Semantics Research Group (Tokyo/Hybrid) 2025/6/6 and 6/13

[jrta...@gmail.com]

意味論研究会のお知らせ

意味論研究会の会合をお知らせします。今回は二週間続けての会合を予定しております。対面の場所・ズームのアクセス情報は下記の通りです。どなたでも参加できますので，多くの方の参加をお待ちしています。また、どちらも会合終了後に食事会を予定しております。ご参加希望の方はご指名と所属をご記入の上、その旨を5月23日（金）までにChris Tancrediにご連絡くださいますようお願い致します。(Chris Tancredi, cdtan...@gmail.com)

The Semantics Research Group will be having two talks two weeks in a row, as detailed below. There will also be a dinner after either talk. If you would like to participate in either or both of the dinners, please RSVP with Chris Tancredi by Friday, May 23rd. Make sure to include your name and affiliation. (Chris Tancredi, cdtan...@gmail.com)

TALK 1

Date: June 6
Time: 5:00 pm
Place: Keio University, Mita campus, South Annex building, 7th floor conference room
https://www.keio.ac.jp/en/maps/mita.html
Online option: https://keio-univ.zoom.us/j/82972175560?pwd=YlRuaGt0NUFWWmI1ajhrNm1vQ3ZVZz09

Speaker: Elin McCready, Research Professor at ICREA, Barcelona, Spain.
Title: Slurs: Denotation, Index, Invocation
Abstract: This talk is joint work with C. Davis. It argues for an analysis of slurs with three components: the denotational, indexical, and invocational. The denotational component is a predication of group membership. The invocational component produces direct changes in the world in a way modelable as a kind of direct update distinct from previous uses of this term in the literature. The indexical component signals the speaker’s positioning in a social space, in a way that also commits the slur user to certain ideological positions in a way corresponding to sociolinguistic indexicality. This ideological component crucially involves normative generics, which (are meant to) constrain the slur’s target in certain ways, or, sometimes, to indicate the basis for the (dis)approbation the slur expresses.

TALK 2

Date: June 13
Time: 5:00 pm
Place: Keio University, Mita campus, South Annex building, 7th floor conference room
https://www.keio.ac.jp/en/maps/mita.html
Online option: https://keio-univ.zoom.us/j/82972175560?pwd=YlRuaGt0NUFWWmI1ajhrNm1vQ3ZVZz09

Speaker: Michael Yoshitaka Erlewine (University of Helsinki / National University of Singapore)
Title: Interrogative and standard disjunction in Mandarin Chinese
Abstract: Mandarin Chinese lexically distinguishes the disjunctors in alternative questions (háishi) and in disjunctive assertions (huòzhe), reflecting a distinction that Haspelmath (2007) and others have called "interrogative" versus "standard" disjunction. In reality, háishi also allows for number of non-interrogative uses, subject to significant speaker variation. I argue that these patterns reflect broadly two types of grammars: those where háishi syntactically enforces that its alternatives be interpreted for question-formation or similar, and those that do not. For the latter, more liberal speakers, háishi can be used non-interrogatively in the same environments that wh-phrases can be. The study and analysis of this pattern of variation leads to the conclusion that a so-called "interrogative disjunction" could be so specified via its syntactic specification or through its semantics alone, with both strategies being attested amongst speakers of Mandarin Chinese.