Journée "Exemplar Semantics" du vendredi 18 mars 2011

Exemplar semantics, a one day workshop
Organizer: René-Joseph Lavie, MoDyCo, Université Paris Ouest Nanterre la Défense
Date: March 18, 2011 (9:00 – 18:00).
Location: Université Paris Ouest Nanterre la Défense , room G614.

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Context
Exemplars have been around in psychology for thirty years.
In linguistics, exemplars are promising as an alternative base for theoretical linguistics, understood as that which together seeks to account for linguistic productivity, learnability and linguistic change: exemplars would make up for the limits of abstraction-based theories.
Over the last fifteen years, exemplars have been used mainly in phonology and in morphology, a little in syntax. Today, their use in semantics is just emerging.
Parallel to this, philosophers propose to circumvent the shortages of Fregean descriptivism with notions such as 'object file' or 'mental file'.
Exemplars and mental files both substitute one abstract entity with a set of more concrete ones. This character is shared by a number of approaches that vary however in scope, intent, and in the way they profile the exemplars and subject them to their goals. So a scene is currently building up that is promising, and that is both unitary and diverse.

Purpose and intent
Survey recent advances in linguistics tending to show why exemplars are wanted in semantics and how their proponents configure them.
Identify what is meant by 'exemplar' as far as semantics is concerned: is the concept univocally defined, what the different acceptations are, how they compare, what merits each has.
Assess what stage different approaches have reached: programmatic / partial achievements / identified open issues / directions for progress.


Programme

9-9:30 Bernard Laks (Vice Président délégué à la Recherche , MoDyCo, U. Paris Ouest Nanterre la Défense , France)
Allocution de bienvenue. Les débuts des exemplaires en linguistique.
(Opening address. Early history of exemplars in linguistics.)

9:30-10:30 William Croft (Professor of linguistics, University of New Mexico , Albuquerque , USA )
Exemplar semantics: cross-linguistic and language internal evidence.

10:30-11 Break

11-12 Andrea Sansò (Professore di linguistica, Università di Insubria, Como , Italia)
Exemplar semantics and diachrony, applications and open questions.

12-14 Lunch

14-15 Dominique Legallois (Maître de conférences, Université de Caen, France)
Modélisation de l'interprétation abductive fondée sur des exemplaires.
(Exemplar-based modelling of abductive interpretation.)

15-15:30 Agathe Cormier (Doctorante, MoDyCo, U. Paris Ouest Nanterre la Défense , France)
La signification dans les Recherches Philosophiques de Wittgenstein : une sémantique des occurrences pour rendre compte du savoir-faire linguistique.
(Signification in Wittgenstein's Philosophical Investigations: a semantics of occurrences to account for linguistic know-how.)

15:30-16 Break

16-17 René-Joseph Lavie (Membre associé, MoDyCo, U. Paris Ouest Nanterre la Défense , France)
Backing exemplar-based semantics to exemplar-based syntax.

17-18 General discussion. Assessment, perspectives.

Language
The languages of the meeting are French and English.