Workshop in Semantics and Philosophy of Language

The Workshop is very pleased to announce a talk by Haim Gaifman, Professor of Philosophy at Columbia University, entitled “Vagueness, tolerance and contextual logic”, this Friday, May 24, 11.30am-1.30pm, in Wieboldt 111.

The talk will relate to Part 1 (pp. 7-29 of the document) of this 2010 paper (corrected draft) that appeared in a Synthese volume on Language and Vagueness.

Anyone who believes they may need assistance in attending or fully participating in the workshop should contact the graduate coordinator in advance (djagannathan@uchicago.edu).

The Workshop is very pleased to announce a talk by Chieu Nguyen (UofC Linguistics) entitled “Transforming Epistemic Vagueness in Quantificational Contexts”, this Friday, May 17, 11.30am-1.30pm, in Wieboldt 111.

The workshop is pleased to welcome Galit Sassoon (Bar Ilan University) for a talk entitled “Size adjectives as adjectives” next Monday, May 6, 10.00am-12.00noon in Classics 312 (Linguistics department lounge). Please note the special day, time, and location. [UPDATE, May 1: The talk may be rescheduled shortly to 12.00-2pm to avoid a conflict.]

Anyone who believes they may need assistance in attending or fully participating in the workshop should contact the graduate coordinator in advance (djagannathan@uchicago.edu).

The workshop is delighted to welcome Heather Burnett (Institut Jean-Nicod, ENS, Paris & Université de Montréal) for a talk this Friday entitled “The Logical Foundations of Adjectival Scale Structure”, an abstract for which is below. The workshop will meet this quarter in Wieboldt 111 at the usual time (11.30am-1.30pm on Fridays). Take a look at our provisional Spring Quarter schedule.

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The workshop is delighted to welcome this week Nicholas Koziolek, a PhD student in the Department of Philosophy at the UofC. Nic’s talk is entitled “Towards a Neo-Fregean Theory of Propositional Attitude Ascriptions”, and we’ll meet as usual in Wieboldt 408 from 11.30am-1.30pm on Friday. This will be the last meeting of the workshop in Winter Quarter. Take a look at our provisional Spring Quarter schedule.

This Friday, the workshop welcomes Stewart Shapiro, Professor of Philosophy at the Ohio State University for a talk entitled “Vagueness, open-texture, and retrievability” (Wieboldt 408, 11.30am-1.30pm). An abstract for Professor Shapiro’s talk follows:
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The workshop is pleased to present Walter Pedersen, from the Department of Linguistics at McGill University, on Friday, February 22nd, 11.30am-1.30pm in Wieboldt 408. Walter’s talk is entitled “A scalar analysis of again” (see abstract for more details). Please join us!

As a reminder, the workshop will return to the theme of vagueness next Friday, March 1st at the usual time and place, with a talk on “Vagueness, open-texture, and retrievability” by Stewart Shapiro, O’Donnell Professor of Philosophy at the Ohio State University.

The workshop is pleased to present our own Matt Teichman, a PhD student in Philosophy, this Friday, February 8th, 11.30am-1.30pm in Wieboldt 408.
Matt’s talk is entitled “Characterizing Kinds”. Please join us!

The workshop is pleased to announce a practice job talk by Ryan Bochnak, a PhD candidate in Linguistics, this Friday, 11.30am-1.30pm in Wieboldt 408. Ryan’s talk is entitled “Comparatives and cross-linguistic semantics”. You can read more about his work on his website.

Matt Teichman’s talk will instead be on February 8th, at the same time and place, and the remainder of our schedule this quarter will be as advertised in the schedule.

The first meeting of the workshop in Winter Quarter will be on Friday, January 18th, 11.30am-1.30pm, in Wieboldt 408 (same time, new location), featuring Daniel Lassiter, a postdoc in the Computation and Cognition Lab at Stanford, who got his PhD in Linguistics at NYU in 2011 and an MA in Philosophy from Otago in 2005. Dan’s talk is quite thrillingly entitled “Compositional Probabilistic Models of Vagueness: Computational Implementation, Experimental Evidence, and Cognitive Implications”. Please join us!

And here is our preliminary schedule for Winter Quarter.