25 May: DCLRS -- May 27 -- Ede Zimmermann
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Speaker: Professor Thomas Ede Zimmermann, Frankfurt University
venue: Arts Building Room 2037
Trinity College, University of Dublin
time: 4:00-6:00, Friday, May 27, 2005.
title:
Free choice: Semantics vs. Pragmatics
abstract:
The following inference is known to present serious problems to the
(standard) analysis of may and or in terms of existential
quantification and, respectively, Boolean join (cf. Kamp 1973, 1978):
You may eat an apple or a pear.
You may eat an apple, and you may eat a pear.
The main point of the talk is to show that attempts to solve the
problem by pragmatic means (e.g., Schulz 2004) are likely to lead to
insurmountable difficulties with alledgedly equivalent reformulations
(You may eat an apple or you may eat a pear vs. You are allowed to eat
an apple or you are allowed to eat a pear; cf. Forbes 2003) and
ambiguity tests (John may eat an apple or a pear - and Mary too).
Although no solution to the free choice problem will be presented, I
will indicate the direction that I think a semantic solution should
take - basically along the lines of Geurts (forthcoming) (and
improving on Zimmermann 2000).
References
Forbes, Graeme: 'Meaning-Postulates, Inference, and the
Relational/Notional Ambiguity'. Facta Philosophica 5 (2003), 49-74.
Geurts, Bart: 'Entertaining Alternatives: Disjunctions as Modals'.
Natural Language Semantics. To appear. [draft:
http://www.ru.nl/filosofie/tfl/bart/papers/disjunction.pdf]
Kamp, Hans: 'Free Choice Permission'. Proceedings of the Aristotelean
Society, N. S. 74 (1973), 57-74.
-: 'Semantics versus Pragmatics'. In: F. Guenthner and S. J. Schmidt
(eds.), Fo rmal Semantics and Pragmatics for Natural Laguages,
Dordrecht 1978. 255-287.
Schulz, Katrin: You may read it now or later: A Case Study on the
Paradox of Free Chioce Permission. Master Thesis University of
Amsterdam 2004.
[http://www.illc.uva.nl/Publications/ResearchReports/MoL-2004-01.text.pdf]
Zimmermann, Thomas Ede: 'Free Choice Disjunction and Epistemic
Possibility'. Natural Language Semantics 8 (2000), 255-290.
Dublin Computational Linguistics Research Seminar - Index of May 2005 | Index of year: 2005 | Full index