Seminario de Lingüística Teórica LyCC: "Donkey sentences and the proportion problem"

16:00 hrs. Sala María Moliner 1F

 

Por Aránzazu San Ginés (Teachers College, Columbia University)

 

All the theoretical approaches that are nowadays classified under the general heading of "Dynamic Semantics" have pointed out the difficulties of a static, satisfaction-based, semantic interpretation of the predicate calculus in accounting for the subtleties of our actual use of language. Our aim on this talk will be to focus on a particular kind of sentences widely discussed by philosophers, linguists, and logicians for over fifty years, the so-called donkey sentences. We will analyze one problematic example of donkey sentence, and will propose a new fresh interpretation for it that will eventually allow us to face successfully the often called proportion problem.