28.226, Calls: Philosophy of Lang, Pragmatics, Semantics/France

[The LINGUIST List]

LINGUIST List: Vol-28-226. Wed Jan 11 2017. ISSN: 1069 - 4875.

Subject: 28.226, Calls: Philosophy of Lang, Pragmatics, Semantics/France

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Date: Wed, 11 Jan 2017 20:59:00
From: John MacFarlane [jgm at berkeley.edu]
Subject: Contextual Indefiniteness and Semantic Theory

 
Full Title: Contextual Indefiniteness and Semantic Theory 

Date: 19-Apr-2017 - 20-Apr-2017
Location: Paris, France 
Contact Person: John MacFarlane
Meeting Email: contextual.indefiniteness at gmail.com

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

Call Deadline: 15-Feb-2017 

Meeting Description:

In truth-conditional semantics it is standard to talk of a context as
determining a speaker, addressee, a reference time, referents of
demonstratives and indexicals, a “modal base” of possibilities, quantifier
domains, similarity metrics or selection functions for conditionals, reference
classes and cutoff points for gradeable adjectives, and much else.

But there is reason to wonder whether semanticists have become too comfortable
with this formalism. In the cases that initially motivated the introduction of
contexts (speaker, place, time, demonstrated objects), speakers and hearers
will normally have mutual knowledge of the values of the relevant contextual
parameters. When they don’t - for example, when the hearer is not sure which
of several dogs the speaker meant to be referring to in using “that dog” - it
is a defect in communication (which is not to say that the hearer cannot gain
information from the speaker in such cases). However, semanticists routinely
posit contextual parameters whose settings cannot possibly be mutually known
between speakers and hearers: for example, delineation functions for gradable
adjectives or similarity metrics for counterfactual conditionals.

The purpose of this workshop is to assess whether it is problematic to posit
contextual parameters whose settings are not mutually known (even in normal
cases of successful communication), and to consider the upshots. Is it
plausible to think of definitions of truth at a context as theories of meaning
when the relevant contextual parameters are not known in common between
speakers and hearers? How do such definitions figure in explanations of
communication? If it is problematic to posit inscrutable settings for
contextual parameters, what are the upshots for the abundant work in semantic
theory that seems to posit them? Are there ways of reconceiving this work
without throwing away its insights? Is it time to rethink the way formal
semantic theory relates to the use of language?


Call for Papers:

If you are interested in presenting a paper at the workshop, please submit an
abstract of no more than 2 pages, in PDF format. We welcome submissions from
anyone who works with formal semantics, whether in linguistics, philosophy, or
another discipline. Abstracts should be sent to
contextual.indefiniteness at gmail.com by February 15, 2017. Notifications of
accepted abstracts will be sent out by February 28.

Papers may address the topic of the workshop directly or indirectly, through
their connections with recent discussions of metalinguistic negotiation,
semantic minimalism, loose talk, vagueness, expressivism, relativism, dynamic
semantics, presupposition and the common ground, knowledge which, or the
semantics of particular expressions such as quantifiers, conditionals,
gradeable adjectives and modals.




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