Date: 20th of June
Time: 11:30 am
Place: Conference
room, Pavillon Jardin - 29, rue d'Ulm - 75 005 Paris
Speaker: Anna Drozdzowicz (Univ. of Oslo)
Title: “The
nature of linguistic intuitions about utterance content”
Abstract: The talk provides a
theoretical framework for one type of linguistic intuitions – intuitions (and
judgements) about whether certain linguistic expression could be used or is
used to mean such-and-such, which I call here judgments about utterance
content. Such judgements are specially relevant to many debates in philosophy
of language and linguistics, as they constitute a potentially important source
of evidence for speaker meaning. The strategy is not an innocent one (Bach,
2002) and the reliability of such reflective judgements cannot be taken as a
brute fact (Higginbotham, 2000). I provide an account of basic features and the
scope of judgements about utterance content. I argue that they do not provide
evidence about literal meaning and that they cover both strongly and weakly
communicated content (contra Azzouni, 2013). For the rest part of my talk I
discuss the question of what might be a plausible mechanism responsible for
delivery of judgements about utterance content. I finish with raising several
issues concerning their utility for different research programmes at the
semantics/ pragmatics interface.
