13:15 – 14:30: Kyle Johnson “On making pronouns and reflexives compete”

In this talk, I’ll provide an argument that we should make Principle A a presupposition and then sketch a way of doing that. If Principle A is a presupposition, we can invoke a pragmatic principle to explain why Principle B is the “elsewhere” way of signaling coreference. This provides a way of understanding certain differences in how Danish and English pronouns differ in their ability to signal coreference.

14:30-14:45: Break

14:45 – 16:00: Douglas Saddy “Quandaries – grammar and uncertainty”

This talk will briefly explore some long-standing challenges for syntactic theory – optionality, gradience and quandaries (impossible expressions).  We will argue that these perennial thorns in our sides are actually beacons that force us to re-examine some strongly held assumptions about the nature of grammars (not just linguistic ones).  We will also draw from recent dynamic brain imaging findings to support our case for a dynamic systems approach to grammars leading to a move away from computational uniformity. 

The talks are open to everyone.