Tracking the Human Mind

Angelika Kratzer writes:

You are all cordially invited to a symposium featuring some of the fellows of the 2015/2016 SIAS (Some Institutes for Advanced Study) Summer Institute. The topic of the symposium is: 

Tracking the Human Mind in Attitude and Speech Reports

Saturday, April 16, 10:00 AM to 1:00 PM. Integrative Learning Center N400. The symposium will be followed by a reception.

 A detailed program will follow. 

Being one of the most interdisciplinary working groups of the 2015/2016 SIAS Summer Institute, the group on Attitude Ascriptions & Speech Reports, designed two projects that promise to make a positive contribution to the longstanding communication problem between neuroscience and linguistic research. In her dissertation, the neuroscientist in the group, Jorie Koster-Hale, found that epistemic properties of other people’s beliefs are represented via response patterns of neural populations in canonical belief ascription regions in the brain (so-called ‘Theory of Mind’ regions). These properties relate to the kind of evidence that ground a belief: whether it was good evidence or not, or whether it was visual or auditory evidence. Those kinds of properties do not only play a major role in philosophical discussions of knowledge ascriptions, they are also grammaticalized in verbal inflectional paradigms in many lesser-known languages (so-called “evidentials”). In addition, they trigger a significant dichotomy in the class of attitude verbs across languages: verbs in the believe family (believe that, suspect that, conjecture that) can be used to report false beliefs, while verbs in the know family (know that, discover that, reveal that, hear that, see that) cannot - those ‘factive’ verbs can only describe attitudes that are properly connected to reality. The SIAS Attitude Ascription and Speech Report group recognized those fascinating connections and found a common language to construct  joint projects that will bring together their collective expertise in neuroscience, cognitive development, language acquisition, epistemology, theoretical linguistics and semantic typology under headings like ‘factivity/veridicality’ and ‘knowledge first’.  Projects of this kind could become models for collaboration between researchers in the sciences and the humanities.

More info about the 2015/2016 SIAS Summer Institute: http://nationalhumanitiescenter.org/sias/index.htm

Call for papers: Sinn und Bedeutung

Sinn und Bedeutung 21 will take place in Edinburgh, from Sun 4th-Tues 6th September 2016.

Confirmed invited speakers:

-Sigrid Beck (Eberhard Karls Universität Tübingen)

- Paul Elbourne (Magdalen College, Oxford)

We invite abstract submissions for oral presentations or posters, devoted to natural language semantics, pragmatics, philosophy of language, and psycholinguistic investigations related to meaning. Oral presentations will be scheduled for 40 minute slots (30 minutes talk + 10 minutes discussion).

Abstracts should contain original research that, at the time of submission, has neither been published nor accepted for publication. One person can submit at most one abstract as sole author and one abstract as co-author (or two co-authored abstracts).

Abstracts must be anonymous, in PDF format, 2 pages (A4 or letter), in a font size no less than 12pt, and with margins of 1 inch/2.5cm. Please submit abstracts via EasyChair (see link below) no later than March 31, 2016.

Abstracts should be submitted via EasyChair, using the following link:
https://easychair.org/conferences/?conf=sub21

For further information, please contact Rob Truswell (rob.truswell@ed.ac.uk).

Call for papers: Sinn und Bedeutung

Sinn und Bedeutung 21 will take place in Edinburgh, from Sun 4th-Tues 6th September 2016.

We invite abstract submissions for oral presentations or posters, devoted to natural language semantics, pragmatics, philosophy of language, and psycholinguistic investigations related to meaning. Oral presentations will be scheduled for 40 minute slots (30 minutes talk + 10 minutes discussion).

Abstracts should contain original research that, at the time of submission, has neither been published nor accepted for publication. One person can submit at most one abstract as sole author and one abstract as co-author (or two co-authored abstracts).

Abstracts must be anonymous, in PDF format, 2 pages (A4 or letter), in a font size no less than 12pt, and with margins of 1 inch/2.5cm. Please submit abstracts via EasyChair (see link below) no later than March 31, 2016. When you submit your abstract, you will be asked to indicate whether you would like it to be considered for a talk, a poster or both.

Abstracts should be submitted via EasyChair, using the following link:
https://easychair.org/conferences/?conf=sub21

For further information, please contact Rob Truswell (rob.truswell@ed.ac.uk).

Call for papers ESSLLI

*2nd Call for Papers*

*ESSLLI 2016 STUDENT SESSION*

Held during the 28th European Summer School in Logic, Language andInformation

Bolzano, Italy, August 15-26, 2016

*Deadline for submissions: March 10th, 2016

*https://easychair.org/conferences/?conf=essllistus2016

*ABOUT:*

The Student Session of the 28th European Summer School in Logic,Language, and Information (ESSLLI) will take place in Bolzano, Italy, August 15th to 26th (http://esslli2016.unibz.it). We invite submissions of original, unpublished work from students in any area at theintersection of Logic & Language, Language & Computation, or Logic &Computation. Submissions will be reviewed by several experts in thefield, and accepted papers will be presented orally or as posters andselected papers will appear in the Student Session proceedings bySpringer. This is an excellent opportunity to receive valuable feedbackfrom expert readers and to present your work to a diverse audience.

*ORAL/POSTER PRESENTATIONS:*

Note that there are two separate kinds of submissions, one for oral presentations and one for posters. This means that papers are directly submitted either as oral presentations or as poster presentations. Reviewing and ranking will be done separately. We particularly encourage submissions for posters, as they offer an excellent opportunity to present smaller research projects and research in progress.

*SUBMISSION GUIDELINES:*

Authors must be students, and submissions may be singly or jointly authored. Each author may submit at most one single and one jointly authored contribution. Submissions should not be longer than 8 pages foran oral presentation or 4 pages for a poster presentation (including examples and references). Submissions must be anonymous, without any identifying information. More detailed guidelines regarding submissioncan be found on the Student Session website: http://www2.sfs.unituebingen.de/esslli-stus-2016/.

*SPONSORSHIP AND PRIZES*

As in previous years, Springer has kindly agreed to sponsor the ESSLLI student session. The best poster and best talk will be awarded Springerbook vouchers of 500€ each.

*FURTHER INFORMATION:*

Please direct inquiries about submission procedures or other matters relating to the Student Session to marisa.koellner@uni-tuebingen.de andrziai@sfs.uni-tuebingen.de.

ESSLLI 2016 will feature a wide range of foundational and advanced courses and workshops in all areas of Logic, Language, and Computation. For further information, including registration information and courselistings, and for general inquiries about ESSLLI 2016, please consult the main ESSLLI 2016 page: http://esslli2016.unibz.it.

Call for papers: Definiteness across Languages

The Faculty of Philosophy and Literature of the National Autonomous University of Mexico and the Center for Linguistic and Literary Studies of El Colegio de México will host a workshop on definiteness across languages,  which will take place in June 22-24, in Mexico City. The aim of this event is to bring together linguists working on syntactic and semantic description as well as on the development of theories aimed to answer two main questions:

i. What formal strategies do natural languages use to express definiteness?ii. What are the possible meanings of their definite noun phrases?

Invited speakers
Bert Le Bruyn (Utrecht University) 
Florian Schwarz  (University of Pennsylvania, UMass Alumnus) 

Abstract submission

We invite submissions contributing to the study of any aspect of the syntax, semantics and pragmatics of definite noun phrases in natural languages. Please submit an abstract in PDF format of no more than one page of text with an additional page for extra data, figures, and references. This file must not contain any personal information or affiliation, and must be submitted via EasyChair. If you are not familiar with EasyChair, please follow these submission instructions. The talks, which can be given either in English or in Spanish,  should be 30 minutes long followed by 10 minutes of discussion. 

Important dates
Deadline for abstract submission: February 14, 2016 Notification of acceptance: February 28, 2016 Conference dates: June 22-24, 2016

Call for papers: Student ESSLLI

*ESSLLI 2016 STUDENT SESSION*

Held during the 28th European Summer School in Logic, Language and Information

Bolzano, Italy, August 15-26, 2016

*Deadline for submissions: March 10th, 2016

*https://easychair.org/conferences/?conf=essllistus2016

*ABOUT:*

The Student Session of the 28th European Summer School in Logic, Language, and Information (ESSLLI) will take place in Bolzano, Italy, August 15th to 26th (http://esslli2016.unibz.it). We invite submissions of original, unpublished work from students in any area at the intersection of Logic & Language, Language & Computation, or Logic & Computation. Submissions will be reviewed by several experts in the field, and accepted papers will be presented orally or as posters and selected papers will appear in the Student Session proceedings by Springer. This is an excellent opportunity to receive valuable feedback from expert readers and to present your work to a diverse audience.

*ORAL/POSTER PRESENTATIONS:*

Note that there are two separate kinds of submissions, one for oralpresentations and one for posters. This means that papers are directly submitted either as oral presentations or as poster presentations. Reviewing and ranking will be done separately. We particularly encourage submissions for posters, as they offer an excellent opportunity to present smaller research projects and research in progress.

*SUBMISSION GUIDELINES:*

Authors must be students, and submissions may be singly or jointlyauthored. Each author may submit at most one single and one jointlyauthored contribution. Submissions should not be longer than 8 pages foran oral presentation or 4 pages for a poster presentation (including examples and references). Submissions must be anonymous, without any identifying information. More detailed guidelines regarding submissioncan be found on the Student Session website:http://www2.sfs.uni-tuebingen.de/esslli-stus-2016/.

*SPONSORSHIP AND PRIZES*

As in previous years, Springer has kindly agreed to sponsor the ESSLLI student session. The best poster and best talk will be awarded Springer book vouchers of 500€ each.

*FURTHER INFORMATION:*

Please direct inquiries about submission procedures or other matters relating to the Student Session to marisa.koellner@uni-tuebingen.de and rziai@sfs.uni-tuebingen.de.

ESSLLI 2016 will feature a wide range of foundational and advanced courses and workshops in all areas of Logic, Language, and Computation. For further information, including registration information and course listings, and for general inquiries about ESSLLI 2016, please consult the main ESSLLI 2016 page: http://esslli2016.unibz.it.

Ashwini Deo gives department colloquium on Friday

Ashwini Deo (Yale) will give the department’s first colloquium of the semester this Friday, September 25, at 3:30 in ILC N400. The title and abstract of her talk follow.

Title: The Semantic and Pragmatic underpinnings of Grammaticalization Paths

It is a well-established fact that meanings associated with functional linguistic expressions evolve in systematic ways across time. But we have little precise understanding of why and how this happens. We know even less about how formal approaches to the meanings of functional categories like tense, aspect, negation can be reconciled with the typologically robust findings of grammaticalization research. In this talk, I will take a first step towards such an understanding by analyzing a robustly attested semantic change in natural languages — the progressive-to-imperfective shift.

The facts can be described as follows: At Stage 0, a linguistic system L possesses a single imperfective or neutral aspectual marker X that is used to express two contextually disambiguable meanings α and β. At Stage 1, a progressive marker Y arises spontaneously in L in order to express α in some contexts. At Stage 2, Y becomes entrenched as an obligatory grammatical element for expressing α while X is restricted in use to expressing β. At Stage 3, Y generalizes and is used to express both α and β. X is gradually driven out of L. Stage 3 (structurally identical to Stage 0) is often followed by another instantiation of Stage 1, with the innovation of a new progressive marker Z. The trajectory to be explained is thus cyclic. The analysis I provide has a semantic component that characterizes the logical relation between the progressive and imperfective operators in terms of asymmetric entailment. Its dynamic component rests on the proposal that imperfective and progressive sentences crucially distinguish between two kinds of inquiries: phenomenal and structural inquiries (Goldsmith and Woisetschleger 1982). The innovation and entrenchment of progressive marking in languages is shown to be underpinned by optimal ways of resolving both kinds of inquiries in discourse given considerations of successful and economic communication. Generalization is analyzed as the result of imperfect learning. The trajectory — consisting of the recruitment of a progressive form, its categorical use in phenomenal inquiries, and its generalization to imperfective meaning — is modeled within the framework of Evolutionary Game Theory. 

Call for papers: ECOM

The Expression, Communication, and Origins of Meaning (ECOM) Research Group is pleased to announce that it will be hosting its second annual interdisciplinary workshop this November on "Expressive Language: Semantics, Pragmatics, and Origins", to be held November 19-20, 2015 at the University of Connecticut. 

The workshop will explore theoretical analyses — offered from a variety of perspectives (such as metaethics, philosophy of language, psycho- and socio- linguistics, and cognitive psychology) — of systematic ways in which language is used to express emotions and other attitudes, through, e.g. slurs, pejoratives, laudatives, exclamatives, and evaluative terms.

Our invited speakers are:

Timothy Jay (Psychology, Massachusetts College)

Anna Papafragou (Psychology, Delaware)

Dean Pettit (Philosophy, UNC-Chapel Hill)

Ljiljana Progovac (Linguistics, Wayne State)

Mark Richard (Philosophy, Harvard) 

We also invite abstracts of short papers by junior researchers (25-30mins) on the topics of the conference. Please submit abstracts in PDF format to Nathan Kellen by October 20th.  (Authors of accepted papers will be notified during the following week.) 

Final Call: Sinn und Bedeutung

Sinn und Bedeutung 20 with Workshop: "Experimental Methodology in Semantics and Pragmatics"

9-12 September 2015 -- University of Tuebingen

Tuebingen, Germany

Conference website

***Call Deadline: 15 February 2015***

The University of Tübingen is proud to host the 20th Sinn und Bedeutung.

Invited Speakers:

Luisa Marti (UQML)

Uli Sauerland (ZAS)

Junko Shimoyama (McGill)

-- Special Session --
Semantic Theory Evolves Continuously – Here’s Our Workshop! (STECHOW)

In addition to the oral presentations and poster sessions, there will be a special workshop celebrating 20 years of Sinn und Bedeutung, and to honour Arnim von Stechow and his contribution to the field of semantics:

Special Session Organisers:

Doris Penka (University of Konstanz)

Sarah Zobel (University of Tübingen)

Special Session Speakers:

Sigrid Beck (University of Tübingen)

Irene Heim (MIT)

Barbara Partee (UMass, Amherst)

Viola Schmitt (University of Vienna)

For more information about STECHOW, go here.

There is also a special Workshop: Experimental Methodology in Semantics and Pragmatics, which is accepting abstracts for 20 minute talks. For more information about this workshop, go here.

For questions or enquiries please write to:

sub20.tuebingen at gmail.com

Call for papers: ESSLI

27th European Summer School in Logic, Language, and Information (ESSLLI 2015) / Barcelona, Spain

August 3rd 2015 - August 14th 2015

Universitat Pompeu Fabra
http://www.esslli2015.org

* Registration to open during January 2015 *

The European Summer School in Logic, Language and Information (ESSLLI) is an annual event organized under the auspices of the Association for Logic, Language and Information (FoLLI). It brings together logicians, linguists, computer scientists, and philosophers to study language, logic, information, and their interconnections. ESSLLI attracts several hundred participants from all over the world, both senior and junior and is a great place to learn and network -- and have a lot of fun in the process.

There will be 42 courses at introductory and advanced levels, as well as 6 workshops, 4 evening lectures, and a week-long student session to foster interdisciplinary discussion of current research. Most courses and workshops are one week long. Courses are offered in the areas of Language and Logic, Language and Computation, and Logic and Computation.

Check our website for details on the program and registration procedure: http://www.esslli2015.org.

Questions? E-mail esslli2015gmail.com

Call for Abstracts: Gradability, Scale Structure and Vagueness

Abstracts are invited for submission to the workshop “Gradability, Scale Structure, and Vagueness: Experimental Perspectives”, which will take place in Madrid, at the Center for Social Sciences and Humanities of the Spanish National Research Council, on May 28th and 29th, 2015.

As its title states, the workshop is concerned with the semantics of gradability, scale structure and vagueness from an experimental perspective. We invite papers that challenge or confirm current formal analyses of these phenomena in view of experimentally collected data; that discuss how semantic and pragmatic theory can benefit from experimental methodologies; and that aim for an explicit and detailed account of the use, mental representation, online processing, neural correlates or acquisition of expressions of gradability, scalarity, and vagueness. Papers may address — but are not limited to — the following questions: 

The ontological status of degrees and their role in the analysis of vagueness, gradability and scalarity phenomena, if any (Kennedy 1999, 2007; Heim 2000; Nouwen 2005; van Rooij 2011a,b; Solt & Gotzner 2012).

Comparison constructions across categories and languages (Pancheva 2006; Geurts & Nouwen 2007; Nouwen 2008; Beck et al. 2010; Ravid et al. 2010; Wellwood et al. 2012; Bobalijk 2012).

Scale-based classifications of gradable predicates such as the absolute vs. relative distinction, the nature of the standards for the applicability of gradable expressions, and the ways in which standards are determined (Rotstein & Winter 2004; Kennedy & McNally 2005; Syrett 2007, Syrett et al. 2010; Sassoon 2012; McNally 2011; Burnett 2014a,b).

Evidence for specifications of implicit parameters, such as comparison class, judge, scalar dimension(s), or standards, in the derivation of vague and gradable expressions, and their role in processing (Solt & Gotzner 2012; Schumacher 2012).

The usage of vague language in the context of borderline cases (e.g., things which are ‘neither tall nor not tall’), apparent contradictions (such as ‘tall and short’), and the Sorites paradox (Serchuk et al. 2011; Ripley 2011; Kriz & Chemla 2014; Alxatib & Pelletier 2011).

The connections between vagueness and other types of context dependence such as ambiguity and polysemy (Schumacher 2012, 2014), imprecision or approximation (Lewis 1979; Lasersohn 1999; Krifka 2007; Hackl 2009; Syrett et al. 2010; Bambini et al. 2013; Solt 2014; Solt et al. 2014), anaphora and presupposition (Kamp 1981; Burkhardt 2008), and multidimensionality and gradability (Kamp 1975; Kennedy 1999; van Rooij 2011a,b; Sassoon 2013; Burnett 2014a,b).

The consequences of vagueness for the architecture of grammar, given the diverse aspects of grammar into which vagueness infiltrates (Chierchia 2010)

8 talks will be selected among the submissions. They will be allotted 35 minutes plus 10 minutes for discussion. One person can submit at most one single-authored abstract and an additional co-authored one. Abstracts must be anonymous, at most 2 pages long including references and examples, 12 pt Times New Roman font, and in .pdf format. They will be submitted electronically via Easychair. Please add 5 keywords.


Invited speakers:
Rick Nouwen (Universiteit Utrecht)
Roumyana Pancheva (University of Southern California)
Petra Schumacher (University of Cologne)
Stephanie Solt (Zentrum für Allgemeine Sprachwissenschaft, Berlin)
 Important dates:
Abstract submission: January 15th, 2015
Notification of acceptance: March 1st, 2015
Workshop dates: May 28th-29th, 2015
 In conjunction with this workshop, the organizers are preparing a volume with the same title for the new Springer series ‘Language, Cognition and Mind’. Papers based on the accepted talks will be considered for this publication.


Registration is free, but please let us know if you will be attending by filling in the form you will find in the workshop’s web page:
https://sites.google.com/site/gradexp2015/registration
 

Organizers: Elena Castroviejo (ILLA-CSIC), Louise McNally (Universitat Pompeu Fabra), Galit W. Sassoon (Bar-Ilan University)

 Contact: expgrad2015@gmail.com

Pilar Prieto gives talk in Hispanic Linguistics on Thursday

Meghan Armstrong writes:

We invite you to join us for the first of our series of talks in Hispanic Linguistics:

Pilar Prieto (ICREA/Universitat Pompeu Fabra)

Intonational and gestural meaning reflect information about spaces of commitment

October 16 - 11:30am

301 Herter Hall

ABSTRACT:

It is well-known that prosody and gesture patterns across languages, among other functions, convey information about the epistemic stance of the speaker, not only in relation to the speaker’s own propositions but also in relation to the addressee’s propositions. In the first part of this talk I will present evidence from two recent experiments on the role of prosody and gesture in the expression and assessment of the epistemic stance of the speaker (Roseano et al 2014, Borràs-Comes and Prieto 2014; see also Armstrong to appear). In one of our experiments on biased questions and intonation, results showed that different tune patterns in Catalan were used to encode (a) different degrees of speaker knowledge on the content of the speakers' own proposition; and (b) different degrees of speaker acceptance of the content of the proposition of the addressee(Borràs-Comes and Prieto 2014).

The second part of the talk will be devoted to show the results from a joint project with M.T. Espinal and S. Tubau (UAB) and two members of our team (J. Borràs-Comes and S. González, UPF) on the role of prosody and gesture in the interpretation of denial in Catalan. Two specific cases will be analyzed, namely double negation and yes-answers to negative yes-no questions (Espinal & Prieto 2011, Tubau et al. in press). These two cases constitute a challenge for semantics and pragmatics because double negative and yes- responses to negative questions are ambiguous in that they can constitute either a negative answer to the proposition expressed or a denial to a presupposition (e.g., What isn’t working? Nothing ‘Everything is working’; Isn't John coming (either)? Yes). Our research supports the conclusion that specific intonation contours (in particular, the so- called contradiction contour, L+H*L!H%) and gestures associated with n-words do constrain meaning in ways that allow listeners to obtain the double negation and/or the contradiction interpretation in the two types of structures. It is our claim that in both cases prosody and gesture act as linguistic and conventionalized encoders of presupposition denial (see also Espinal et al. to appear, Prieto et al. 2013). Support for the linguistic view comes from languages classified as truth-based languages (e.g. Chinese, Japanese, or Russian [Jones 1999: 8ff.]), which contradict negative questions by answering no yes (Don’t you drink coffee? No yes (meaning you are not right, I drink coffee)), while some languages with a polarity-based system contradict the truth of the negative proposition by answering Yes and a specific prosody (i.e. the answer ‘disagrees’ with the whole contentof the negative sentence).

Following Krifka's proposal on the interpretation of speech acts as "spaces of commitments", we propose that intonation and gesture patterns associated both to biased questions and to n-words and particles can be interpreted as epistemic operators encoding REJECT, ASSERT and REQUEST operations (see also Portes et al. 2014 for a related proposal). For example, the contradicting answer to a negative question yes is composed of REJECT (encoded by prosody and gesture) plus ASSERT(φ) (encoded through the positive word, where φ is the propositional discourse referent). All in all, these results are challenging for the design that has been traditionally assumed in the theory of grammar, since they suggest that prosody and gesture constrain meaning representations. Inparticular, the inferencing of denial.

Post Doc at the University of Göttingen

At the Courant Research Centre “Text Structures” at the University of Göttingen a full post-doc position is available starting from *Dec. 01,  2014* or as soon as possible within the junior research group “Theoretical Linguistics". The salary is in accordance with the German TV-L 13 regulations. The contract shall expire on *Sept. 30, 2016*. 

The successful applicant has a PhD in linguistics, research experience including publications in syntax/semantics/pragmatics and in particular research interest in at least one of the following fields: 

- the syntax, semantics and pragmatics of indefinite NPs, 

- the syntax, and semantics of conditionals, 

- the syntax and semantics of questions and the pragmatics of answers, 

- information structure, 

- syntax and semantics of tense and aspect.  

The applicant will be expected to get involved in collaborative research projects at the University of Göttingen and at the Courant Research Centre “Text Structures” including interdisciplinary research. A research record in mathematical or in experimental linguistics are of advantage. Moreover, experience with computational linguistics, programming and statistics as well as proficiency in German constitute an advantage but are no strict requirements. 

The University of Göttingen attempts to increase the number of female researchers and therefore explicitly invites women to apply. Disabled candidates will be preferred in case of similar qualification. 
Applications in English or German should be submitted before *November 1, 2014* to:

Georg-August-Universität Göttingen, 

Courant Forschungszentrum “Textstrukturen” 

Edgar Onea / Julia Busse

Nikolausberger Weg 23 D-37073 Göttingen 

E-Mail: edgar.onea@zentr.uni-goettingen.de

Semantics/Pragmatics job at UC, Berkeley

The Department of Linguistics at the University of California, Berkeley, has been authorized to make an appointment in semantics and pragmatics. This position will be at the rank of assistant professor (tenure-track) or associate professor (tenured). Salary will be commensurate with experience. Duties will include undergraduate and graduate advising and teaching (up to four courses per year, in semantics and other areas of linguistics), supervision of student research, and development of a successful and original research program. The PhD (or equivalent) is required by the start date of the appointment; all degree requirements other than the dissertation must be complete at the time of application.

Applicants must have a broad intellectual engagement in linguistics and a theoretically informed research specialization in semantics and pragmatics. Applicants must be able to teach formal model-theoretic semantics at all levels, including seminars and research mentoring, and should have research interests or skills that intersect with an allied field such as cognitive science, corpus or experimental linguistics, historical linguistics, language documentation, morphology, syntax, or typology.

Applications must include a cover letter, curriculum vitae, research and teaching statements, and copies of representative written work (up to 5 items may be submitted). Applications must contain evidence of teaching excellence or potential (either through separate documentation or through information in the cover letter, c.v., or recommendation letters). Applicants must arrange for 2-5 (preferably at least 3) letters of recommendation to be submitted through the online application system. All recommendation letters will be treated as confidential according to University of California policy and California state law. Please refer potential referees, including those who provide letters via a third party, to the UC Berkeley Confidentiality Policy (http://apo.berkeley.edu/evalltr.html).

Please submit all materials electronically at https://aprecruit.berkeley.edu/apply/JPF00505. We encourage applicants to submit materials by November 14, 2014, when review of applications will begin; no application materials will be accepted after December 1, 2014. Select candidates will be interviewed at the LSA Annual Meeting in Portland, January 8-11, 2015; thereafter a few candidates will be invited for campus visits. Questions can be sent to Paula Floro (floro@berkeley.edu).

We are interested in candidates whose research, teaching, or service prepares them to contribute to UC Berkeley’s commitment to diversity and inclusion in higher education. We welcome applications from those who have had non-traditional career paths, have achieved excellence in careers outside academia, or have taken time off for family reasons. For information about relocation to Berkeley or the career needs of partners, please visit calcierge.berkeley.edu (or e-mail calcierge@berkeley.edu).

Registration open for ESSLLI 2014

The registration for the 26th European Summer School in Logic, Language and Information (ESSLLI 2014) is now open. ESSLLI 2014 will be held in Tübingen, Germany, August 11-22, 2014.

In order to register, go to http://www.esslli2014.info/registration/registration.

The European Summer School in Logic, Language and Information (ESSLLI) is organized every year by the Association for Logic, Language and Information (FoLLI) in different sites around Europe. Under the auspices of FoLLI (the Association for Logic, Language, and Information), ESSLLI brings together logicians, linguists, computer scientists, and philosophers to study language, logic, and information, and their interconnections. The school hosts approximately 50 courses at both introductory and advanced levels, and brings together around 500 participants from all over the world. Along with the courses, ESSLLI hosts workshops and invited lectures, providing opportunities for in-depth discussion of current research.

The ESSLLI Organizing Committee is pleased to be able to offer a limited number of waivers of participation fees and student travel grants to highly motivated and talented students. Preferences will be given to students who actively participate in the Student Session. See more details at: http://esslli2014.info/registration/grant-information

Final Call: ESSLLI 2014 Student Session

Held during the 26th European Summer School in Logic, Language and Information

Tübingen, Germany, August 11-22, 2014

*Deadline for submissions: April 1st, 2014*

https://www.easychair.org/conferences/?conf=essllistus2014

*ABOUT:*The Student Session of the 26th European Summer School in Logic, Language, and Information (ESSLLI) will take place in Tübingen, Germany on August 11-22, 2014. We invite submissions of original, unpublished work from students in any area at the intersection of Logic & Language, Language & Computation, or Logic & Computation. Submissions will be reviewed by several experts in the field, and accepted papers will be presented orally or as posters and will appear in the student session proceedings by Springer. This is an excellent opportunity to receive valuable feedback from expert readers and to present your work to a diverse audience.

*SEPARATE POSTER SESSION:*Note that there are two separate kinds of submissions, one for the oral presentations and one for the posters. This means that papers can be directly submitted as posters. Reviewing and ranking will be done separately. We particularly encourage submissions for posters, as they offer an excellent opportunity to present research in progress.

*SUBMISSION GUIDELINES:*All authors must be students, and submissions may be singly or jointly authored. Submissions should not be longer than 8 pages for an oral presentation and 4 pages for a poster presentation (including examples and references). Submissions must be anonymous, without any identifying information. More detailed guidelines regarding submission can be found on the Student Session website: http://www.kr.tuwien.ac.at/drm/dehaan/stus2014/.

*FURTHER INFORMATION:*Please direct inquiries about submission procedures or other matters relating to the Student Session to dehaan@kr.tuwien.ac.at. 

ESSLLI 2014 will feature a wide range of foundational and advanced courses and workshops in all areas of Logic, Language, and Computation. For further information, including registration information and course listings, and for general inquiries about ESSLLI 2014, please consult the main ESSLLI 2014 page: http://www.esslli2014.info/.

Call for papers: Workshop on the Semantics of Referring Expressions

Workshop on the semantics of referring expressions
Olomouc
June 5, 2014

Deadline: February 10, 2014

This workshop forms part of the Olomouc Linguistics Colloquium 2014. For further information please consult this webpage.

Coordinators and discussants: Mojmír Dočekal (Masaryk University, Brno), Berit Gehrke (Université Paris Diderot)

The workshop aims to bring together linguists interested in the semantics and pragmatics of natural language, focusing on interpretative issues related to nominal complexes. The theme should not exclude papers on other subjects, but submissions traditionally related to this theme (indefinite/definite NPs, plurality/kind/mass denoting NPs and referential pronouns) are especially welcome.

Partee at LSA

In WHISC’s last issue, we neglected to include the talk given by Barbara Partee in our entry about UMass’s presence at the Linguistics Society of  America’s meeting in Minneapolis. She was one of the presenters at the LSA’s 90th anniversary talks. Hers was entitled “Semantics and Pragmatics: then and Now.” The slides for her talk can be found here.

Post Doc at ZAS in Berlin

The Center for General Linguistics (ZAS) in Berlin, Germany has an opening starting flexibly between April 1st, 2014 and September 1st, 2014 pending final approval of funding for one postdoctoral researcher.  The position is in the SSI project within the XPrag.de program (www.zas.gwz-berlin.de/xpragde.html).  The advertised position is limited to one year initially with a possibility of extension. The appointment would be made at the German government pay-scale for a postdoc (about 45.000 EUR/year before tax). 

The SSI project:

Scalar inferences have been shown to differ in strength. As an example, consider the contrast between the cardinal numerals "three" and the quantifier "some":  the scalar inference from "three" to "not four" is felt to be stronger than  that from "some" to "not all" in some cases.  Four diagnostics of strength corroborating this contrast are the following: 1) The stronger inference of the cardinal is more difficult to cancel, 2) easier to embed,  3) acquired earlier by children, and 4) accessed faster and more easily in online language processing. Several researchers have therefore claimed that cardinals like "three" must receive a fundamentally different analysis from other scalars.  However, disjunction also exhibits a  strength difference: "either A or B" is intuitively  felt to more strongly exclude the truth of both A and B than a bare disjunction "A or B" does.  Most proposals for cardinals cannot be extended to "either-or"  As far as we know, there has been no general discussion of strength of scalar inferences within pragmatic theory despite numerous individual observations.

The goal of this project is to develop a theory of the strength of scalar inferences that extends beyond cardinals.  Our empirical basis is a detailed investigation of the four diagnostic mentioned above for the pair of "or" and "either-or".  In addition to offline judgment tasks, we gather data from language acquisition and online language processing using self-paced reading, eye-tracking and mouse-tracking.  Furthermore we engage language comparisons between German and Japanese since in several respects our experimental tests are easier to apply in Japanese.  Within pragmatic theory, our goal is to develop a uniform theory of strength.  In particular, we test the hypotheses that obligatory activation of alternatives within the grammatical analysis of implicatures underlies at least the two core cases of scalar inference strength.

The XPrag.de program is a national priority program (SPP 1727) funded by the German Research Council DFG. The overall goal of XPrag.de is to develop a precise pragmatic theory that is informed by evidence using experimental methods.  Within the XPrag.de program additional possibilities for Postdoc career development such as training schools, funding for workshops and scientific exchanges are available.

Desirable skills include the following:

- broad general background in linguistics including syntax, Japanese and German linguistics
- advanced knowledge / own research in formal pragmatics and semantics
- familiarity with current research on implicatures
- experimental skills in language acquisition and processing
- experience with self-directed project work in experimental linguistics
- interest to contribute to broader research agendas of ZAS and XPrag.de

For further information regarding this position please contact
Uli Sauerland <uli@alum.mit.edu>.

Review of applications will start February 1st, 2014 and continue until the position is filled.

Applications should include the following information:
- cover letter indicated the desired starting date
- curriculum vitae 
- samples of prior published research
- names and email addresses of three people that can be contacted for recommendation letters
 (but please do not send letters at this point)

Please send your applications electronically to uli@alum.mit.edu. 

Applications can also be send by mail to the address below.

Uli Sauerland
Zentrum für Allgemeine Sprachwissenschaft
Schützenstr. 18
10117 Berlin
Germany

Call for Papers: Workshop on Pragmasemantics

The 15th Szklarska Poreba Workshop, a workshop on the roots of pragmasemantics, will be held at the top of the mountain Szrenica, near Szklarska Poreba, Poland, on 21-24 February 2014. The workshop will address issues related to the semantics and pragmatics of aspect and, more generally, to the representation of meaning, both from a linguistic as well as a philosophical and cognitive perspective. 

For more information, go here.https://sites.google.com/site/szklarskaporebaworkshop/