SemanticsBabble
Fall 2017
 


WHAT:

  • A weekly informal discussion group at UC San Diego on theoretical and experimental aspects of semantics and related areas such as its interface with syntax, pragmatics, and philosophy of language
  • Open to any students and faculty
  • Supported by an award from the UC San Diego Institute of Arts & Humanities

WHEN: Friday 1-3 pm

WHERE: AP&M 4218 (map)

CONTACT: Ivano Caponigro & Jonathan Cohen

 
Dates
Babbling about
Material
10/6
  • Organizational meeting
 
10/13
  • Dave Barner (UC San Diego, psychology)
    Infinite thoughts from finite means: How children discover the logic of counting
 
10/20
  • Roman Feiman (UC San Diego, psychology)
    Shared and distinct mechanisms behind the strengthened meanings of numbers, "some", and free choice disjunctions
 
10/27 No meeting  
11/3
  • Alessandro Caiola (University of Rome La Sapienza and University of Rome 3, linguistics)
    Lexical underspecification and processing of light verb constructions
 
11/10 VETERANS DAY HOLIDAY  
11/17
  • Paolo Santorio (UC San Diego, philosophy)
    Free choice in unexpected places: experimental evidence and predictive algorithms
 
11/24 THANKSGIVING HOLIDAY  
12/1 No meeting  
12/8
  • Leon Bergen (UC San Diego, linguistics)
    Three ways to solve the symmetry problem

    ABSTRACT: The symmetry problem (Fox 2007, Katzir 2007) poses a challenge for a broad range of pragmatic theories. Several groups have proposed related solutions to the problem: total (Katzir 2007, Fox & Katzir 2011) and graded (Bergen, Levy, & Goodman 2016) elimination of alternatives on the basis of complexity or cost. Recently, Romoli (2013, personal communication) has introduced several instances of the symmetry problem which cannot be solved through complexity or cost alone. We show that these apparent counterexamples can be resolved through two symmetry-breaking principles, informativity and Bayesian Occam's razor (MacKay 2003). These principles follow automatically from the model proposed in Bergen et al. (2016), requiring no changes to this model.
 
     

1/9
1-2:30 pm

Winter Preview

  • Melissa Fusco (Columbia University, philosophy)
    Agential Free Choice and the Unity of Modals
 
     
 

Spring Preview

  • Michela Ippolito (Univ of Toronto, linguistics)
    Title TBA
    Date TBA (likely in April)
 
     
     

 
Useful links


CONFERENCES & SUMMER SCHOOLS

JOURNALS & ARCHIVES

 
 
 
Previous SemanticsBabbles:
 

(last update: 12/03/2017 )