27.2278, Confs: Philosophy of Language, Pragmatics, Semantics/UK

Thu May 19 13:29:20 UTC 2016

LINGUIST List: Vol-27-2278. Thu May 19 2016. ISSN: 1069 - 4875.

Subject: 27.2278, Confs: Philosophy of Language, Pragmatics, Semantics/UK

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Date: Thu, 19 May 2016 09:28:58
From: Jumbly Grindrod [j.grindrod at pgr.reading.ac.uk]
Subject: Pervasive Context Conference: Ramifications and Next Directions

Pervasive Context Conference: Ramifications and Next Directions 
Short Title: PCC 

Date: 25-Jun-2016 - 26-Jun-2016 
Location: Reading, United Kingdom 
Contact: Jumbly Grindrod 
Contact Email: pervasive_context at reading.ac.uk 
Meeting URL: https://www.reading.ac.uk/pervasive-context/pc-conference-reading.aspx 

Linguistic Field(s): Philosophy of Language; Pragmatics; Semantics 

Meeting Description: 

This conference will examine the wider implications of pervasive
context-sensitivity and the possible directions for future research. Some
indicative questions which may be explored at the conference include:

How do different approaches to pervasive context-sensitivity fit with accounts
of cognitive impairment? Do theories of cognitive impairment provide empirical
support for, or raise problems for, extant theories of context-sensitivity?

Should an account of pervasive context-sensitivity also provide an account of
metaphor and other non-literal uses of language?

How should we take debates about pervasive context-sensitivity forward? What
aspects of debate are open to empirical investigation and in what way? How
does the debate about pervasive context impact on cognate areas, such as
computational modelling of language understanding?

Is the debate deepened by bringing to bear research and intuitions from those
working with different linguistic and cultural backgrounds?

Program:

Call for Registration – AHRC Pervasive Context Conference, University of
Reading
25-26 June 2016
Registration for the conference is now open. To do so, just click on the
following link and follow the instructions:
https://registration.venuereading.com/pervasivecontext

Speakers and Abstracts:

Eliot Michaelson (King’s College London): ‘Almost Minimal’

Borg (2004, 2012) develops what I take to be the richest and best-motivated
version of 'semantic minimalism'.  This view offers some very serious
benefits: among others, it holds out the prospect of explaining the
relationship between semantics and psychology, and it offers a principled way
of preserving an interesting explanatory project for semantics.  While I am
sympathetic to both the motivations and indeed many of the commitments of this
view, I shall argue here that Borg's considerations regarding reference-fixing
constitute a serious weakness in the view---and one which suggests a related,
but substantially different, way forward.  In particular, I shall argue that
Borg's view goes wrong when faced with speakers who are sufficiently confused
about the world.  After considering some potential fixes, I offer a different
way forward, one which bifurcates between a revised notion of 'character' and
'content'.  Complex, sentence-level characters, on this sort of view, fulfil
many of the roles that Borg hoped for semantic contents to fill.  But they are
not themselves the proper bearers of truth-values.  By understanding the
relationship between these two different types of semantic values, I hope to
derive a view that can preserve most of the explanatory virtues of Borg's own
position while also offering an account of reference capable of handling the
sorts of messy situations we find when considering the full range of
real-world speakers.

Josef Stern (University of Chicago): ‘Quotation and Pictures’

Quotation (q-)marks “ ‘… ’ ” are currently used in two main ways: to quote
someone’s utterance or inscription (e.g., “Trump said: ‘I will make America
great!’”) and to mention words (e.g., “ ‘Love’ is a four letter word”).  Over
the last 50 years there has been an explosion of work by philosophers and
linguistics on q-marks but almost all of it has focused on their use in
mentioning, either ignoring or assimilating quotation to mentioning.  In the
first parts of this paper I trace the disjoint histories of q-marks in the two
practices to identify the explanandum of quotation and I propose that the
q-marks “ ‘… ’ ” are homonymous.  For the rest of the paper I concentrate
almost entirely on the use of q-marks in quotation, present the semantic
problems raised by sentential and sub-sentential (so-called mixed) quotation,
and, drawing on an analogy between pictures and quotations—frequently
mentioned but rarely used in the literature—show how quotations can be best
analyzed using three notions taken from the theory of pictures.  What emerges
from this analysis is a conception of quotation that locates it on the
boundary between linguistic competence proper and the non-linguistic—and in
one sense, contextual—symbolic skill of picturing.

Luca Sbordone (University of Cambridge): ‘Vagueness, Contextualism and
Assessment-sensitivity’

Most natural language predicates such as ‘tall’ in example (1) are notoriously
problematic for traditional formal semantics approaches in that they typically
show the characteristic and puzzling features of vagueness: borderline cases,
lack of clear boundaries, susceptibility to the Sorites paradox. 
(1) John is tall. 
In recent years, several authors have pursued the intuition that the vagueness
of most natural language predicates goes hand in hand with their
context-sensitivity and developed contextualist theories that typically aim at
tracing back the puzzling properties of vague expressions to features of the
context in which these expressions are used. Nonetheless, such contextualist
theories of vagueness (Kamp 1981, Raffman 1994, 1996, Fara 2000, Shapiro 2006)
have encountered forceful objections in the literature, on the ground that,
allegedly, vagueness and context-dependence are two demonstrably independent
phenomena: hold the context fixed – so the standard objection goes – vagueness
still arises. Based on such a simple reasoning, other authors have insisted
that the widespread recognition that typically vague words are in need of
contextual specification only points in the direction of ''an empirical
correlation, not an a priori law'' (Williamson 1994: 214). 
I shall argue that this conclusion is not correct. I will show that the
presumed force of the objection is based on a restrictive understanding and
formalization of the notion of context. Particularly, I shall develop a new
contextualist theory of vagueness according to which, in order to make sense
of the idea that vagueness is a form of context-sensitivity, we need to
acknowledge that the context-dependence of vague words is two-fold: the
meaning of vague expressions is not only sensitive to the context of use, but
it also shows a previously unrecognised form of context-sensitivity which,
following MacFarlane (2003), I shall call sensitivity to the context of
assessment. Within a broadly Kaplanian framework, I propose that expanding the
operative (two-dimensional) notion of context so as to include the entirely
new level of the context of assessment helps building a version of the
contextualist theory of vagueness that is immune to the standard objection.
Building on the analogy between vague predications and utterances of future
contingent statements, I will argue that the assessment- sensitive semantics
allows capturing the seemingly incompatible intuitions about the meaning and
use of vague predicates. At the same time, it explains why the Sorites paradox
is logically invalid but psychologically so compelling. 

Jumbly Grindrod (University of Reading): ‘QUDs and Context Sensitivity’

It has variously been argued that discourse can be modelled as an attempt to
answer questions (Roberts 1996, Ginzburg 1996). This is called the question
under discussion (QUD) framework. In recent years, it has been thought that
this pragmatic framework could provide the basis of an account of the
context-sensitivity found in natural language. In particular, Schoubye &
Stokke (2015) and Stokke (2016) have argued that the QUD can be utilised to
provide a systematic account of how what is said is freely enriched across
different contexts. In doing so, they aim to provide a clear role for minimal,
context-invariant content in determining what is said. In this talk, I will
present two objections to their view. First, there are several cases of free
enrichment that their account fails to capture. Furthermore, the divide
between those cases of free enrichment that their account does capture, and
those that it does not looks to be arbitrary. Secondly, on their account there
is no obvious way for what is said to be the input for relevance implicature
derivation. Schoubye & Stokke (2015) and Stokke (2016) do provide differing
responses to this objection. However, I argue that both responses fail. 

Dan Zeman (University of the Basque Country): ‘Relativism about Predicates of
Personal Taste and Perspectival Plurality: Some Solutions’

In this paper we discuss a phenomenon that has been largely unnoticed in the
current debate between relativism and contextualism about predicates of
personal taste. This is the phenomenon of “perspectival plurality”, whereby
the truth value of a sentence containing more than one such predicate may
depend on more than one perspective. Prima facie, perspectival plurality
constitutes a problem for relativism and an argument for contextualism. In the
paper we first introduce the phenomenon, then the problem it poses. In the
last section, we explore several possible solutions for the relativist. 

Michael Blome-Tillmann (University of Cambridge/McGill University): TBC

Qilin Li (Peking University): TBC 

Nausicaa Pouscolous (University College London): TBC

This conference is part of the AHRC Pervasive Context Project:
https://www.reading.ac.uk/pervasive-context/ This project aims to create an
international network of researchers to investigate and explore the
theoretical developments and positions regarding pervasive context-sensitivity
in natural language. The network primarily consists of a research link between
the University of Reading and Peking University.

We gratefully acknowledge the support of the Arts and Humanities Research
Council.

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