Kategorie: Talks

We are happy to announce a talk by Todor Koev (University of Konstanz) at the Semantics Colloquium. Please register beforehand (s.walter@em.uni-frankfurt.de) to receive the access data to zoom on Thursday shortly before the talk starts. Title: "Believe" as Gradable, Strong, and Subjective Date: July 1 Time: 4 pm – 6 pm ct Abstract: The verb "believe" is standardly analyzed as a universal quantifier over possibilities, i.e. as stating that the prejacent is true across all the attitude holder’s doxastic alternatives (Hintikka 1969). This semantics (i) fails to capture the fact that "believe" is a gradable predicate (cf. "partially believe", "fully believe", etc.) and (ii) does not predict the intuition that "believe" implies some sort of weakness on the part of the attitude holder towards the prejacent proposition (cf. "I believe Kim is on vacation" vs. "I know Kim is on vacation"). In order to remedy the gradability problem, I propose a gradable semantics for "believe" within the framework developed for gradable adjectives (Cresswell 1976; Kennedy & McNally 2005; a.m.o.). As for the modal strength problem, I claim that "believe" has the...

We are happy to announce a talk by Alexander Wimmer (University of Tübingen) at the Semantics Colloquium. Please register beforehand (s.walter@em.uni-frankfurt.de) to receive the access data to zoom on Thursday shortly before the talk starts. Title: Minimal sufficiency as implicature cancellation Date: June 17 Time: 4 pm – 6 pm ct Abstract: In his 2012 dissertation, Patrick Grosz assumes two kinds of ONLY, an exclusive and a non-exclusive one, which he also refers to as minimal sufficiency ONLY, henceforth MS-ONLY. German NUR ‘only’ in conditional antecedents is noted by him to be ambiguous between MS- and exclusive ONLY. One factor that clearly disambiguates in favor of MS-ONLY is the insertion of certain particles in the consequent. Consider the following example:  (1)        Heinrich ist (schon / selbst / auch) froh, wenn nur DREI Katzen kommen.             Henry is (already / even / also) glad if only THREE cats come The particles SCHON, SELBST and AUCH, henceforth referred to as EVEN-particles, enforce a reading on which Henry is also happy if more than three cats are around. Such particles are...