15 April 2019, AUC Logic Lectures Series, Maria Aloni

Formal semantics investigates natural langauge meanings using tools from formal logic. In the presentation i will briefly introduce the field and then discuss then case of free choice (FC) inferences, where conjunctive meanings are derived from disjunctive sentences contrary to the prescrtiptions of classical logic.

There have been two main approaches to the challenge that FC inferences present for logic-based accounts of linguistic meanings: a pragmatic approach where FC inferences are treated as conversational implicatures derived as the product of rational interactions between cooperative language users and a semantic approach where FC inferences are treated as sematic entailments and therefore require the development of non-classical modal logics. After comparing the two approaches I will defend a novel hybrid appraoch where FC inferences are derived by allowing pragmatic principles intrude in the recursive process of meaning composition.