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INTERNATIONAL WORKSHOP ON WORD MEANING, CONCEPTS AND COMMUNICATION

Funded by the Arts and Humanities Research Board

(AHRB –AR16356)

Place: Cumberland Lodge

Travel Directions

Notes for visitors

Programme

Speakers

Organisers

As part of an AHRB-funded project on pragmatics and word meaning, we are organizing a Workshop on Word Meaning, Concepts and Communication, to be held at Cumberland Lodge, Windsor Great Park, from September 16^th to September 18^th 2005. The aim of the Workshop is to broaden the understanding of lexical pragmatics in the cognitive science community and to encourage interdisciplinary research on the relations between word meaning, concepts and communication.

Lexical pragmatics investigates the processes by which linguistically-specified (‘literal’) word meanings are modified in use. Well-studied examples include lexical narrowing (e.g. drink used to mean ‘alcoholic drink’), approximation (e.g. square used to mean ‘squarish’) and metaphorical extension (e.g. battleaxe used to mean ‘frightening person’). There is increasing evidence that such processes apply automatically, and that a word is rarely used to convey exactly its literal meaning.

Typically, narrowing, approximation and metaphorical extension have been seen as distinct pragmatic processes and studied in isolation from each other. Moreover, there has been relatively little interaction between those attempting to develop linguistic, philosophical and cognitive accounts of any one of these processes. We believe that a dialogue between linguists, pragmatists, philosophers and cognitive scientists broadly interested in word meaning, concepts and communication could lead to valuable progress in lexical pragmatics. We are therefore inviting a broad cross-section of such scholars to consider questions such as the following:

(a) Is it possible to construct a unified account of lexical pragmatic processes?

(b) Does lexical pragmatics contribute to truth-conditional content or (only) to implicatures?

(c) What mental mechanisms are involved in lexical adjustment?

(d) What is the relation between word meanings and concepts?

(e) How do pragmatic processes affect the acquisition of word meanings or concepts?

(f) How are lexical pragmatic processes affected in autism or right-hemisphere damage?

(g) Are there sui generis lexical pragmatic processes that do not also apply at sentence level?

Speakers

Invited speakers include:

Reinhard Blutner (University of Amsterdam))

Robyn Carston (University College London)

Eve Clark (Stanford)

Herb Clark (Stanford)

Sam Glucksberg (Princeton)

Laurence Horn (Yale)

Francois Recanati (Institut Jean Nicod, Paris)

Dan Sperber (Institut Jean Nicod, Paris)

Deirdre Wilson (University College London)

The following young researchers will give small talks

Richard Horsey (University College London)

Patricia Kolaiti (University College London)

George Powell (University College London)

Paula Rubio (Cambridge University/ University College London)

Rosa E. Vega Moreno (University College London)

Tim Wharton (University College London)

To increase the opportunities for in-depth discussion, attendance at the Workshop will be limited to around 50 or 60 people.

Organisers:

Main organisers

Prof. Deirdre Wilson (University College London) deirdre@ling.ucl.ac.uk

Prof. Robyn Carston (University College London) robyn@ling@ucl.ac.uk

Dr. Tim Wharton (University College London) twharton@clara.co.uk

Assistants

Marsha Hill (University College London) marsha.hill@ucl.ac.uk

Patricia Kolaiti (University College London)

Rosa E. Vega Moreno (University College London) r.vega-moreno@ucl.ac.uk

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