SYNTACTIC ARGUMENTS IN THE CONTEXTUALISM/RELATIVISM DEBATE
May 17, 2023
Online
University of Warsaw
DESCRIPTION
Syntactic arguments have played an important role in the debate between contextualism and relativism about a variety of natural language expressions - predicates of taste, aesthetic and moral terms, epistemic modals, etc. Phenomena like binding, licensing, control, etc. have been taken to support contextualism about such expressions (e.g., Glanzberg (2007), Schaffer (2011), Snyder (2013)). On the other hand, relativists like Lasersohn (2009, 2014) have argued that embeddings under certain (factive) attitude verbs and modification by certain adverbs favor their view. Finally, a classic argument - the so-called "operator argument" found in Lewis (1980) and Kaplan (1989) - has also been invoked in support of relativism (Kölbel (2009)). The operator argument has been heavily contested (e.g., King (2003), Cappelen & Hawthorne (2009), Fritz, Hawthorne & Yli-Vakkuri (2018)). This workshop purports to assess the viability and dialectical role of these arguments and to bring to light new ways of approaching them. Among the main questions tackled by the presentations at the workshop are the following:
- How successful are the arguments against relativism based on syntactic considerations (binding, licensing, control, etc.)?
- What relativist accounts of these phenomena are there?
- How successful are the arguments in favor of relativism based on various embeddings?
- What contextualist accounts of these are there?
- Is there a successful version of the "operator argument"?
- What other relevant syntactic phenomena can be brought to bear on the debate? Etc.
ORGANIZATION
The workshop is part of the project Semantic Relativism about Perspectival Expressions: A Reassessment and Defense
(OPUS 17 project no. 2019/33/B/HS1/01269) and is organized by Dan Zeman with the support of the Faculty of Philosophy, University of Warsaw. Please write to danczeman[at]gmail.com if you want to participate.
PROGRAM
(All times are in CEST)
9.50: Welcome
10.00-11.00: Michael Glanzberg (Rutgers University), "Experiencers in Taste and the Status of Obliques"
11.10-12.10: John Collins (University of East Anglia), "Variables: The very Idea"
Lunch break
13.30-14.30: Isidora Stojanovic (CNRS/Institut Jean Nicod), "New Findings on FIND-embeddings"
14.40-15.40: Brian Rabern (University of Edinburgh), "Operators and Relativism"
15.50-16.50: Eno Agolli (Rutgers University), "Radical Schmentencism"
ABSTRACTS
Eno Agolli (Rutgers University), "Radical Schmentencism"
I present a dilemma about the syntax of modality that poses a serious challenge to current theories on the nature of linguistic meaning. Radical schmentencism is the view that there are no intensional operators (and indeed no operators at all) in natural language; instead, modality and grammatical mood are analyzed as involving explicit quantification and variables over possible worlds at LF. Radical schmentencism seems to contravene not only the identity thesis, which identifies the compositional semantic value of a sentence with the content of an assertoric utterance of that sentence, but also the recoverability thesis, according to which the latter is recoverable from the former. Despite this, I will show that radical schmentencism is overwhelmingly supported by empirical considerations. I will resolve this dilemma by attempting a schmentencist analysis of modality and mood which vindicates weakened versions of the identification thesis and, a fortiori, the recoverability thesis.
John Collins (University of East Anglia), "Variables: The very Idea"
One standard approach to the logical form of sentences whose truth-conditional content varies with contextual factors is to posit a covert variable constituent that might take as value the relevant varying factor. The paper will offer general reasons for scepticism of the very idea that there are any such variables. The first part will be wholly theoretical. The second part will look at some phenomena relating to predicates of personal taste and show that the pertinent readings can be captured without appeal to variables and that other readings are available that belie the presence of putative variables.
Michael Glanzberg (Rutgers University), "Experiencers in Taste and the Status of Obliques"
In other work, I have argued on both semantic and syntactic grounds that there is an often-hidden experiencer argument in predicates of personal taste. The syntactic arguments defeasible at best, and have been challenged directly (e.g. by Collins). In this paper, I explore what status the experiencer for a taste predicate should have in syntax. Two options are available. One is that they are lexically selected adjuncts (Bylinina). The other is that they are more like oblique arguments (instrument, goal, source, etc). These are often syntactically optional, but semantically seem required. Though their status remains disputed, I shall suggest that the experiencer in taste predicates is best construed as like an oblique argument.
Brian Rabern (University of Edinburgh), "Operators and Relativism"
Question: Does some sort of Operator Argument support Relativism? Answer: No.
Isidora Stojanovic (CNRS/Institut Jean Nicod), "New Findings on FIND-embeddings"
The possibility of felicitously embedding an expression under subjective attitude verbs such as "find" is a widely accepted criterion for demarcating subjective, perspectival expressions from objective, factual terms, as illustrated by the contrast "She finds the book interesting/*85 pages long." Embeddability under "find" is also sometimes used as an argument for contextualism about PPTs, the thought being that "find" only accepts expressions whose argument structure includes an experiencer argument (see, e.g., Sæbø 2009). Two intertwined issues remain controversial in the debate. First, what does the felicity of an expression under "find" actually tell us about the semantics of that expression? Second, once the paradigmatic cases are set apart, what is the range of expressions that are felicitous under "find"? Moral terms are a case at point - they are claimed by some (e.g., Silk 2021, Franzén 2018) to be so, while others (e.g., McNally and Stojanovic 2017, Stojanovic 2019) suggest that such constructions sound marked, as opposed to the more natural embeddings under verbs such as "consider". In this talk, I shall present the results of a corpus study, conducted in collaboration with Louise McNally, in which we have looked at the distribution of moral predicates under "find" and "consider", and have compared it to that of PPTs and other expressions. What our results suggest is that moral terms exhibit hallmarks of subjectivity at the linguistic level, but at the same time, are significantly different from PPTs. I will end with a discussion of the implications of our findings for the contextualism/relativism debate.
SYNTACTIC ARGUMENTS IN THE CONTEXTUALISM/RELATIVISM DEBATE
May 17, 2023
Online
University of Warsaw
DESCRIPTION
Syntactic arguments have played an important role in the debate between contextualism and relativism about a variety of natural language expressions - predicates of taste, aesthetic and moral terms, epistemic modals, etc. Phenomena like binding, licensing, control, etc. have been taken to support contextualism about such expressions (e.g., Glanzberg (2007), Schaffer (2011), Snyder (2013)). On the other hand, relativists like Lasersohn (2009, 2014) have argued that embeddings under certain (factive) attitude verbs and modification by certain adverbs favor their view. Finally, a classic argument - the so-called "operator argument" found in Lewis (1980) and Kaplan (1989) - has also been invoked in support of relativism (Kölbel (2009)). The operator argument has been heavily contested (e.g., King (2003), Cappelen & Hawthorne (2009), Fritz, Hawthorne & Yli-Vakkuri (2018)). This workshop purports to assess the viability and dialectical role of these arguments and to bring to light new ways of approaching them. Among the main questions tackled by the presentations at the workshop are the following:
- How successful are the arguments against relativism based on syntactic considerations (binding, licensing, control, etc.)?
- What relativist accounts of these phenomena are there?
- How successful are the arguments in favor of relativism based on various embeddings?
- What contextualist accounts of these are there?
- Is there a successful version of the "operator argument"?
- What other relevant syntactic phenomena can be brought to bear on the debate? Etc.
ORGANIZATION
The workshop is part of the project Semantic Relativism about Perspectival Expressions: A Reassessment and Defense
(OPUS 17 project no. 2019/33/B/HS1/01269) and is organized by Dan Zeman with the support of the Faculty of Philosophy, University of Warsaw. Please write to danczeman[at]gmail.com if you want to participate.
PROGRAM
(All times are in CEST)
9.50: Welcome
10.00-11.00: Michael Glanzberg (Rutgers University), "Experiencers in Taste and the Status of Obliques"
11.10-12.10: John Collins (University of East Anglia), "Variables: The very Idea"
Lunch break
13.30-14.30: Isidora Stojanovic (CNRS/Institut Jean Nicod), "New Findings on FIND-embeddings"
14.40-15.40: Brian Rabern (University of Edinburgh), "Operators and Relativism"
15.50-16.50: Eno Agolli (Rutgers University), "Radical Schmentencism"
ABSTRACTS
Eno Agolli (Rutgers University), "Radical Schmentencism"
I present a dilemma about the syntax of modality that poses a serious challenge to current theories on the nature of linguistic meaning. Radical schmentencism is the view that there are no intensional operators (and indeed no operators at all) in natural language; instead, modality and grammatical mood are analyzed as involving explicit quantification and variables over possible worlds at LF. Radical schmentencism seems to contravene not only the identity thesis, which identifies the compositional semantic value of a sentence with the content of an assertoric utterance of that sentence, but also the recoverability thesis, according to which the latter is recoverable from the former. Despite this, I will show that radical schmentencism is overwhelmingly supported by empirical considerations. I will resolve this dilemma by attempting a schmentencist analysis of modality and mood which vindicates weakened versions of the identification thesis and, a fortiori, the recoverability thesis.
John Collins (University of East Anglia), "Variables: The very Idea"
One standard approach to the logical form of sentences whose truth-conditional content varies with contextual factors is to posit a covert variable constituent that might take as value the relevant varying factor. The paper will offer general reasons for scepticism of the very idea that there are any such variables. The first part will be wholly theoretical. The second part will look at some phenomena relating to predicates of personal taste and show that the pertinent readings can be captured without appeal to variables and that other readings are available that belie the presence of putative variables.
Michael Glanzberg (Rutgers University), "Experiencers in Taste and the Status of Obliques"
In other work, I have argued on both semantic and syntactic grounds that there is an often-hidden experiencer argument in predicates of personal taste. The syntactic arguments defeasible at best, and have been challenged directly (e.g. by Collins). In this paper, I explore what status the experiencer for a taste predicate should have in syntax. Two options are available. One is that they are lexically selected adjuncts (Bylinina). The other is that they are more like oblique arguments (instrument, goal, source, etc). These are often syntactically optional, but semantically seem required. Though their status remains disputed, I shall suggest that the experiencer in taste predicates is best construed as like an oblique argument.
Brian Rabern (University of Edinburgh), "Operators and Relativism"
Question: Does some sort of Operator Argument support Relativism? Answer: No.
Isidora Stojanovic (CNRS/Institut Jean Nicod), "New Findings on FIND-embeddings"
The possibility of felicitously embedding an expression under subjective attitude verbs such as "find" is a widely accepted criterion for demarcating subjective, perspectival expressions from objective, factual terms, as illustrated by the contrast "She finds the book interesting/*85 pages long." Embeddability under "find" is also sometimes used as an argument for contextualism about PPTs, the thought being that "find" only accepts expressions whose argument structure includes an experiencer argument (see, e.g., Sæbø 2009). Two intertwined issues remain controversial in the debate. First, what does the felicity of an expression under "find" actually tell us about the semantics of that expression? Second, once the paradigmatic cases are set apart, what is the range of expressions that are felicitous under "find"? Moral terms are a case at point - they are claimed by some (e.g., Silk 2021, Franzén 2018) to be so, while others (e.g., McNally and Stojanovic 2017, Stojanovic 2019) suggest that such constructions sound marked, as opposed to the more natural embeddings under verbs such as "consider". In this talk, I shall present the results of a corpus study, conducted in collaboration with Louise McNally, in which we have looked at the distribution of moral predicates under "find" and "consider", and have compared it to that of PPTs and other expressions. What our results suggest is that moral terms exhibit hallmarks of subjectivity at the linguistic level, but at the same time, are significantly different from PPTs. I will end with a discussion of the implications of our findings for the contextualism/relativism debate.