Next Tuesday (5th March, 12-2pm) Torfinn Huvenes (Umeå) will give a talk on “A Puzzle about Accommodation”. The talk is based on joint work-in-progress with Derek Ball.

Abstract: In his 1979 landmark article “Scorekeeping in a Language Game”, David Lewis developed the idea that the acceptability and truth of an utterance depends on the so-called “conversational score”. Roughly speaking, the conversational score consists of the shared standards and presuppositions that are in play in the conversation. Sometimes a speaker says something that is only true if the conversational score has a certain component. If that component is missing, it may be added by means of a process that is known as “accommodation”. The conversational score is then changed by adding the relevant component. The purpose of this talk is to present a puzzle concerning accommodation by formulating three theses about accommodation that may seem independently plausible, but are mutually inconsistent. Having establish this, we will then discuss the implications of rejecting each of the three theses.

The seminar will happen in Zoom. If you want to join, please email me at si24@.