Experimental semantics - 3800-SEM25-S
The course introduces to the study of linguistic meaning utilizing (a variety of) empirical methods, conducted in the field of philosophy (philosophy of language) and linguistics. The theoretical module will include a general introduction to experimental semantics (its subject matters, methods, challenges) and detailed discussions of selected case studies of that discipline. The course will be primarily concerned with those issues in semantics which illustrate a significant contribution of experimental methods to the development of semantic research. These issues include, but are not limited to: the nature of reference and proper names, descriptions and presupposition, conditionals, quantification, and anaphora. We will focus on the questionnaire and the psycholinguistic methods. A special emphasis will be put on those issues which bear philosophical relevance.
Type of course
Course coordinators
Bibliography
Proponowana literatura (wybrane pozycje):
Machery, E., Sytsma, J., & Deutsch, M. (2015). “Speaker’s reference and cross-cultural semantics”. In A. Bianchi (ed.), On Reference, 62–76. Oxford, UK: Oxford University Press.
Devitt, M., Porot, N. (2018). “The reference of proper names: testing usage and intuitions”. Cognitive Science 42, 1552–1585.
Abrusán, M., & Szendrői, K. (2013). “Experimenting with the king of France — topics, verifiability and definite descriptions”. Semantics and Pragmatics 6(10), 1–43.
Schwarz, F. (2016). “False but slow: Rejecting statements with non-referring definites”. Journal of Semantics 33(1), 177-214.
Gordon, P. C., Grosz, B. J., Gilliom, L.A., (1993), “Pronouns, names, and the centering of attention in discourse”, Cognitive Science 17, 311-347.
Rostworowski, W., Kuś, K., Maćkiewicz, B., (2022). “Against Intentionalism: experimental study on demonstrative reference”, Linguistics and Philosophy 45, 1027-1061.
Oberauer, K., Weidenfeld, A., & K. Fischer (2007). “What makes us believe a conditional? The roles of covariation and causality”, Thinking & Reasoning, 13:4, 340-369.
Krzyżanowska, K., Collins, P., U. Hahn (2017). “Between a conditional’s antecedent and its consequent: discourse coherence vs. probabilistic relevance”. Cognition 164, 199–205.
Douven, I., Elqayam, S., & Mirabile, P. (2022). “Inference strength predicts the probability of conditionals better than conditional probability does”. Journal of Memory and Language, 123(2). https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jml.2021.104302
Geurts, B., Katsos, N., Cummins, Ch., Moons, J. and Noordman, L. (2010). “Scalar quantifiers: logic, acquisition, and processing”. Language and Cognitive Processes, 25: 130-148.
Chemla, E. & Bott, L. (2013). “Processing presuppositions: dynamic semantics vs pragmatic enrichment”. Language and Cognitive Processes 38(3): 241–260.
Additional information
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