semanticists to relevant thinking in the computational world:

Knowledge representation for language engineering. A revised version of this manuscript will appear in Farghaly, ed., A Handbook for Language Engineers, to be published by CSLI, 2003.

Communicative intentions and conversational processes in human-human and human-computer dialogue. To appear in Trueswell and Tanenhaus, eds., World-Situated Language Use, to be published by MIT, 2003.

Jeff King has posted a new paper about the syntax-semantics connection, also downloadable in many formats (pdf, ps,Word,rtf), responding to a recent paper by Johnson & Lepore, which was critical of certain arguments in King’s book on complex demonstratives.

The Amsterdam Colloquium will be held December 19–21, 2003, in Amsterdam of all places. Special sessions on Mood and Modality and The Evolution and Change of Semantic Conventions. Invited speakers: Nick Asher, Polly Jacobson, Manfred Krifka, Sandro Zucchi, Jan Nuyts, Cleo Condoravdi, Regine Eckardt, James Hurford. No details on abstract submission yet.

The next meeting of the ESPP - European Society for Philosophy and Psychology will take place in Torino, Italy, 9-12 July 2003. Invited speakers include Bob Stalnaker and Deirdre Wilson. “Submissions may be by abstract but in the case of philosophical submissions a full paper is preferred.” The deadline for submissions is April 30, 2003.

DiaBruck 2003 is the Seventh Workshop on the Semantics and Pragmatics of Dialogue (SEMDIAL). It will take place at the Saarland University Sept 4th-6th 2003. Abstracts due: May 1st.

On Alex Lascarides’ webpage, there is a paper on “Imperatives in Dialogue”, co-authored with Nick Asher, to appear in a volume on The Semantics and Pragmatics of Dialogue for the New Millenium.

BTW: If, like me, you look at such postscript files only after they’re converted to pdf-format, you may be disappointed at the quality of the onscreen display. That is because the postscript file includes so-called bitmap fonts. Printouts should be fine. There is at least one way to fix the postscript file to include the scalable and hence more easily displayed Type 1 fonts: if you have a working TEX/LATEX installation, you can use a program called “pkfix”, written by Heiko Oberdiek, to do the fixing for you. More on this at the TEX-FAQ.

Eric Schwitzgebel has a draft entry on “Belief” for the online Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy.

One of his examples starts like this:

I assume that people called John or Mary are desensitized to having their names used in examples by linguists and philosophers. But as the proud bearer of a rather rare name, this is a disconcerting experience. When I saw Quine’s example “Tai always eats with chopsticks” (1966, Elementary Logic (Revised Edition), §37, pp. 90-92), that already came close to home. Then, Uli Sauerland started using the name of his son, which happens to be Kai, in his examples, as in “Kai had peas or broccoli last night” (Scalar Implicatures in Complex Sentences). Now this. I can’t help but feel that these people are talking about me. Very strange.

François Recanati has posted the final manuscript version of his book “Literal Meaning”, to be published by Cambridge University Press. Now, we await the response from Jason Stanley and company.