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« MUMM 2 Workshop This Saturday | Main | Deanna Moore Talk for Job-Seeking Undergrads»
Chierchia Public Lecture on Logic and Grammar
Gennaro Chierchia
Harvard University
Logic and grammar: How language and reasoning shape each other
Wednesday, April 9, 1:30-3:00 pm, Campus Center Room 904
Abstract
How do we understand each other? What is it that makes English sentences carriers of information? How do we go from sounds to meanings? I want to explore a controversial answer to these questions, an answer which comes in two parts: (i) knowing the meaning of words is not quite enough; (ii) the main source or meaningfulness is logic (here understood as a natural capacity to reason). A corollary of these claims is that language and logic are intertwined and that humans, against all appearances, are good spontaneous logicians. I will motivate this view of language with a few concrete examples, including one having to do with an old controversy: what do words like “or” really mean? This will give us a chance to take a cursory look at modern semantics, a field that would not be what it is without the UMass Linguistics Department.