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<p><span style="white-space: nowrap;">Dear PLing-members,<br /><br />This is a reminder that <strong>Kyle Johnson</strong> will give a talk <strong>tomorrow, 13 May, at 17:00</strong>, at the Theoretical Linguistics Colloquium, <br />in <strong>Seminarraum 2</strong>, and an announcement of</span><span style="white-space: nowrap;"> the next talk</span><span style="white-space: nowrap;">.</span><br /><br /><span style="white-space: nowrap;">Speaker: <strong>Hans Kamp </strong>(University of Stuttgart)</span><br />
Date & time: <strong>Monday, 18 May, 16:00</strong><br />Location: Sensengasse 3a, 1090 Vienna, Seminarraum 2<span style="white-space: nowrap;"><br /><br />Both titles and abstracts can be found below, as well as on the TLC <a href="https://sites.google.com/view/totlvienna/upcoming">website</a>.</span><br /><br /><span style="white-space: nowrap;">We are looking forward to seeing many of you at both talks!</span><br /><br /><span style="white-space: nowrap;">Valerie Wurm & Iva Kovač</span><br /><span style="white-space: nowrap;">The TLC organizers<br /><a href="https://sites.google.com/view/totlvienna/upcoming" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">https://sites.google.com/view/totlvienna/upcoming</a></span><span style="white-space: nowrap;"><br /></span></p>
<p><span style="white-space: nowrap;">---<br /><br /><strong><span style="font-family: verdana, geneva, sans-serif; font-size: 9pt;">Kyle Johnson - Getting B to follow A<br /><br /></span></strong></span><span class="v1C9DxTc" style="color: #000000; font-size: 9pt; vertical-align: baseline; font-family: verdana, geneva, sans-serif;"></span><span class="v1C9DxTc" style="color: #000000; font-size: 9pt; vertical-align: baseline; font-family: verdana, geneva, sans-serif;">I sketch a way of deriving Chomsky's Principles A and B of the binding theory. I first argue that English reflexive pronouns can, like English non-reflexive pronouns, be free variables. Also like non-reflexive pronouns, when bound, reflexives must be bound by a Büring-like special binder which I call an "A-probe." I suggest that Principle A derives from a requirement that certain A-probes impose. Reflexive pronouns are the exponent of those special A-probes, and the requirement that the special A-probes impose is that their exponent (the reflexive) have the same value as their argument (the DP in the Specifier of the A-probe). This requirement is expressed as a presupposition. All other A-probes are exactly like the special one, except that they have no accompanying presupposition. This allows Principle B to be a consequence of Heim's Maximize Presupposition.</span></p>
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<p><strong><span class="v1C9DxTc" style="color: #000000; font-size: 9pt; vertical-align: baseline; font-family: verdana, geneva, sans-serif;">Hans Kamp - A Syntax and Semantics for Russell's 'I thought your yacht was larger than it is'</span></strong><span class="v1C9DxTc" style="color: #000000; font-size: 9pt; vertical-align: baseline; font-family: verdana, geneva, sans-serif;"><br /></span></p>
<p>The sentence quoted in the title is from Russell's <em>On Denoting</em>. There it has the flavor of a joke, a cute way, it seems to show the scope ambiguities generated by the possibility of eliminating definite descriptions at different scope levels. But there is much more to the syntax and semantics of this sentence than could have been articulated in the world in which <em>On Denoting</em> was conceived and written (and achieved Russell's seminal proposal). In more recent times the sentence has come within the focus of linguists like von Stechow and Heim, within the context of investigations about the comparative.</p>
<p>My personal current interest in the sentence stems from it being at the intersection of two larger projects I have been involved in for some years. The first is MSDRT ('Mental State Discourse Representation Theory'), an extension of DRT designed to deal with sentences used to make complex attitude attributions. The second is a project about the syntax and semantics of the different forms and constructions – positive, comparative, equative and others -- of scalar adjectives, such as 'large', 'long', 'happy' and countless others). The analysis of Russell's sentence I will present in the talk combines results from these two projects. In my presentation of this analysis I will sketch the basic features of the syntax-semantics interface frameworks developed in these projects and show how they can be combined into a single overarching framework, suitable for sentences like this one from Russell.</p>
<p>The talk will end with three questions that go beyond the particular frameworks used. These are about:</p>
<p>(i) the role of tense and aspect in the semantics of Russell's sentence and some variants of it;</p>
<p>(ii) the different ways in which noun phrases can get wide scope and/or directly referential interpretations; and</p>
<p>(iii) how the central conception behind MSDRT – that attitude attributions provide partial descriptions of the mental states of their attributees – is compatible with the common practice in attitude attribution of specifying the contents of attributed attitudes in terms that the attributeel would not be able to recognize.</p>
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