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Schedule of Events
Fall 2002 Colloquium Series
Robert StalnakerMIT (Linguistics and Philosophy)
Common Ground
Class of '47 Room, Homer Babbidge Library
Friday, September 27, 2002
4:00 PM
Abstract
The notions of speaker presupposition and common ground have long played a central role in pragmatic and semantic theory, but those of us using those notions have not been as clear as we might have been about exactly how they are to be understood. My aim in this paper is to sketch a more explicit account of the structure of the notion of common ground, and the related notion of speaker presupposition, and to suggest some ways in which this account can help to clarify the role of these notions in the explanation of linguistic phenomena.
In the possible worlds semantic framework, the common ground at a particular point in a conversation is usually represented by a given set of possible worlds, labeled the context set, and informally explained as the possibilities that are compatible with the presumed shared background information available to the participants in the conversation at that point. My attempt to spell out what this might mean begins with a first approximation, identifying the common ground with the common beliefs of the participants, where a proposition is common belief among the members of a group if all in the group believe it, all believe that all believe it, all believe that all believe that all believe it, etc. Speaker presupposition is identified (again, to a first approximation) with the speaker's beliefs about common belief. Using these definitions, I consider the notion of accommodation and its role in the explanation of the way presuppositions change in the course of a conversation. Then I consider some of the ways that common ground and speaker presupposition may diverge from common belief, and belief about common belief.
Guiding this project is a Gricean picture that tries to explain as much as possible of linguistic phenomena in terms of general assumptions about the intentions of speakers, and the role of discourse in accomplishing their purposes. The divergence between common ground and common belief is analogous to Grice's distinction between what is said and what is meant.
Linda GarroUniversity of California, Los Angeles (Anthropology)
Cultural Understandings about Illness: A Process-Oriented Perspective
Class of '47 Room, Homer Babbidge Library
Monday, October 28, 2002
4:30 PM
Abstract
 Much of my work addresses the way concerns about illness enter into and are dealt with in everyday life. At my two main research sites -- a Purépecha Indian community located in west-central Mexico and a Canadian Indian reservation community -- I’ve devoted considerable attention to learning about cultural understandings related to illness. In both settings, there exists a diversity of culturally available interpretive frameworks. Some are biomedically influenced and others are not. I’ve written about these cultural understandings as resources which may be variably drawn upon to help make sense of one’s own or another’s experiences. As resources for navigating the ambiguity surrounding illness and other troubling experiences, cultural understandings can be seen as tools which both enable and constrain interpretive possibilities. In this presentation, drawing primarily on my research in a Canadian Anishinaabe (Ojibway) community, I explore how cultural and social processes enter into the perception and interpretation of illness and other troubling experiences. Rather than highlighting shared cultural content, attention is directed to the available resources for endowing experience with meaning and the processes through which individuals learn about, orient toward, and make sense, even provisionally, of troubling experiences.
Harry van der Hulst University of Connecticut (Linguistics)
Cognitive Phonology
Al Liberman Room Bousfield #160
Friday, December 6, 2002
4:00 PM
Three Talks to Inaugurate the Cognitive Science Major
Abstract
Phonology theorizes about the mental representations that underlie the production and perception of whatever 'forms' are used in human language to 'carry' meaning. In spoken language, the forms are auditory, whereas they are visual in sign language. The fact that both sign languages and spoken languages rely on 'phono'logical representations perhaps should cast doubt on the idea that 'phono'logical primes and their modes of combinations are very heavily dependent on sound production or sound perception. An extreme position would have it that the relevant primes and their constellation are not 'phono' at all. My talk will be a comment on this extreme position (of which I have been accused). I will argue that, indeed, large parts of phonology are independent of the specifics of the modality and shared with other linguistic components, and perhaps even with other cognitive systems.
Bernard GrelaUniversity of Connecticut (Communication Sciences)
A Psycholinguistic Approach to Children with Specific Language Impairment
Al Liberman Room Bousfield #160
Friday, December 6, 2002
4:00 PM
Three Talks to Inaugurate the Cognitive Science Major
Abstract
Children with specific language impairment (SLI) have difficulty with the acquisition of language. Two sets of theories have attempted to explain why these children have problems with language development. According to the deficits in linguistic knowledge, children with SLI have difficulty with the acquisition of grammatical rules. On the other hand, processing capacity theories assume that children with SLI have intact grammatical systems, but they are unable to process linguistic information as efficiently as normally developing children. A review of the experimental data supporting the processing capacity accounts will be discussed.
James DixonUniversity of Connecticut (Psychology)
Redescription disembeds relations: Implications for knowledge acquisition
Al Liberman Room Bousfield #160
Friday, December 6, 2002
4:00 PM
Three Talks to Inaugurate the Cognitive Science Major
Abstract
A central problem in knowledge acquisition is how the cognitive system creates meaning. Meaning results from placing the relevant entity in a relational structure. Therefore, it is important to understand the ontogeny of relational structures. I propose that a process called redescription extracts relations embedded in one's actions. Two experiments demonstrate that redescription creates a relational representation that is easily transferred and robustly applied.
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