Spring 2009
April 3, 2009. Palle Leth. “Predicate Terms in Context”
April 24, 2009. Tommy Grano. “English embedding verbs and the semantics of nonfinite complementation”
May 1, 2009. Peter Hylton (UIC). “The Idea of a Logically Perfect Language in Analytic Philosophy” (joint meeting with Wittgenstein Workshop)
May 22, 2009. Gillian Russell (Washington University). “Necessity and the Analytic/Synthetic Distinction”
May 29, 2009. Jasmin Urban. “Open questions, modality and truth relativity”
June 5, 2009. Angelika Kratzer (Massachussetts). “Epistemic modality and context dependency”
Winter 2009
January 30, 2009. Stefan Kaufmann (Northwestern). “Unconditionals are Conditionals”
February 13, 2009. Itamar Francez. “Making it implicit: The dynamics of context sensitivity in existentials”
February 20, 2009. Aidan Gray. “What do Alfreds have in common?”
February 27, 2009. Chris Kennedy. “On ‘Average’ ”
March 6, 2009. Thony Gillies (Michigan). “Iffiness”
Autumn 2008
- Oct 24. Paul Portner (Dept of Linguistics, Georgetown University). Scales of Probability
- Nov 14. Nat Hansen (Grad. Student, Dept of Philosophy, University of Chicago). Color adjectives and Radical Contextualism
- Nov 21. Delia Graff Fara. (Dept of Philosophy, Princeton University). De-re Modality: Identity Theory versus Counterpart Theory
- Dec 5. Sara Bosworth (Grad. Student, Dept of Philosophy University of Chicago). “Meaning Internalism and Content Externalism”
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Spring 2007
Spring quarter meetings will be held on Fridays, 11am – 1pm, in Classics 47.
- April 6: Chris Potts, University of Massachusetts, Amherst
Expressive content and semantic theory - April 27: Aidan Gray, Chicago
Having your cake and also eating it: Quantification and non-contradiction in ‘On denoting‘ - May 11: TBD
- May 25: Chris Barker, New York University
The case against E-type donkey pronouns - June 1: Jason Stanley, Rutgers University
Winter 2007
Winter quarter meetings will be held on Fridays, 11am – 1pm, Cobb 119.
- January 12: Discussion of Kratzer’s paper ‘Minimal pronouns: Fake indexicals as windows into the properties of bound variable pronouns’ led by Yaron McNabb
- January 17: Angelika Kratzer, University of Massachusetts, Amherst
- February 16: Discussion of Elbourne’s book Situations and Individuals. We should focus on chapters 2 and 3, though it will probably also be useful to look at chapter 1 (the intro).
- February 23: Paul Elbourne, University of London
Fall 2006
Fall quarter meetings will be held Wednesdays, 4pm-6pm.
- October 3: Organizational meeting
- October 17: E-type pronouns and donkey anaphora
Evans, G (1980) ‘Pronouns’
Evans, G (1977) ‘Pronouns, quantifiers and relative clauses (I)’
Evans, G (1977) ‘Pronouns, quantifiers and relative clauses (II)’ - October 24: Kent Bach, San Francisco State University
Perspectives on Possibilities: Contextualism, Relativism, or What?
Background reading
Lasersohn, P (2005) ‘Predicates of Personal Taste’
MacFarlane, J (2006) ‘Epistemic Modals Are Assessment Sensitive’ - November 7: Dynamic models of anaphora
Heim, I. (1983) ‘File change semantics and the familiarity theory of definiteness’
King, J (2006) ‘Context dependent quantifiers and donkey anaphora’ - November 17: Jeff King, USC
- November 28: Nat Hansen, Chicago
Wittgensteinian Contextualism
Background reading
Searle, J (1983) ‘The Background’ in Intentionality, Cambridge University Press.
Travis, C (2001) ‘The Making of Sematnic Fact’ in The Uses of Sense, Oxford University Press.