This month, the next fellow of our 2018 internship program joined XPrag.de. Chao Sun from UCL is working with Uli Sauerland and Bob van Tiel in the project “MUQTASP” at ZAS Berlin. The title of her project there is “Online examination of focal ranges associated with quantifying expressions”. How is Chao herself describing the project? Chao: “Quantifying expressions have focal ranges that are independent from the pragmatic inferences. For example, given a statement like “Some of the As are Bs” in a context where the cardinality of the intersection set is ranging from 0 to 10, a hearer would associate ‘some’ with the range below half but above two. In this project, we aim to show that these focal ranges are relevant for experimental research into the online processing of quantifying expressions. In my PhD thesis, I have demonstrated that prior expectations about the set size associated with ‘some’ and ‘all’ influence anticipatory looks during online interpretation of scalar quantifiers. Thus, in this project, we will conduct another eye-tracking experiment to extend the scope of investigation to other quantifying expressions, in particular ‘most’, which implies ‘not all’, and ‘few’, which implies ‘not none’.”
News
Talk by XPrag.de member Maribel Romero at “Treffpunkt Sprache”!
On January 23rd, Maribel Romero, Prinicipal Investigator from project “BiasQ” (Konstanz) will give a talk on the meaning of questions at “Treffpunkt Sprache”. In this lecture series, current topics of interdisciplinary interest around language and their investigation are presented. The series is organized by ZAS Berlin in cooperation with the Institute for German Language and Linguistics and the Institute for Philosophy of Humboldt University and is aimed at scientists, students and interested laymen.
Title: “Was wir tun, wenn wir eine Frage stellen”
Time and Venue: 6:15 p.m., Humboldt University, Dorotheenstraße 24, 10117 Berlin, room 1.101
Second round of Short-term Collaboration Program has started!
We are happy to announce that the Short-term collaboration program of the 2nd period of XPrag.de has started. The Steering Board has selected the following projects for funding:
- An Experimental Investigation of Anti-presuppositions
Nadine Bade (ObTrEx, Tübingen) and Florian Schwarz (U Pennsylvania) - The role of world-knowledge in setting imprecise standards for absolute gradable adjectives: Probabilistic Modeling
Petra Schumacher (InfoPer2, Cologne), Barbara Tomaszewicz (InfoPer2, Cologne), Michael Franke (Pro3, Tübingen), Judith Degen (Pro3, Stanford University) and Daniel Lassiter (Stanford University) - Combining EEG and virtual reality to investigate the processing of quantifiers and scalar implicatures in the context of partial information
Maria Spychalska (ImplPer, Cologne) and David Peeters (MPI Nijmegen)
Three questions to XPrag.de intern Alice Rees
From October 2017 to January 2018, Alice Rees is an XPrag.de intern in the project “InfoPer2: Processing speaker’s meaning: Epistemic state, cooperation, commitment“ at the University of Cologne, supervised by Petra Schumacher. Alice is a final year PhD student at the School of Psychology at Cardiff University. The topic of her dissertation project is “Structural priming of pragmatic enrichment.”
Q: Alice, how would you describe the topic of your doctoral thesis in three sentences to your grandmother?
A: My thesis looks at how people make inferences and how the preceding context affects this. I’ve been looking at how deriving an inference influences subsequent interpretations and whether this also influences a speaker’s choice to make use of inferences.
Q: What led you to apply for an internship in our program ?
A: I was really keen to learn EEG and this internship offered the perfect opportunity. I also wanted to work in a different lab so the XPrag.de internship program was ideal.
Q: Your internship has been running for a while now. How do you like it? Does it meet your expectations?
A: I love it. I am having a great time and learning so much. It has exceeded my expectations.
Call for papers for a special issue on conditionals
Mingya Liu from project SPOCC (Osnabrück) is currently editing a special issue on conditionals with Linguistic Vanguard. In case you would like to submit an article, please announce your interest by January, 15th, 2018. More details and the call for papers can be found here!
Six-month research stay by XPrag.de member Mingya Liu at the University of Chicago
From December 6, 2017 to May 2018, XPrag.de Principal Investigator Mingya Liu from project “SPOCC” (Osnabrück) is visiting scholar at the Department of Linguistics of the University of Chicago. She will be working on her SPOCC project in collaboration with Prof. Anastasia Giannakidou there.
Call for submissions to the workshop “Scalar Implicatures: Formal and Experimental Exploration”
On July 11-13, 2018 the workshop “Scalar Implicatures: Formal and Experimental Exploration” will take place at the University of Siena, Italy. The workshop is organized by XPrag.de associate Salvatore Pistoia-Reda (ZAS Berlin, U Siena), XPrag.de coordinator Uli Sauerland (ZAS Berlin), XPrag.de associate Filippo Domaneschi (U Genoa for XPRAG.it) and Valentina Bianchi (U Siena). Deadline for submissions is May 1st, 2018. More details and the call for papers can be found here!
Talk by XPrag.de member Cornelia Ebert at ZAS Berlin
On November 15th, at 3:30 p.m. XPrag.de member Cornelia Ebert from project “PSIMS” at ZAS Berlin will give a talk on “Temporal sequence and information status” (with special attention on the interplay of gesture and speech) at ZAS Berlin, room 403.
Abstract:
The temporal sequence of verbal expressions as well as the temporal alignment of gesture and speech is decisive for the information status of the involved expressions. It is by now established that, while appositives are generally seen as contributing non-at-issue, sentence-final appositive clauses are much easier to be interpreted at-issue than sentence-medial ones (AnderBois et al. 2014; Koev2013). Similarly, the temporal synchronization of gesture and speech is not without consequences (cf.Esipova 2017). I will argue that while co-speech gestures are non-at-issue by default (Ebert & Ebert 2014; Schlenker 2016), post-speech gestures are more likely to be interpreted at issue (pace Schlenker 2016). I propose a continuous scale of self-contained gesture interpretation: gestures that have their own time slot are interpreted at issue; the less they are synchronized with speech the more likely it is that they will be interpreted as at issue material(cf. Kendon’s continuum, Kendon 1980). Furthermore I will discuss the possibility and systematic means to shift information from the non-at-issue dimension to the at-issue dimension and vice versa. I will focus my attention on the relationship between gesture and speech and argue that language provides different means of initiating dimension shifting.
Judith Degen from project “Pro^3” is co-organizing the workshop “Sociolinguistic, Psycholinguistic and Formal Perspectives on Meaning” in Paris in July 2018.
@hburnett and i are organizing a workshop on social meaning in paris in july — submit abstracts by jan 15! https://t.co/70f6SbhMIx
— Judith Degen (@thegricean) 24. Oktober 2017
Talk by XPrag.de coordinator Petra Schumacher at “Meaning in FLUX 2017” at Yale University
On Thursday, 12th 2017, XPrag.de coordinator Petra Schumacher (U Cologne) will give a talk with the title “Do different types of cognitive effects reflect the diachronic stage of use conditions?” at the conference “Meaning in flux: connecting development, variation, and change”, which will take place at Yale University, New Haven, CT on October 12th-14th, 2017.