Workshop “The meaning of numerals: cognitive, experimental, and semantic perspectives”

Organizers:
Anton Benz (SiGames, ZAS), Christoph Hesse (SiGames/BAPAGiD, ZAS), Nicole Gotzner (SiGames, ZAS), Stephanie Solt (ZAS) and Paul Egre (CNRS, Paris)

Time and venue:
March 27-28th, 2019 at ZAS Berlin, Trajekte-Room, 3rd floor
How to get to ZAS!

Invited speakers:
Lisa Bylinina (Leiden University), Chris Cummins (University of Edinburgh), Véronique Izard (CNRS & Université Paris Descartes)

Link to the workshop’s webpage!

Description:
The meaning of numerals is a much researched topic in experimental pragmatics (e.g. Breheny 2008; Cummins, Sauerland, Solt 2012), cognitive science (e.g. Dehaene 2011), and theoretical semantics and pragmatics (e.g. Horn 1989; Krifka 1999; Fox & Hackl 2006; Kennedy 2015; Rothstein 2017). This workshop primarily targets contributions that enhance our understanding of numerals by combining insights and methods from several of these research fields. In particular, the imprecise use of numerical expressions (10km away) and vague expectations raised by modified numerals (more than 100 people came) call for such combined approaches. The topic is also fitting well to the more recent interest in probabilistic models that try to account for vague expectation raised by numerical expressions (e.g. Kao, Wu, Bergen, Goodman 2014). Topics of the workshop include, but are not limited to, the following issues:

  • Vagueness, roundness, and the approximate number system.
  • Pragmatic and semantic explanations of number interpretations
  • Acquisition of number sense and numerical meaning
  • Bayesian and neural models of numerical meanings
  • Meaning of numerals in compositional semantics
  • Comparatives, approximators, and other linguistic modifiers of numerical expressions
  • Typology of number systems and their modifiers