Session 6 - A Kai von Fintel and David Beaver: Semantics-pragmatics Interfaces

We seek original research papers developing new approaches to formal semantics and pragmatics: experimental and corpus methods, field methods, cross-linguistic comparison, and innivative formal frameworks; We particularly encourage submissions that develop dynamic and modal techniques beyond their traditional domains, especially as related to the cluster of six subtopics listed below;
We look forward to an exciting meeting, one that will be enhanced by the presence at the ICL of two keynote speakers whose research exemplifies the type of work we seek: Angelika Kratzer and Philippe Schlenker. The multi-day session on semantics & pragmatics will feature almost 40 half four presentations (20 minute talks+10 minute discussion) and is organized by the founding editors of the journal "Semantics & Pragmatics", David Beaver and Kai von Fintel.

1. Domain restriction
Natural languages quantifiers are subject to contextual domain restriction. Issues include wether the restraiction occurs via covert material in logical form or via some parameter of evaluation, the precise location of the restriction (on a nominal, on a quantificational operator), and the question of wether domain restriction of modals and quantifiers and possibly other constructions should be seen as special cases of the same general phenomenon.

2. Evidentiality, modality, conditionals
The semantics of modals and conditionals have long been subjects of scholarly controversy, but until relatively recently  the related intensional phenomenon of evidentiality (the grammatical marking of source or strength of evidence for a proposition) was largely overlooked by semanticists. We are interested in work that develops our understanding of any of these three types of construction, or that explores the similarities and differences between them.

3. Questions and alternatives
While the semantics of questions, and the pragmatic relationship between questions and answers, has been an ongoing area of study for forty years. This interest centers around three related areas: (i) the relationship between questions and focus marking, (ii) models of discourse structure in terms of strategies for answering questions, and (iii) the advent of the framework of Inquisitibe Semantics, which extends ideas developed in the context of question semantics to a wider range of constructions. We seek proposals that develop question semantics in any of these directions.

4. Desiderative considerations
Maintaining our general theme of extending dynamic and modal techniques beyond their traditional domain, we are seeking work that sheds light on a wider range of constructions, and a wider range of speech-act types, than had been achieved in a traditional, classical semantics. One important sub-area is desiderative constructions, broadly speaking those constructions that express desire, and which we take to include imperatives, optatives, and desiderative attitudes such as "want".

5. Formal approaches to politeness
We understand "politeness" in Brown and Levinson's sense as including not only traditional honorific marking, but also the more general issue of how linguistic form reflects the pragmatics of social relationships. A classic example, connecting with Topic 4, is the many forms of expression (direct or indirect) of the expression of commands and requests. politeness issues have also come to the fore both because they appear to demand a dynamic, strategic view of communication, and because explicit marking of politeness often involves information that is conventionalized and yet apparently non-truth-conditional, hence posing a problem for traditional semantic methods.

6. Presupposition and Conventional Implicature
Presupposition and Conventional Implicature are among the drivers of work that pushes away from a classical conception of meaning. Of particular note is the tendency of both Presuppositions and Conventional Implicatures to exhibit "projection", which occurs when an inference associated with a construction survives even after the construction is embedded within a larger construction that would tend to block inferences associated with ordinary truth-conditional content. A simple example, (cf; Topic 5) is way that deference exhibited by a use of a polite form in a clause is maintained even when that clause is embedded under negation. We seek papers that explore the question of how projective inferences should be explained, what causes projection in the first place, and what the similarities and differences are between different constructions that manifest such behavior.

22.07.2013   16:30-18:30

Title: Presupposition and anaphora I
Chair: David Beaver and Kai von Fintel

 16:30 - 17:00 Elena GUERZONI et al.
Whether or not Anything but not Whether Anything or not
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17:00 - 17:30 Nadine BADE
Obligatory Presuppositions and Exhaustive Interpretation
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17:30 - 18:00 Rebekah BAGLINI et al.
The implications of managing
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18:00 - 18:30 Lauri KARTTUNEN et al.
Double meaning: A systematic empirical study
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23.07.2013   10:30-12:30

Title: General session
Chair: Rick Nouwen

 10:30 - 11:30 Kai VON FINTEL et al.
Variable Costs
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11:30 - 12:00 Alessandro ZUCCHI et al.
Monsters begat by quantifiers
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23.07.2013   16:30-18:30

Title: Presupposition and anaphora II
Chair: Craige Roberts

 16:30 - 17:00 Pascal AMSILI et al.
Beyond obligatory presupposition
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17:00 - 17:30 Yasutada SUDO
Beyond Frege-Strawson: Presupposition, Quantification and Anaphora
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17:30 - 18:00 Chris CUMMINS
How not to trigger a presupposition
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18:00 - 18:30 Ezra KESHET
Coherence and Donkey Anaphora
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23.07.2013   18:30-19:30

Title: -- Poster session --
Chair: -- Poster session --

 18:30 - 19:30 Agata Maria RENANS
Functions of exclusives in Ga
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18:30 - 19:30 Ahbi KOH
Korean Temporal Adverbs from the Perspective of Pragmatic Comparison
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18:30 - 19:30 Anastasia GIANNAKIDOU et al.
Future morphemes and epistemic modality: evidence from modal adverbs in Greek, Italian and English
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18:30 - 19:30 Aynat RUBINSTEIN et al.
Contextual commitment and desiderative verbs
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18:30 - 19:30 Chris CUMMINS et al.
Multi-level contextual effects on the scope of negation
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18:30 - 19:30 Dongsik LIM
On the interaction between Korean direct evidential -te- and the event structure of predicates
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18:30 - 19:30 Elena CASTROVIEJO et al.
What we know about capacities
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18:30 - 19:30 Harris CONSTANTINOU et al.
Accounting for the Scopal Effects of Intensifiers
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18:30 - 19:30 Irena CRONIN
Absence, Non-existence, and Particular Beings or Objects
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18:30 - 19:30 Lisa BYLININA
The judge argument
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18:30 - 19:30 M. Ryan BOCHNAK
From adposition to comparative marker: Innovating locative comparisons
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18:30 - 19:30 Mira GRUBIC et al.
If only means must...: Analyzing the modal meanings of the Hausa exclusive particle sai and its use in conditionals
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18:30 - 19:30 Osamu SAWADA et al.
The modal demonstratives in Japanese: a mismatch between at-issue and non-at-issue meanings
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18:30 - 19:30 Pei-Yi HSIAO
Evidentiality and Epistemic Modality: The case of phah4-sng3 in Taiwanese Southern Min
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18:30 - 19:30 Sara UCKELMAN et al.
Medieval insights for the semantics of exceptives
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18:30 - 19:30 Shevaun LEWIS et al.
3-year-olds compute relevance inferences in indirect requests
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25.07.2013   10:30-12:30

Title: Information structure
Chair: Regine Eckardt

 10:30 - 11:00 Laia MAYOL et al.
Contrastive Topic and Conversational Implicature Cancellation
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11:00 - 11:30 Christopher DAVIS
Focus Particles, GIVENness, and Wh-Questions in A Southern Ryukyuan Language
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11:30 - 12:00 Allyson ETTINGER et al.
Mandarin utterance-final particle ba in the conversational scoreboard
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12:00 - 12:30 Christopher TANCREDI et al.
Qualities and Translations
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25.07.2013   16:30-18:30

Title: Modality I
Chair: Ezra Keshet

 16:30 - 17:00 Ariel COHEN
Embedded Epistemic Modals: An Experimental and Theoretical Investigation
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17:00 - 17:30 Luis ALONSO-OVALLE et al.
Modal indefinites beyond speaker ignorance: "uno cualquiera" and "algún que otro"
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17:30 - 18:00 Jessica RETT et al.
The effects of syntax on the acquisition of evidentiality
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18:00 - 18:30 Regine ECKARDT
Speaker Commentary Items
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26.07.2013   10:30-12:30

Title: Politeness and discourse
Chair: Stanley Peters

 10:30 - 11:00 Jason QUINLEY et al.
Impolitely Requesting Awareness
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11:00 - 11:30 Eric MCCREADY et al.
Strategic politeness
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11:30 - 12:00 Daniel GUTZMANN
Towards true multi-dimensionality. A compositional logic for expressive content
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12:00 - 12:30 Matthijs WESTERA
Meanings as proposals: an inquisitive approach to exhaustivity
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26.07.2013   14:00-16:00

Title: Modality II
Chair: Sandro Zucchi

 14:00 - 14:30 Alex SILK
Deontic Conditionals: Weak and Strong
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14:30 - 15:00 Eva CSIPAK
Factive subjunctives in German
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15:00 - 15:30 Stefan HINTERWIMMER
The Semantics of German 'sollen'
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15:30 - 16:00 Aynat RUBINSTEIN
Negotiable and non-negotiable necessities: the view from arguments
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27.07.2013   08:30-10:30

Title: Eventualities and the lexicon
Chair: David Beaver and Kai von Fintel

 08:30 - 09:00 Fátima OLIVEIRA et al.
On the Iterative Reading of 'Pretérito Perfeito Composto' in European Portuguese
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09:00 - 09:30 Tijana ASIC et al.
The emergence of telic readings in French and Serbian : prepositions and definiteness
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09:30 - 10:00 Rebekah BAGLINI
The lexical semantics of derived states
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10:00 - 10:30 Melania S. MASIA
Real modification in Spanish
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