Rob Pasternak will speak in Semantics Workshop on Wednesday (September 28, 12:25 PM). Everyone is welcome, even if you do not normally attend the workshop. Here is a short description of what Rob will talk about:
Intuitively, there is a similarity in meaning between (1) and (2): both can be (somewhat simplistically) summarized as claiming that Sam’s going to the party is a priority relative to Mary’s desires.
(1) Mary wants Sam to go to the party.(2) It is important to Mary that Sam go(es) to the party.
In this talk, I will argue that want and important (to NP) share a core semantic component, based on evidence from entailment relations, scale structure, presupposition projection, and if clause domain restriction. I will then sketch a proposed semantics for these constructions and discuss ways in which this proposal improves upon previous work on attitude verbs and gradable intensionality.
Rob is visiting us from Stony Brook University. His department’s website says that, in addition to his academic work, Rob is also “an avid amateur (formerly professional) pianist, composer, and singer/songwriter.”
Next week (October 5), Alex Göbel will prepare us for Florian Schwarz’s visit on October 6 (Thursday) and October 7 (Friday). Florian will give the Colloquium on Friday and talk in a joint session of the Semantics and Psycholinguistics Workshops at 6:00 PM on Thursday. Both talks will be about presuppositions. Here is a folder with readings related to Florian’s talks. Here is more info about Florian’s talk and the recommended readings.