The \;Slurring Terms Across Languages (STAL) \;network (https://sites.google.com/view/stalnetwork/home) invites you to a talk by Nicolá\;s Lo Guercio (CONICET/University of Buenos Aires)\, \;entitled \;"Maximize Expressivity!". The talk will take place online on \;NOVEMBER 4\, 14:30-16:00 Central European Time (CET)\, and is part of the of STAL Seminar series (https://sites.google.com/view/stalnetwork/seminar). If you want to participate\, please write to \;stalnetwork@gmail.com \;for the Zoom link. Below you can find the abstract.
\nAll welcome!
\nABSTRACT:
\nIn interpreting utterances language users frequently compare the sentence used by the speaker with a set of alternative sentences that she could have used instead. Arguably\, such comparison can have a significant impact on the interpretation\, the grammaticality\, or the felicity of the utterance. In this talk I focus on scalar inferences\, alternative-based inferences that arise as a result of the comparison between sentences mainly in terms of their informativeness. In this regard\, a lot of research has focused on scalar implicatures and anti-presuppositions\, where the hearer compares alternatives regarding their at-issue and presuppositional content respectively. To my knowledge\, however\, no attention has been paid to differences in informativeness regarding expressive meaning\, arguably a type of non-presuppositional\, non-at-issue content. Thus\, for example\, the sentence &ldquo\;That idiot Nicolá\;s lost his keys&rdquo\; is intuitively more informative than &ldquo\;Nicolá\;s lost his keys&rdquo\; in terms of its expressive content. The question arises whether expressives may license expressive scalar inferences (ESIs) parallel to scalar implicatures and anti-presuppositions\, and under what circumstances. In this talk I argue\, based on the discussion of epithets and certain honorifics (e.g.\, the Spanish honorific 'don') that expressive utterances may license ESIs under the right circumstances\, and I suggest that the data can be accounted for by postulating a principle called Maximize expressivity! Some expressives\, however\, e.g. expressive adjectives and group pejoratives\, do not seem to license ESIs. In the second part of the talk I attempt to account for these apparent counterexamples in a way that is compatible with Maximize expressivity!: on the one hand\, I maintain that expressive adjectives do not license ESIs because of the particularities of their semantics\; on the other hand\, I contend that group pejoratives do not license ESIs because they are (sociolinguistically) marked.
ORGANIZER;CN=Isidora Stojanovic;CN=Dan Zeman: METHOD:PUBLISH END:VEVENT END:VCALENDAR