The UConn Logic Colloquium will feature Julian Schlöder (UConn Philosophy) on Friday, February 11, 2:30-4:00pm. The talk will be held online. For login information, watch the email announcements or contact Stefan Kaufmann.

Neo-Pragmatist Truth and Supervaliuationism

Deflationists about truth hold that the function of the truth predicate is to enable us to make certain assertions we could not otherwise make. Pragmatists claim that the utility of negation lies in its role in registering incompatibility. The pragmatist insight about negation has been successfully incorporated into bilateral theories of content, which take the meaning of negation to be inferentially explained in terms of the speech act of rejection. One can implement the deflationist insight in the pragmatist’s theory of content by taking the meaning of the truth predicate to be explained by its inferential relation to assertion. There are two upshots. First, a new diagnosis of the Liar, Revenges and attendant paradoxes: the paradoxes require that truth rules preserve evidence, but they only preserve commitment. Second, one straightforwardly obtains axiomatisations of several supervaluational hierarchies, answering the question of how such theories are to be naturally axiomatised. This is joint work with Luca Incurvati (Amsterdam).

On Thursday, February 10, 12:30-1:30pm, Magda Kaufmann will lead the discussion of the paper “Practical Moore Sentences” by Matthew Mandelkern (Noûs 55:39-61). The meeting will be in person in Oak 338.

On Thursday, February 3, 12:30-1:30pm, we will continue the discussion of the paper “Chasing Hook: Quantified Indicative Conditionals” by Angelika Kratzer (in Lee Walters & John Hawthorne (eds.): Conditionals, Probability, and Paradox: Themes from the Philosophy of Dorothy Edgington, 40-57.) The meeting will be in Oak 338 with an online option. See the email announcement for login information.

On Thursday, January 27, 12:30-1:30pm, Muyi Yang will lead the discussion of the paper “Chasing Hook: Quantified Indicative Conditionals” by Angelika Kratzer (in Lee Walters & John Hawthorne (eds.): Conditionals, Probability, and Paradox: Themes from the Philosophy of Dorothy Edgington, 40-57.) The meeting will be online. See the email announcement for login information.

The UConn Logic Colloquium will feature Sarah Murray (Linguistics, Cornell) on Friday, November 5, 2:30-4:00pm. The talk will be held online. For login information, watch the email announcements or contact Stefan Kaufmann.

The Logic of Speech Acts: Sentential Force vs Utterance Force

Across languages, sentences are marked for sentence type, or sentential mood, e.g., declarative and interrogative. These sentence types are associated with speech acts: assertions and questions, respectively. However, sentential mood does not determine the force of an utterance of a sentence. We argue that the semantic contribution of sentential mood is a relation that constrains utterance force. This relation takes a proposition as an argument and uses it to affect a component of the context. The semantic constraint together with additional pragmatic factors produce utterance force.

This logic for speech acts involves a semantics for the three main sentence types found cross-linguistically (declarative, interrogative, imperative) as well as a distinction between speaker commitment and discourse reference. In addition to a semantics for sentential mood, this approach provides a framework for a range of phenomena, including evidentials, parentheticals, hedges, and “speech act modifiers”. We conclude by discussing the Linguistic Modification Thesis, the idea that linguistic material can only influence utterance force by influencing sentential force.

This talk is based on joint work with William Starr

The Meaning Group will meet on Friday October 15, 1:15pm–2:15pm), online. We will be talking about Clemens Mayr (2014) “Intervention effects and additivity”, Journal of Semantics 31: 513 – 554.  Muyi Yang will lead the discussion. For online login information, see the email announcement of contact Magdalena Kaufmann.

The UConn Logic Colloquium will feature Dilip Ninan (Philosophy, Tufts University) on Friday, October 1, 2:30-4:00pm, in ITE 336. Details can be found on the Logic Group website.

The Meaning Group will meet on Friday, September 10, 1:15-2:15pm, in Oak 338. Our own Muyi Yang will present her work on Japanese nara-conditionals.

Sensitive to future: the discourse dynamics of Japanese nara-conditionals

This study investigates the felicity condition of Japanese nara-conditionals. It has been observed that such conditionals require discourse-saliency in the sense that the antecedent “always expresses new information that has just entered the consciousness of the speaker at the discourse site” (Akatsuka 1985: 628). Based on novel observations about the sensitivity of nara to different types of preceding discourse moves (e.g., assertions, questions), I show that Akatsuka’s view is not fine-grained enough. I argue that nara-conditionals require that the antecedent be in some possible future context set provided by the actual context, and implement the idea in Farkas & Bruce’s (2010) Table model. The proposed account makes correct predictions for the interaction between nara-conditionals and (i) directive speech acts, (ii) contrastive strategy of question-answering, and (iii) evidentiality.

For online participation, contact Magdalena Kaufmann.

Jointly with collaborators in Japan, we are hosting a series of online presentations showcasing ongoing work on conditionals and related topics. This event is part of an ongoing collaboration sponsored by the Japan Society for the Promotion of Science^*. Presentations are spread out over several days in June, 2021. See the schedule on this webpage (subject to change). For login information or other details, please contact Magdalena Kaufmann or Stefan Kaufmann.

^*Conditionals and topology – the origins of non-monotonicity, Grant No. 17K02699; Constructing a semantic theory of modal expressions without the concept of possible worlds – evidence from Japanese, Grant No. 20K00586; both Ikumi Imani, PI.

The UConn Logic Colloquium on Friday, 7 May 2021, at 10am EST (online) will feature Alessandro Zucchi (University Of Milan). Title, abstract and zoom information below.

Minimal Change Theories Of Conditionals: The Import-Export Law And Modus Ponens

Abstract: Stalnaker’s minimal change semantics for conditionals fails to support the import-export law according to which (a) and (b) are logically equivalent:

(a) if A then if B then C
(b) if A and B then C

However natural language conditionals seem to abide by the law. McGee (1985) outlines a minimal change semantics for conditionals that supports it. I argue that in fact the equivalence between (a) and (b) does not hold unrestrictedly and I suggest that the facts follow from the interaction between the semantics of conditionals and the ways suppositions may affect the context. I conclude by describing the consequences of my account for the issue of the validity of modus ponens.