Mayfest 2025 - Constraints on Meaning
Mayfest 2025 - Constraints on Meaning
Each year our department hosts a two-day workshop, Mayfest, focusing on a different aspect of language and linguistic theory. This year's event is on May 16-17, and will investigate "Constraints on Meaning."
It appears that certain meanings are lexicalized in some languages, but not others, while other meanings are not lexicalized in any language. What are the universal gaps? We hope to consider this question with 'logical' vocabulary, such as quantifiers, connectives, modals, attitude predicates and focus operators. For observed universals, we can ask why they hold. Are they due to constraints in the grammar, biases in acquisition, learnability considerations, processing restrictions, pragmatic principles, or other sources? In at least some cases, restrictions may result from how the semantics interacts with other components of grammar, or with language-external cognitive systems. This year our Mayfest brings together ten researchers who are studying constraints on meaning from a wide range of perspectives, both analytical and experimental:
Pranav Anand / Professor, University of California Santa Cruz
Tanya Bondarenko / Assistant Professor, Harvard University
Alexandre Cremers / Researcher, Vilnius University
Rachel Dudley / Assistant Professor, University of California San Diego
Paloma Jeretic / Assistant Professor, University of Pennsylvania
Tyler Knowlton / Postdoctoral Fellow, University of Delaware
Viola Schmitt / Professor, Humboldt-University Berlin
Benjamin Spector / Research Director, CNRS Institut Jean Nicod
Wataru Uegaki / Reader, University of Edinburgh
Aaron Steven White / Associate Professor, University of Rochester