Please join us this week for a talk by Michael Franke (ILLC, Amsterdam) on adjectives:

Speaker: Michael Franke (ILLC, Amsterdam)
Title: Optimal use of gradable adjectives: the effect of scale structure & prior expectations
Date: Friday 2/28
Time: 11:30 am to 1:20 pm
Location: Wieboldt 408

Abstract:

Gradable adjectives are commonly classified into absolute and relative cases. Absolute adjectives more readily allow for crisp truth value judgements, are less context-dependent (if at all) and less prone to give rise to vagueness than relative ones. The goal of this talk is to explore a model that tries to explain this distinction in terms of optimal speaker behavior. The main building block of the theory proposed here is the notion of an (almost) optimal convention of use that depends crucially on prior expectations about how likely a given property is instantiated to a certain degree.