LSA Workshop: "Context and Content"

"Context and Content -- Topics in Formal Pragmatics"

This one-day workshop will be held on July 15, 2005 as part of the 2005 LSA Institute at MIT and Harvard. The workshop will bring together researchers in semantics, pragmatics, and philosophy of language to discuss the role of context in interpretation.

Logistics

The location for the workshop is Jefferson Hall, Room 250, which is on the Harvard campus, behind the Science Center. Here is a map, with the location of Jefferson Hall highlighted.

The workshop starts with a small breakfast at 8:30am. The first talk starts at 9am. The workshop ends at 6:30pm.

The workshop is open to anyone, regardless of whether they are registered for the LSA institute or not. There will be a registration fee of $15 for students and $20 for faculty — the fee will help defray logistical and catering costs. The workshop is partly funded by the Dean of the School of Humanities, Arts, and Social Sciences at MIT.

The Program

Here is the program for the workshop, with links to draft papers or handouts:

8.30	Registration and Breakfast
9.00	Danny Fox & Martin Hackl “The Universal Density of Measurement” Comments by Roger Schwarzschild
10.00	Benjamin Spector “Exhaustive Interpretations: What to Say and What Not to Say” (handout, slides) Comments by Irene Heim
11.00	Coffee Break
11.30	Bob Stalnaker “Conditional Propositions and Conditional Assertions” Comments by Thony Gillies
12.30	Lunch Break (on your own in Harvard Square)
2.00	Sophia Malamud “Arbitray Monster: You and One”(handout) Comments by Pranav Anand
3.00	Cleo Condoravdi “Not Knowing or Caring Who” Comments by Kai von Fintel
4.00	Coffee Break
4.30	Gennaro Chierchia “Aspects of Recursive Pragmatics: Managing Multiple Alternative Sets” (related paper) Comments by Polly Jacobson
5.30	Angelika Kratzer “Covert Quantifier Restrictions in Natural Languages”(slides) Comments by Sally McConnell-Ginet

Format of the workshop

Each of the talks will be 40 minutes long. There will be 10 minutes of comments from a designated commentator and then 10 minutes for questions and discussion from the audience.

All contributors were asked to provide (drafts of) their papers by June 15, 2005. The papers were made available to the designated commentators at that time.

Call for Papers

The workshop will include a small number of contributed papers. We welcome abstract submissions of relevant papers. Abstracts should be no longer than 3 pages (including examples and references) in a legible font. Only electronic submissions of pdf files will be accepted.

Abstracts should be sent to fintel@mit.edu.