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Meeting on 11/18: Satoshi Tomioka

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We will meet on Wednesday, November 18, 1:30-2:30pm in Herbst 338. We are pleased to announce a talk by Satoshi Tomioka (University of Delaware):

Anaphoric bare nouns: Not all of them are definite descriptions

In some of the languages in which (in)definiteness is not obligatorily marked, bare common nouns can be used anaphorically. Such an instance of bare noun is commonly regarded as an anaphoric definite description — e.g., During my office hours, a student came to see me. I asked the student to wait for a couple of minutes. Contrary to this general consensus, I argue, inspired by the intuition reported in Minjoo Kim’s 2023 JEAL paper, that some instances of anaphoric bare nouns, ones in Japanese in particular, are used as if they were proper names. More concretely, anaphoric bare nouns are directly referential based on the speaker’s private naming conventions. I will demonstrate the distributional patterns of anaphoric bare nouns in Japanese that would be left unaccounted for under the definite description thesis. I further hypothesize that the availability of anaphoric bare nouns is tied to the lack of ‘repeated name penalty’.

Talk of interest on 11/13: Kai von Fintel

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The UConn Logic Group will host Kai von Fintel (MIT) as this semester’s (technically, last year’s) Scholar of Consequence. Kai will visit us for two days, starting with an appearance in Magdalena Kaufmann’s Semantics Seminar on Thursday (11/12, 12:30-3:30pm) and culminating in his Logic Lecture on Friday, November 13, 2-4pm, Homer Babbidge Library Class of 1947 Room. Contact Magdalena Kaufmann with questions about the seminar. There is room for individual appointments on Thursday and Friday. Contact Stefan Kaufmann to reserve a slot. Title and abstract of his Logic Colloquium Talk are below.

Yo-yo conditionals and counterfactual supposition

joint work with (An)Thony Gillies (University of Arizona)

There are two ways of articulating counterfactual thought experiments about what would have been the case if some (specific) things had been the case: counterfactual supposition and counterfactual conditionals. We introduce a novel puzzle about a class of iterated counterfactual thought experiments, the problem of yo-yo conditionals like “If it had rained then if it hadn’t rained the seats would be dry”. We show that yo-yo conditionals raise serious issues for extant theories of counterfactual conditionals. There are some fixes we can and will consider, but lurking there’s a hard problem that we find both intriguing and infuriating.

Meeting on 11/11: Yurie Hara

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We will meet on Wednesday, November 11, 1:30-2:30pm in SSH 338. Yurie Hara (University of Hokkaido, Japan) will present her work on the language of manga.

Title: Who Speaks Like a Manga Character? A Game-Theoretic Account of Role Language in Japanese Manga and Anime

Abstract: Why can a few words make a fictional character sound like a wise old man, an aristocratic lady, or a macho man? Japanese manga and anime offer a striking case: linguistic forms known as yakuwarigo ‘role language’ evoke recognizable personae even when uncommon among their real-world counterparts. Fiction may facilitate these associations because creators and audiences share an understanding that language contributes to characterization, while visual and narrative cues help audiences learn form–persona pairings. The following expressions all convey ‘Yes. I know that.’, while evoking different personae:

(1)
Elderly male


So-ja.
yes-COP
Washi
I
ga
NOM
shit-teoru-zo.
know-ASP-PRT

(2)
Aristocratic lady


So-desu
yes-COP.POL
wa.
PRT
Watakushi
I
ga
NOM
zonji-teorimasu
know.HUM-ASP.POL
wa
PRT
yo.
PRT

(3)
Macho man


So-da.
yes=COP
Ore
I
ga
NOM
shit-teru-ze.
know-ASP-PRT

I propose a two-stage account combining social representativeness with repeated signaling. Representativeness explains why a less frequent form can be selected over more frequent alternatives: it distinguishes the intended persona more clearly. Repeated coordination between creators and audiences can then strengthen this association. Kinsui’s historical account of elderly male role language—from conservative western Japanese forms associated with older scholars to their use in eighteenth-century kabuki and fiction—is qualitatively consistent with these stages. A signaling-game model illustrates this amplification; an extension predicts that established conventions are especially useful with limited narrative exposure, whereas greater exposure can support individualized voices. The account explores how social meaning
becomes convention, using Japanese fiction as a case study of a broader process.

Meeting on 10/28: Nam and Yang

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We will meet on Wednesday, October 28, 1:30-2:30pm in SSH 338. Seungho will first finish last week’s discussion of Onea et al. Then Seungho will present joint work with Heesun Yang. Title and abstract below.

Title: More puzzles on high negation and biased questions in two varieties of Korean

Abstract: This talk builds on our earlier attempt to account for an empirical contrast between two varieties of Korean: short-form negation can form positively biased polar questions in Southeastern Korean, but not in Central Korean. We first review Rett’s (2026) proposal that high negation is discourse-anaphoric to a salient proposition outside the utterance in which it occurs. We then present further empirical observations on the semantic and pragmatic differences between the constructions in question in the two Korean dialects. Particular attention will be paid to their information-sharing requirements and their uses in requesting confirmation versus conveying assertions. The discussion is exploratory and aims to clarify the empirical and theoretical questions that remain open.

Meeting on 11/04: Nam and Yang

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We will meet on Wednesday, November 04, 1:30-2:30pm in SSH 338. Seungho will continue their discussion of their joint work.

Title: More puzzles on high negation and biased questions in two varieties of Korean

Abstract: This talk builds on our earlier attempt to account for an empirical contrast between two varieties of Korean: short-form negation can form positively biased polar questions in Southeastern Korean, but not in Central Korean. We first review Rett’s (2026) proposal that high negation is discourse-anaphoric to a salient proposition outside the utterance in which it occurs. We then present further empirical observations on the semantic and pragmatic differences between the constructions in question in the two Korean dialects. Particular attention will be paid to their information-sharing requirements and their uses in requesting confirmation versus conveying assertions. The discussion is exploratory and aims to clarify the empirical and theoretical questions that remain open.

Talk of interest on 10/13: Peng Liu

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Peng Liu (doctoral student, University of Stuttgart) will give a talk titled Minimal sufficiency and scalar particles in German at LingLunch next Tuesday (October 13, 12:30-1:30). This is a collaborative study with Alexander Wimmer and Daniel Hole, to be presented at NELS next week.

The meeting will be held in person, in SHH 338.

Title: Minimal sufficiency and scalar particles in German

Abstract: Exclusive focus particles sometimes receive minimal sufficiency (MS) readings (Grosz 2012, Coppock & Lindahl 2014, Coppock & Beaver 2014, Liu 2016, 2017, Panizza & Sudo 2020). In German, such readings can arise with allein ‘alone’ in combination with schon ‘already’ and selbst ‘even’.

(1) a. QUD: Are antibiotics needed to cure this disease?
b. Selbst allein  schon    Baldrian_F hilft hier.
even    alone  already  valerian helps here
‘Even just valerian alone helps here.’

In (1b), valerian is presented as sufficient without excluding other effective treatments. The central question is how this reading arises despite the presence of an exclusive particle.

This talk explores a compositional account of minimal sufficiency. We distinguish local exclusivity, contributed by allein, from scalar lowness, contributed by schon. The particle selbst ‘even’ adds mirativity. We examine how these three operators combine to present a small resource as sufficient while leaving larger alternatives available.

Meeting on 10/07: Yurie Hara

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On Wednesday, 10/07, 1:30pm, Professor Yurie Hara (Hokkaido University) will present the paper From LLM Errors to Linguistic Theory: Human Evaluation of Japanese Particle Predictions. This is joint work with Hoi Man Kevin Li and John S. Y. Lee of Hong Kong City University. Abstract attached. The paper will be presented at Linguistic Evidence 2026, to be held in Mannheim, Germany, October 15-16. Yurie Hara is visiting us at UConn during all of October and November.

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