Issues in Contemporary Semantics and Ontology VII
Trends in Semantics and Pragmatics
Courses
The TALK group and the Argentinian Society for Analytic Philosophy invite researchers, scholars and undergraduate students in Philosophy of Language, Linguistics, Logic and Philosophy of Mind to enroll for the courses taught by our invited speakers on May 14th-16th, 2025.
Both courses will take place at Facultad de Filosofía y Letras (UBA) and each of the three classes will be two hours long. The teachers will dictate the classes in English. Assistance is free and a certificate will be given upon completion. Here is the registration form.
Description of each course
The architecture of grammar
Uli Sauerland
May 14th-16th from 2 pm to 4 pm
Architectural considerations played a big role in linguistic research in the 1970s (e.g. work by Chomsky, Jackendoff, and Montague), but less since. In Sauerland & Alexiadou (2020), we presented some arguments in favor of return to a Meaning-First Architecture. The goal of the is to develop a critical understanding of both the classical arguments and more recent work bearing on the matter of grammar architecture. We introduce a rough division between syntax-based, usage-based, and meaning-based conceptions of grammar, but focus on concrete empirical arguments that can distinguish between the syntax- and meaning-based views. The most elaborate discussion will focus to movement structures.
References in https://github.com/ulisauerland/ArchitectureOfGrammar
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Adjectives — Degree semantics, grammar and expressive meanings
Ana Paula Quadros Gomes
May 14th-16th from 4:30 pm to 6:30 pm
Contents
(1) Argument / predicate distinction and word classes - How to identify adjectives?
(2) A puzzle to compositionality
(3) The dynamics of adjective meaning – contextual dependency
(4) Lack of determination, vagueness and imprecision – degree adjectives
(5) Syntactic Distribution and Meaning: The contrast between prenominal and postnominal adjectives in romance languages
(6) Is Structure the sole source of meaning? Grammar and scale structure
(7) Licensing in Expressive Contexts
(8) Diminishers/ Reducers and negative evaluative adjectives
Selected References
Ferreira, Marcelo (2019) Curso de Semântica Formal. Textbooks in Language Sciences 6. Language Science Press. Capítulo 5. Modificação nominal. 97-1-3. Disponível em https://langsci-press.org/catalog/book/200
Gomes, A. Q.; Sanchez-Mendes, L. (2018). Para conhecer: Semântica. São Paulo: Contexto, Cap 4- Modificação. 153-180
Heim, I., & Kratzer, A. (1998). Semantics in generative grammar. Blackwell textbooks in Linguistics.
Partee, B. (2007). Compositionality and coercion in semantics: The dynamics of adjective meaning. Cognitive foundations of interpretation, 2007, 145-161.
Partee, B. H. (2009). Formal semantics, lexical semantics, and compositionality: The puzzle of privative adjectives. Philologia, 7(1), 1-24. Chapter 4. 63-72.