March 14, 2014: Chris Davis

Time:: 4:30pm, March 14, 2014
Place:: Keio University, Mita Campus,
South Annex, 7th floor
Speaker:: Chris Davis (University of the Ryukyus)
Title:: Contextual Relations and Pragmatic Constraints
Abstract:: This talk argues for a model of contextual update in which sentences denote relations, rather than functions, between contexts. This view allows for an interaction of semantic and pragmatic constraints in determining the optimal contextual update associated with an utterance. Semantic constraints are argued to be spelled out as contextual presuppositions and postsuppositions, which respectively restrict the domain and range of the relation denoted by a sentence. The resulting relation is then fed to a set of general pragmatic constraints, which help to determine an optimal output context from those compatible with the semantically specified relation.

Semantics Research Group Meeting, March 14, 2014