Date:
Friday, May 4, 2012 - 2:30pm - 4:00pm
Location:
Memorial 037 Clause Types in Context
A fundamental concept in the description oflanguage is that of CLAUSE TYPE, a pairing between grammatical form andconversational use. After presenting some background on contemporaryapproaches to understanding clause types within formal semantics and pragmatics,I will focus on the analysis of jussives and evidentials within a modelpreviously developed for imperatives alone (Portner 2004, 2007; Zanuttini, Pak, and Portner to appear). The fundamental idea isthat we should understand these types as updating a discourse model consistingof ordering relations over the common ground (the Multiply Ordered CommonGround, MOCG). If time permits, I will discuss the relation between theMOCG model and probabilities, drawing a comparison with recent work (e.g.,Lassiter 2011).
