Event Detail
Tue Oct 14, 2014 234 Moses Hall 2:30–4:30 PM |
Meaning Sciences Club Yael Sharvit (UCLA) Sequence of Tense: Syntax, Semantics, Pragmatic |
We will look at some pros and cons of two theories of embedded “null” past tense, as in “John said that Mary was pregnant”. One theory says that the sentence is semantically ambiguous, and the other theory says that it is “ambiguous” only in a pragmatic sense. The theories make different predictions regarding embedded present, non-attitude embedders, and cross-linguistic variation.