April 27: Seth Yalcin

The Semantics and Philosophy of Language Workshop is pleased to welcome Seth Yalcin (Berkeley) for our third talk of the quarter.

DATE: Friday, April 27, 2012
TIME: 11:00-1:00pm
PLACE: Stuart 102

“Alternatives in the analysis of epistemic and deontic modalities”

Various motivations have been offered for treating epistemic modal clauses as somehow sensitive to a space of alternatives. Various motivations have also been offered for treating deontic modal clauses as somehow sensitive to a space of alternatives. To what extent do the motivations in each case have a common source? To what extent can a single model of alternatives serve to explain the relevant data? When does alternative-sensitivity for these modals belong to pragmatics, and when to compositional semantics? I investigate these questions in this talk.