13-14 September 2008, Biosemantics: Workshop on the Status of Semantics in the Biolinguistic Approach to Language

This workshop addresses foundational aspects of semantics within a broadly biolinguistic approach to language, where explanatory accounts to the semantic component of the language faculty (in comparison tothe sensorimotor component, or syntax) are still lacking. The workshop's more specific focus is the question of how syntactic structures feed semantic interpretation. It is particularly devoted to the 'elements of truth', such as predication, categorization, and reference. Truth is the basic category and theoretical primitive around which most semantic theories have been built. But only very specific syntactic structures are evaluable for truth: not Noun Phrases, in particular. The origin of truth therefore throws up central questions in the pursuit of biolinguistics: the structure of the syntax-semantics interface and the mapping of syntactic to semantic categories, clause-structure, the theory of categories, the units of computation (phases), the truth-reference distinction, cross-linguistic variance in categorization, clause-structure, the growth of reference in acquisition, semantics and extra-linguistic domains, the neurological basis of the syntax-semantics interface, and the theory of predication. The conference is a part of the NWO-funded ILLC/UvA project on the 'Origins of truth'.

For more information, see http://home.medewerker.uva.nl/b.arsenijevic/page2.html