The Lexicon of Subjectivity

In recent years, one of the most vivid debates in philosophy of language has been that between contextualism, relativism, and expressivism about a series of subjective, or perspectival, expressions (such as predicates of personal taste, aesthetic and moral terms, epistemic vocabulary, gradable adjectives, epistemic modals etc.). The main arguments discussed so far can be categorized into two types: arguments based on intuitions about the truth-value of sentences containing the expressions in question in various situations (disagreement, eavesdropping, retraction etc.) and arguments based on syntactic considerations (binding, licensing, control, embeddings under various attitude verbs etc.).

While such arguments are no doubt important, not much attention has been devoted to investigating the expressions in question from the point of view of lexical semantics. There are many lexical theories on the market, but they can be divided into two broad types. Thus, according to one type of theories, lexical entries of natural language expressions are rich, comprising a significant amount of information, possibly structured along several dimensions, which get selected in context. According to the other type, lexical entries of natural language expressions are rather skeletal, comprising only minimal information that is further enriched in context. Intermediary positions are possible, too: according to those, lexical entries of some expressions are rich, while those of other expressions are minimal.

This workshop aims to explore the possible significance for the debate mentioned above of a lexical approach to subjective, or perspectival, expressions. The general purpose of such an endeavor is to gain insight into the lexical configuration of subjective expressions and bring to the fore possible consequences for their syntax, as well as for their semantics. Thus, among the questions raised and tackled in the workshop are the following:
- What is the lexical configuration of subjective, or perspectival, expressions?
- What lexical theory is best suited to adequately account for such expressions?
- How does the lexical configuration of such expressions affect their syntax and their semantics?
- What are the consequences of such findings for the contemporary debate between contextualism, relativism and expressivism? 


The workshop is organized by Dan Zeman, Marina Ortega and Agustin Vicente, with the financial support of the Lexical Meaning and Concepts (FFI2014-52196-P) project and the Basque Research Group for Theoretical Linguistics (HiTT). Attendance is free, but please write an email to danczeman[at]gmail.com if you want to participate.

VENUE: Micaela Portilla Research Center, Justo Vélez de Elorriaga, 1, Vitoria-Gasteiz

PARTICIPANTS

Lisa Bylinina, Leiden University
Elena Castroviejo, University of the Basque Country
John Collins, University of East Anglia
Sara Packalén, Stockholm University
Hazel Pearson, Queen Mary University
Carla Umbach, ZAS Berlin

PROGRAM

9.30-10.45
John Collins, "Lexical Items as Atomic Syntactic Constituents: Active and Inactive Aspects of Words"

10.45-12.00
Elena Castroviejo, "From Evaluativity to Intensification. The Cases of Romance 'Good' and 'Well'"

12.00-12.15
Coffee break

12.15-13.30
Lisa Bylinina: "Evidence for Subjective Statements"

13.30-15.00
Lunch

15.00-16.15
Sara Packalen, "A Two-Dimensional Defense of Subjectivism about Normative Predicates"

16.15-16.30
Coffee break

16.30-17.45
Hazel Pearson, "Predicates of Personal Taste and the De Se: Similarities and Differences"

17.45-19.00
Carla Umbach, "On the Meaning of Dimensional and Aesthetic Predicates"

20.30
Dinner