2021 Fiscal Year Research-status Report
One-World Semantics for Modals and Attitudes
| Project/Area Number |
20K00613
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| Research Institution | Keio University |
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Principal Investigator |
タンクレディ クリストファー 慶應義塾大学, 言語文化研究所(三田), 教授 (80251750)
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| Project Period (FY) |
2020-04-01 – 2025-03-31
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| Keywords | I-semantics / belief / modality / model theory / discourse pragmatics |
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| Outline of Annual Research Achievements |
The main achievements made this year have been a simplification of the proposed I-semantic foundation and a detailed analysis of belief sentences that highlights the explanatory role that our I-semantics plays in accounting for a wide range of examples from the literature.
The main simplification to the I-semantics has been in the interpretation of variables. Our original proposal treated logical variables in a manner parallel to logical constants, associating them with judges and extension conditions. We found this complexity to be unnecessary, and opted instead for a more standard analysis of variables. The consequences of this change are far reaching and will continue to be explored over the following years, but we showed that the simplification is adequate for the analysis of standard de re, de dicto, de qualitate and de translato interpretation.
We additionally showed in detail how our semantics interacts with discourse pragmatics, in particular showing how the semantic definitions of truth and falsity relate to our corresponding intuitive pragmatic notions, how to model disagreement among speakers, and how to model the evolution of common ground among discourse participants.
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| Current Status of Research Progress |
Current Status of Research Progress
2: Research has progressed on the whole more than it was originally planned.
Reason
We have had to go through several rounds of revision for a paper submitted to a journal, which has changed the order in which we are progressing. To address reviewer concerns we have had to focus on the formal foundation, its application to belief sentences, and its relation to discourse. This has resulted in the formal foundations being much more advanced at this point than we anticipated, though it has also left us with less time to focus on the analysis of modals. Overall we are progressing at a good pace.
This year again, because of travel restriction related to Covid, it has not been possible to get together in person with my co-author, though we have connected regularly over Skype and through email. This limits the interactions we have, but by focusing on those things that can be handled through these shorter interactions we have kept our research on track and remained largely in sync with one another.
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| Strategy for Future Research Activity |
Our immediate plans are to get our paper on belief attribution in an I-semantics published. We are in the final stages of revision at this point. We then plan to work on a new paper arguing for the elimination of possible worlds and situations from semantics. That paper will respond to recent work on the interaction between belief attributions, quantifiers, and the restrictors of quantifiers that proposes a situation-semantics based analysis of a novel phenomenon, but also shows the inadequacy of that analysis for exactly parallel cases involving mathematical reasoning. We plan to show that our analysis can account for the phenomenon in both the mathematical and non-mathematical cases with the simple addition of contextual restrictions on domains of quantification, something needed in some form under any analysis.
We also plan to work out the semantics of non-epistemic modals in more detail and to begin on the analysis of identity statements, both in matrix contexts and embedded in belief sentences and modal sentences.
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| Causes of Carryover |
This grant is exclusively for supporting international travel expenses related to the research project. Covid has made such travel problematic over the last two years. Travel restrictions are opening up worldwide at this point, however, making the prospects of travel more promising over the upcoming year.
I plan to travel to the US over the summer of 2022, and to invite my co-author to travel to Japan next March.
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