Polysemy in the Evaluative Sphere

POLYSEMY IN THE EVALUATIVE SPHERE

In-person: Faculty of Letters, University of Porto, Via Panorâmica s/n

Online: Zoom

This is a biweekly seminar pertaining to the project Slurs and the Lexicon: A Rich-Lexicon Approach to Slurs and Other Evaluative Expressions - LEXISLUR (2023.05952.CEECIND; PI: Dan Zeman). The main aim of the project is to offer a polysemy account fit for evaluative expressions and to assess to what extent a unified approach to the entire evaluative sphere is feasible. Much work on polysemy can be found in lexical semantics - the branch of semantics that studies the meaning of words, their internal structure and interrelations, etc. However, while the debate about polysemy of various expressions has produced an impressive amount of work, not much material on the polysemy of evaluative expressions exists in that area. The purpose of this seminar is twofold: first, to get acquainted with the essential literature on polysemy (via in-person sessions dedicated to reading and discussing the relevant papers); second, to feature current work on polysemy as applied to evaluative expressions (via online talks by invited speakers). In this way, participants will both acquire knowledge about polysemy in general and see how the discussions in lexical semantics can be applied to the evaluative sphere.

In-person meetings

Prospective readings:

Nicholas Asher, Lexical Meaning in Context: A Web of Words, Cambridge University Press, 2011 (excerpts).

Robyn Carston, "Polysemy: pragmatics and sense conventions", Mind & Language 36(1): 108-133, 2021.

John Collins, "Copredication as illusion", Journal of Semantics 40(2-3): 359-389, 2023.

Steven Frisson, "Semantic underspecification in language processing", Language and Linguistics Compass 3(1): 111-127, 2009.

Lotte Hogeweg & Agustin Vicente, "On the nature of the lexicon", Journal of Linguistics 56(4): 865-891, 2020.

Ray Jackendoff, Semantic Structures, MIT Press, 1990 (excerpts).

Michelle Liu, "Polysemy and Philosophy", Philosophy Compass 20: e70040, 2025.

Ingrid Lossius Falkum & Agustin Vicente, "Polysemy", Oxford Bibliographies Online, 2020.

Marina Ortega Andrés & Agustin Vicente, "Polysemy and co-predication", Glossa 4(1), 2019.

James Pustejovsky, The Generative Lexicon, MIT Press, 1995 (excerpts).

Petra Schumacher, "When combinatorial processing results in reconceptualization: Towards a new approach of compositionality", Frontiers of Psychology 4: 677, 2013.

Agustin Vicente, "Polysemy and word meaning", Philosophical Studies, 175(4): 947-968, 2018.

Agustin Vicente, "Approaches to co-predication", Journal of Pragmatics 182: 348-357, 2021.

Online talks

Confirmed speakers (schedule to be announced):

John Collins & Agustin Vicente

Tamara Dobler

Jessica Keiser

Michelle Liu

Ingrid Lossius Falkum

Marina Ortega Andrés

Emanuel Viebahn