Giorgio Sbardolini: Something from Nothing (joint talk with the NihiL Seminar)

Abstract

The main topic of this talk is logic and semantic change. I will discuss episodes of semantic change that have to do with the meaning(s) of negation and show how to model them in Bilateral State-based Modal Logic. The discussion will connect with work I have done on lexicalizability (the NAND problem), with ongoing work on homogeneity and definite plurals, and with future work on Negative Polarity Items (the meaning of "any"). Along the way, I will argue that we can use logic to study linguistic fossils, that "not even" is the non-classical negation of "even", that "any" is a non-harmonious quantifier (in the sense of Dummett), and much more.