nyu20

The Inferential Typology of Language

Philippe Schlenker

(LINGUAE, Institut Jean-Nicod, CNRS; New York University)

September-October 2020 - NYU

Instructor: Philippe Schlenker (E-mail: philippe.schlenker@gmail.com)

Note: P. Schlenker will be present at NYU for 8 weeks in September-October 2020. In addition, he will be at NYU for advising purposes for 3 weeks in May 2021 (precise dates to be determined later).

Topic

Natural language doesn't just convey information; it simultaneously comments on its status by dividing it among various slots of a rich inferential typology, which includes: at-issue contributions, presuppositions, implicatures, supplements, expressives, and more. This seminar will discuss aspects of this inferential typology, especially ones that go beyond standard presupposition and implicature theory. One overarching question is which of these inferential types are encoded in words, and which are generated on the basis of productive rules (some of which might go beyond language proper).

Syllabus: (to be added later)

Honor Code

To foster learning and discussion, students are discouraged from using phones, tablets or laptops during class, unless this is solely to take notes and/or follow the pdf slides as they are presented (with all other applications closed).

[Summary of some data on this topic]

[Effects of laptop multitasking on users and nearby students]

Important

(i) Please sign up here if you plan to attend some or all of the seminar (irrespective of whether you plan to enroll or not; this is just so that the instructor has your email address, can assess how many people will attend, and which topics will be of particular interest to the audience).

(ii) The discussion sessions (open to all graduate students, whether registered or not) are being scheduled by way of a Doodle poll. Please fill out the following Doodle poll by Wednesday, August 26, 7pm (and sooner if you can).

Please add to your name: (i) your affiliation, and (importantly) (ii) IP if you plan to attend in person, and Z if you plan to attend on Zoom.

(The information will also be useful to schedule guest lectures, hence multiple slots are provided - thanks for your patience in filling this out!)

Requirements

Besides active class participation:

(i) 1 class presentation + 1 squib/mini-literature review (in some cases, the squib may be replaced with an additional class presentation);

(ii) 1 mini-term paper (to be emailed 10 days after the seminar end; ideally the mini-term paper will have been prepared by the two squibs/presentations in (i))

The squib and mini-term paper should be connected to the broad questions that will be addressed in the seminar.

You are encouraged to take the opportunity of this seminar to explore new datasets and propose new generalizations.

Please contact the instructor soon after the beginning of the term to discuss (i) and (ii).

Readings and slides

If they are not linked below, they will be made available in this Dropbox folder.

Schedule and topics [to be adapted as we go]

8 weeks in September-October - see below for sessions and readings.

–General sessions (2 hours 40 per week) will be held on Tuesdays, 3:30pm-6:10pm

–Discussion sessions (1 hour 45 per week) are open to all graduate students (whether registered or not for the course). See above for the Doodle poll.

The seminar will include a guest lecture by Matt Mandelkern, who is joining NYU in Fall 2020, and another one (on semantics and reasoning) by Salvador Mascarenhas (ENS Paris, NYU alumnus).

Possible topics (preliminary!):

• The inferential typology beyond words

Reading: Tieu et al., Linguistic Inferences Without Words

• Supplements and expressives

Reading: Schlenker, The Semantics and Pragmatics of Appositives (handbook article)

• Maximize Presupposition, Blind Implicatures and Logical Integrity

Reading: Anvari, Logical Integrity

• Varieties of cosuppositions: gestures and beyond

• Iconic inferences: the case of repetition-based plurals

• Inferences and reasoning (guest lecture by Salvador Mascarenhas)

Preliminary schedule and readings - to be adapted (please note that 2 guest lectures at non-standard times have yet to be scheduled)

Main sessions are in red; normal schedule: Tuesdays 3:30pm-6:10pm (unless otherwise noted), WP 104 or Zoom.

Discussion sessions are in blue. All discussion sessions will be held on Zoom (per the Department's request)

Background reading: Schlenker, The Semantics/Pragmatics Interface

Tuesday, September 8, 2020: Introduction - the productivity of the inferential typology of language

Readings: Tieu et al. Linguistic Inferences without Words (short)

or Schlenker Gestural Semantics (long)

Thursday, September 10, 2020 - 10am-11:45am: discussion session: Omar Agha on homogeneity, habituals and generics.

Optional reading: Kriz 2019

Tuesday, September 15, 2020: Supplements I

Readings: Potts Conventional Implicature and Expressive Content

Schlenker The Semantics and Pragmatics of Appositives

Optional: Poschmann Embedding Non-Restrictive Relative Clauses; AnderBois et al. At-issue proposals and appositive impositions in discourse. Schlenker Supplements Without Bidimensionalism [2020 version]

Thursday, September 17, 2020 - 10am-11:45am: discussion session: Cindy Chen on the ignorance inferences of epistemic indefinites

Tuesday, September 22, 2020: Supplements II

Readings:

(shorter) Logical Integrity. Anvari, A. In Maspong, S.; Stefánsdóttir, B.; Blake, K.; and Davis, F., editor(s), Proceedings of the 28th Semantics and Linguistic Theory Conference, pages 711–726, 2018. Paper

(longer) Logical integrity: from Maximize Presupposition! to Mismatching Implicatures. Anvari, A. 2018. Submitted

Thursday, September 24, 2020 - 10am-11:45am: discussion session: Zhuoye Zhao on conditionals (and Maximize Presupposition)

Squib or presentation #1 due (by email, 9pm)! (no need to do anything if you have already given a presentation)

Tuesday, September 29, 2020: Logical Integrity I

Thursday, October 1, 2020 - 10am-11:45am: discussion session: Soo-Hwan Lee on expressives in Korean (Optional reading: McCready 2019 Ch. 4)

Tuesday, October 6, 2020 (Zoom): Matt Mandelkern on Relativism vs. Contextualism (joint work with Jonathan Phillips): "Eavesdropping: What is it good for?"

Optional reading: Egan et al. Epistemic modals in context; Beddor and Egan: Might do better

Thursday, October 8, 2020 - 10am-11:45am: discussion session: Ioana Grosu on supplements in Romanian

Tuesday, October 13, 2020: Logical Integrity II

Thursday, October 15, 2020 - 10am-11:45am: discussion session: Q&A with Amir Anvari

Squib or presentation #2 due (by email, 9pm)!

Tuesday, October 20, 2020, 9am (note the non-standard time!), Zoom: Salvador Mascarenhas: Semantics, Reasoning, and the Logic of Thought

Ad hoc Zoom link: please contact the instructor if you haven't received it [philippe.schlenker@gmail.com]

Reading: Picat and Mascarenhas 2020

Abstract: Human reasoning is fallible in systematic ways that have been the object of abundant study from the psychology of reasoning and behavioral economics. This field openly acknowledges the difficulty in teasing apart genuine reasoning mistakes from non-obvious but well-understood and communicatively rational interpretive processes. Did participants make a reasoning mistake, or did they reason perfectly well with more complex interpretations than meet the eye? Yet the interactions between the psychology of reasoning and linguistic semantics are extremely scarce. In this lecture, I present an overview of the past 60 years of research on human reasoning, with an eye to interactions with semantic theory and psycholinguistics. We will discuss examples from deductive reasoning, reasoning with conditionals, and probabilistic reasoning. For each case study, we will review the top reasoning-based accounts and interpretation-based accounts, and discuss how they might hang together. I will show that there is much more that linguists, and specifically semanticists, have to offer in way of helping understand human reasoning. Only carefully coordinated work combining theories and methodologies from semantics and psychology will allow us to crack the puzzle of human reasoning.

Thursday, October 22, 2020 - 10am-11:45am: discussion session: Cindy Chen on Logical Integrity; André Eliatamby on presuppositions, implicatures and neg-raising

Tuesday, October 27, 2020 9am (note the non-standard time!), Iconic Inferences (the Zoom link is the usual one for Tuesday sessions, sent by email at the beginning of the semester; the timing of this particular session has been changed while keeping the link)

Optional reading: Schlenker and Lamberton Meaningful Blurs

Additional reading: Greenberg, The Structure of Visual Content

Important note: You should have received from NYU Linguistics a link to a course evaluation form. Please remember to fill it out (whether you were registered for the class or not - people who just attended are welcome to fill out the forms as well).

Thursday, October 29, 2020 - 10am-11:45am: discussion session: Omar Agha on plural definites and bare conditionals

Mini-term paper due [by email]: Friday, November 6, 2020, 9pm EST.

Instructions for the mini-squib(s)

Choose between A, B, and C. In either case, please consult with the instructor ASAP. Registered students should write one squib and give a class presentation (or write an additional squib). In some cases, the squib may be replaced with an additional class presentation.

Note: Your squib can be very short. Ideally, it should present one very clear argument or empirical problem.

A. Write a brief review of an article that concerns one of the topics that will be discussed in the seminar.

Consult with the instructor on the choice of the paper. Your squib should be empirically and formally precise. Be sure to specify in your review:

(i) the empirical problem that is addressed, and the generalizations that are discussed [state them precisely];

(ii) what the main formal proposal is;

(iii) how the formal analysis is applied to several selected examples;

(iv) what some strengths and weaknesses of the proposal are.

B. Write a squib related to one of the topics that will be discussed in the seminar. Your squib should be empirically and formally precise. The squib should be very focused, and it should:

(i) define a clear problem, which could be:

(a) an empirical problem [interesting patterns of projection for connectives we haven’t discussed; empirical problems for the analyses we have discussed, etc.];

(b) a formal problem that arises in some of the theories we have discussed;

(ii) give a precise analysis of the relevant data and formalisms;

(iii) discuss one or several possible solutions.

C. Give a class presentation, to be discussed with the instructor.

Instructions for the mini-term paper

The mini-term paper should be a more elaborate version of B. above. The key is to find some crisp empirical and/or formal result, not to write something long. Approximate length: 6-10 pages.