New Directions in the Theory of Presupposition

Workshop Schedule

2009-06-24T05:42:00.000-07:00

Monday July 27th

2:00-2:30 -- Introduction (Organizers)
2:30-3:30 -- Zeevat, Presupposition as Semantic Composition

Tuesday July 28th

2:00-2:45 -- Lassiter, Explaining Symmetric Presupposition Projection with "if" and "or" (paper)
2:45-3:30 -- Chemla and Schlenker, Incremental vs. Symmetric Presupposition Satisfaction (paper)

Wed July 29th

2:00-2:45 -- Roberts, Simons, Beaver, and Tonhauser, Projective Meaning: a Unified Account (paper)

2:45-3:30 -- Charlow, Strong Predicative Presuppositional Objects (paper)

Thurs July 30th

2:00-2:45 -- Rothschild, Presuppositions, Processing Contexts, and Epistemic Modals
2:45-3:30 -- Kim, Gunlogson, Tanenhaus, and Runner, Restricting and Generating Hypotheses about Focus Alternatives (paper)

Friday July 31st

2:00-3:00 -- Schlenker, TBA
3:00-3:30 -- Benjamin Spector, TBA

Workshop Program

2009-04-22T05:33:00.000-07:00

Please check back for further details, to be added in coming weeks.

Invited Speakers:

Hans Kamp (Stuttgart), title tba
Philippe Schlenker (Institut Jean Nicod), tba
Henk Zeevat (Amsterdam), 'Presupposition as Semantic Composition'

Accepted papers:

Marta Abrusan (Institut Jean Nicod)
An Approach to the Triggering Problem

Simon Charlow (NYU)
Strong Predicative Presuppositional Objects

Emmanuel Chemla & Philippe Schlenker (Institut Jean Nicod)
Incremental vs. Symmetric Presupposition Satisfaction

Christina Kim, Christine Gunlogson, Mike Tanenhaus & Jeff Runner (Rochester)
Restricting and Generating Hypotheses about Focus Alternatives

Dan Lassiter (NYU)
Explaining Symmetric Presupposition Projection with 'if' and 'or'

Craige Roberts (Ohio State), Mandy Simons (Carnegie Mellon), David Beaver (UT Austin) & Judith Tonhauser (Ohio State)
Projective Meaning: a Unified Account

Raj Singh (MIT)
Symmetric and Interacting Alternatives for Implicature and Accommodation

Call for papers

2008-12-08T07:46:00.001-08:00

The last ten years has seen a wealth of new developments on the topic of presupposition and, in particular, the projection problem for presupposition. While there had been considerable interest in the seventies in developing entirely pragmatic accounts of presupposition triggering and projection (Wilson, 1974, Stalnaker 1977, Grice, 1981), these accounts had generally not been sufficiently developed to match the dynamic accounts developed in the eighties in predictive power. Recent work, such as that of Schlenker (2006, 2008), however, has shown that broadly pragmatic accounts can also have considerable predictive power. In addition, trivalent approaches based on such techniques as supervaluations and the Strong Kleene connectives, which were dismissed by many long ago, have recently attracted new interest (Beaver and Krahmer, 2001, George, 2008, Fox, 2008) and have been shown capable of handling many empirical issues in presupposition projection. Thus there is no longer a clear consensus on how we should explain presupposition projection. In addition, experimental work has raised interesting questions about what the basic facts of presupposition projection are and suggests that real empirical work is needed to determine some of the subtleties (Chemla 2007). There has also been renewed interest in the triggering problem (Simons, 2001, Abusch, 2002) which naturally links up to the projection problem, as well as recent theoretical work on foundational issues such as the notion of common ground and accommodation (Beaver and Zeevat, 2004, von Fintel, 2001, 2006, Stalnaker, 2002). The purpose of this workshop is to bring together researchers on presupposition to discuss these new developments and connect some of the different theoretical and empirical questions, which are too often considered in isolation.

We invite submission of abstracts from linguists, philosophers, and cognitive scientists, addressing formal or foundational issues about theories of presupposition, or offering new empirical perspectives that bear on them. We especially encourage papers that address questions about the explanatory depth of different theories or the triggering problem, or introduce new forms of experimental or empirical evidence relevant to adjudicating between theories of presupposition.

Invited Speakers:
- Hans Kamp (Stuttgart)
- Philippe Schlenker (Institut Jean Nicod/NYU)
- Henk Zeevat (University of Amsterdam)

Submission Details:
Authors are invited to submit an anonymous, extended abstract. Submissions should not exceed 2 pages, including references. Please email your submission in PDF format to presupposition.esslli2009 AT gmail.com. Abstracts will be anonymously reviewed by the program committee.

Workshop Format:
The workshop is part of ESSLLI and is open to all ESSLLI participants. It will consist of five 90-minute sessions held over five consecutive days in the second week of ESSLLI. There will be 2-3 slots for paper presentation and discussion per session.

Timeline:
Submission Deadline: Febuary 15, 2009
Notification: April 1, 2009
Preliminary program: April 24, 2009
ESSLLI early registration deadline: April 15, 2009
Final papers for proceedings: June 1, 2009
Final program: June 19, 2009
Workshop dates: July 27-31, 2009

Practical Information:
All workshop participants including the presenters will be required to register for ESSLLI. The registration fee for authors presenting a paper will correspond to the early student/workshop speaker registration fee.

Further Information about ESSLLI: http://esslli2009.labri.fr/

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The workshop is organized with the support of Institut Jean-Nicod (Euryi grant to P. Schlenker, 'Presuppositions: A Formal Pragmatic Approach', European Science Foundation)