The Linguistics Colloquium on October 25 will feature Paul Portner (Georgetown University). Details as follows:

Friday Oct. 25 (4-6 pm), in person at SHH112.

Title: The Semantics of Profane Quasi-Verbs: Social Relations in a Dynamic Framework

Abstract

Though profane imprecations like F*** you! have received no attention in formal semantics, we might expect our theory of linguistic meaning to have something to say about such common expressions. In this talk, I discuss the nature of the meanings of profane quasi-verbs (Quang 1971) that function syntactically like f*** in the example above, and I provide a formal model that can account for some important aspects of their meaning and conversational use. This analysis throws light on the role of social relations in semantics and pragmatics.

 

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