Dr. Liz Irvine (University of Cardiff) will start our 2018 seminar series with her talk, “Semantics in the Light of Interaction”

Abstract: In this talk I’ll argue that new psycholinguistic research on communicative interaction  makes it possible to challenge a leading theory in the semantics vs. pragmatics debate (minimalism). This is surprising: semantic theories are not usually particularly empirically sensitive, but I’ll argue more generally that if they’re not empirically sensitive (in a particular sense), then it is not clear that they can fulfill a core part of their job description.

The talk will be held on Wednesday January 9th (2-4pm) at the Open University’s Campus at Walton Hall, in Room 006, Gardiner Building 1. All welcome.