The Philosophy Brownbag on Wednesday, October 25, at12:15pm will feature our own Magdalena Kaufmann with a talk titled Conjunctions (in)forming Conditionals. The meeting is hybrid, in-person in the basement lounge of Manchester Hall and online via Zoom. Contact Stefan Kaufmann for login information.

Abstract: In many natural languages (including English), sentential conjunctions instantiating the schema `p and q’ can receive conditional interpretations similar to `if p, then q’ (“conditional conjunctions”). Empirical evidence from several languages suggests that this interpretation comes about when the first sentential conjunct is marked or interpreted as a topic. While this allows for a compositional interpretation of the phenomenon, it does not in itself explain puzzling restrictions on the kinds of conditional meanings that can be expressed by conjunctions: conditional conjunctions cannot normally be used to express generalizations and to make predictions about future sequences of events (roughly, generic and causal-like/metaphysical conditionals), but not to express epistemic conditionals (roughly, reasoning under uncertainty about current and past states of affairs). Special discourse settings can, however, overwrite this restriction and make conditional conjunctions felicitous as epistemic conditionals. 

The Meaning Group will meet on Tuesday, October 24, 11:30-12:30 in Herbst 338. Jon Gajewski will lead the discussion on this paper:

White, Aaron Steven. “On believing and hoping whether.” Semantics and pragmatics 14 (2021): 6-1.

https://semprag.org/index.php/sp/article/view/sp.14.6

The UConn Logic Colloquium will feature a talk of interest to Meaning Groupers:

Richard Samuels, Eric Snyder, and Stewart Shapiro:
“Semantics Without Numbers”

https://uconn-edu.zoom.us/j/99735715427?pwd=dVEzK0duTkRWYnI0WktCUlFMQ28zQT09
Meeting ID: 997 3571 5427
Passcode: 18481108

Ali Aenehzodaee (visiting graduate student from Ohio State University) will present work of his own. (In person)

Title: “A Predicativist Approach to Fictional Names”.

Abstract:

Philosophers of language tend to treat fictional names no differently than other putatively empty names such as those of empty scientific posits. Focusing on reference failure as the only or most salient feature of theoretical interest, it’s no wonder fictional names and other empty names are often lumped together. My aim in this talk is to examine linguistic criteria for distinguishing fictional names from other names in general and other empty names in particular. I will discuss certain predicative applications of fictional names generally unavailable to nonfictional (full or empty) names, for example as parts of DPs denoting mind-dependent objects of creative expression, such as “Peter Jackson’s Aragorn”. In addition to helping differentiate the fictional/nonfictional and the empty/full, these uses help reveal that fictional names are not empty singular terms, but instead have the underlying semantic function of predicates, or so I will argue. 

We are discussing Homer’s (2021) Actualistic interpretations in French. Semantics & Pragmatics 14.

On August 29, 11:30am-12:30pm in Oak Hall 338, Yusuke Yagi will present his work on Presuppositions in Disjunctions. Contact Stefan Kaufmann for a remote link.

We will meet on Thursday, April 27, 1:45-2:45 in Oak 338. Bill Lycan will present his ongoing work.

Explicature and Cancellability

Relevance theorists, most notably Robyn Carston, defend a notion they call “explicature,” that contrasts with mere conversational implicature in much the way that Grice’s “what is said” and semantic entailment do. But there is a puzzle: (i) As characterized, explicatures should not be cancellable in the way that conversational implicatures are. But (ii) in fact the standard examples of explicature are all cancellable, which you’d think is a serious objection to the Relevance theorists’ claim. Yet (iii) Carston not only grants but insists that explicatures are cancellable.

I try to solve that puzzle by pointing out something not often noticed, that “cancellable” is a relative term: cancellable without… what penalty? (And I believe that point is important independently of the explicature issue.)

We will meet on Thursday, April 20, 1:45-2:45 in Oak 371 (note the untypical room). Our own Omar Agha will present his ongoing work.

Focus-driven QUD accommodation in plural definites

Kriz (2015) and other recent work has drawn much attention to non-maximal interpretations of plural definite noun phrases. In Kriz’s model, non-maximality is possible when the QUD makes the exceptions irrelevant.

I present some novel observations that motivate an amendment of this theory. I show that plural definite noun phrases that associate with focus sensitive operators display more extreme non-maximality than plural definites without focus. This is especially apparent in out-of-the-blue contexts, where no particular QUD is assumed.

I sketch the beginning of a pragmatic theory of these facts, in which the presence of focus drives the listener to accommodate a QUD that is focus congruent, which in turn licenses exception tolerance.

Each year the UConn Logic Group chooses invites a distinguished “scholar of consequence” to deliver our Annual Logic Lecture. This year’s speaker is Maria Aloni (ILLC, University of Amsterdam). Her lecture will take place this Friday, March 31, 11am-1pm in ITE 336. This is an in-person event, but a zoom option will be available for those who cannot come (zoom link to be shared  by email).

Nothing is Logical

People often reason contrary to the prescriptions of classical logic. In the talk I will discuss some cases of divergence between everyday and logical-mathematical reasoning and propose that they are a consequence of a tendency in human cognition to neglect models which verify sentences by virtue of an empty configuration [neglect-zero tendency, Aloni 2022]. I will then introduce a bilateral state-based modal logic (BSML) which formally represents the neglect-zero tendency and can be used to rigorously study its impact on reasoning and interpretation. After discussing some of the applications, I will compare BSML with related systems (truthmaker semantics, possibility semantics, and inquisitive semantics) via translations into Modal Information Logic [van Benthem 2019].

Maria Aloni. Logic and conversation: The case of free choice, Semantics and Pragmatics, vol 15 (2022)
Johan van Benthem. Implicit and Explicit Stances in Logic, Journal of Philosophical Logic, vol 48, pages 571–601 (2019)

Maria Aloni (ILLC, University of Amsterdam), the Logic Groups “scholar of consequence” this year, will make an appearance in the semantics seminar on Thursday, March 30, 9:30-12:15 in HBL 2153. The session will begin with a presentation and discussion of her work on (non-)specific indefinites (title and abstract below). The latter part of the session will be devoted to the topic of her Annual Logic Lecture the following day. This is a paper which was discussed in the seminar earlier in the semester. Contact the instructors, Jon Gajewski and Magdalena Kaufmann, for details.

(Non-)specificity across languages: constancy, variation, -variation – Maria Aloni and Marco Degano

Abstract: Indefinites are known to give rise to different scopal (specific vs nonspecific) and epistemic (known vs unknown) uses. Farkas and Brasoveanu [2020] explained these specificity distinctions in terms of stability vs. variability in value assignments of the variable introduced by the indefinite. Typological research [Haspelmath, 1997] showed that indefinites have different
functional distributions with respect to these uses. In this work, we present a formal framework where Farkas and Brasoveanu [2020]’s ideas are rigorously formalized. We develop a two-sorted team semantics which integrates both scope and epistemic effects. We apply the framework to explain typological variety of indefinites, their restricted distribution and licensing conditions, and some diachronic developments of indefinite forms.

D. Farkas and A. Brasoveanu. Kinds of (Non)Specificity. The Wiley Blackwell Companion to Semantics, pages 1–26, 2020.
M. Haspelmath. Indefinite Pronouns. Oxford University Press, 1997.