News and Events: Conferences

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16-18 December 2016, Workshop "Situations, Information, and Semantic Content", Muenchen, Germany

Date: 16-18 December 2016
Location: Muenchen, Germany
Deadline: 29 May 2016

The semantic content of natural language is multiply *situated*: Whether an utterance receives one interpretation or another depends on the *discourse situation* (in which the utterance takes place), on the *target situation* (which is described by the utterance), and on the interpreting agents' *informational situation* (which also contains the agents' background knowledge). Over the past decades, work on extralinguistic context-dependence has focused on discourse situations and target situations, and has paid less attention to the dependence of interpretation on the agents' informational situation. However, this kind of information-dependence plays a crucial role in the explanation of a number of semantic phenomena, including the behavior of epistemic/deontic modals and propositional attitude-sentences. Recent research in situated cognition has suggested an even more general scope of semantic information-dependence. The latter assumes that cognition (and therefore, *all* linguistic understanding) is fundamentally embedded in the situational context of the cognition.

This workshop aims to bring together linguists, philosophers, logicians, and cognitive and computer scientists to discuss the information-dependence of the semantic content of natural language. It covers all aspects of the interaction between situations, information, and semantic content - both theoretical and experimental.

For more information, see http://www.situatedcontent2016.philosophie.uni-muenchen.de/ or email Kristina Liefke at .

We invite submissions of extended abstracts for talks (for 30+10-minute presentations) or posters on any aspect of semantic information-dependence. Submission deadline: May 29, 2016

Please note that this newsitem has been archived, and may contain outdated information or links.