Workshop in Semantics and Philosophy of Language

Peter Klecha, a graduate student in Linguistics, will present at the workshop this Friday October 23 at 11am in the Landahl Center (Social Sciences 004). Title and abstract below:

“The Meaning of Predictions”
A long-contested issue has been whether future terms like “will” are modals or simple tenses. Most recently, Kissine (2008) has argued “will” to be a tense. In the first part of my talk I argue against his analysis and in favor of one which treats predictions as modal expressions, and offer a new analysis of temporal/modal interaction. In the second part I examine different ways the terms “will” and “gonna” interact with context. I argue these terms are semantically identical, except in their interaction with context, providing support for a semantic, and not pragmatic, view of contextual enrichment of meaning.