Reassessing the Link between Relevance and Informativeness

Diego Feinmann

The next meeting of the Sign-Language-Reality seminar in the academic year 2025/26 will take place:

Thursday, the 21st of May 2026, 17.00, Central European Time

Diego Feinmann

(IPI PAN)

will deliver a talk:

Reassessing the Link between Relevance and Informativeness

Abstract:

The dominant view in cognitive science and formal pragmatics is that relevance is a matter of informativeness: a sentence is relevant if it is informative, and irrelevant otherwise. In this talk, I consider both non-probabilistic and probabilistic approaches to relevance, and conclude that, insofar as they entail that informativeness is a necessary condition for relevance, they are bound to fail: it is possible for a sentence to be uninformative and yet be perceived as a relevant contribution. Time permitting, I will also discuss some experimental work on this topic (forthcoming, with Sonia Ramotowska).

About the speaker:

Diego Feinmann is Assistant Professor at the Institute of Computer Science of the Polish Academy of Sciences, where his research focuses on the formal semantics and pragmatics of natural language. His publication record includes work in leading venues such as Journal of Semantics, Linguistics and Philosophy, Snippets, Journal of Logic, Language and Information, and Journal of Psycholinguistic Research. Across papers on homogeneity and vagueness, domain restriction, relevance, and non-maximality, his work combines technical precision with a strong feel for foundational questions at the semantics–pragmatics interface.

Speaker's webiste: https://www.diegofeinmann.com/

The seminar will be held online, to join the meeting, please use the information below:

Join Zoom Meeting https://uw-edu-pl.zoom.us/j/92716044372?pwd=0l7PETAOwqQDBKTMCnheYQN7ag7zx1.1

Meeting ID: 927 1604 4372 Passcode: 697648 The meeting opens at 4:45 pm, the talk starts at 5 pm.

https://www.pts.edu.pl/seminarium