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Stefan Kaufmann | Talk at COCOA

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Stefan Kaufmann will speak as part of a forum at the Converging on Causal Ontology Analysis (COCOA) zoominar on Wednesday, October 12, 2022. The information about the talk is below:

Was I speaking before I spoke?

Some English expressions let us characterize states of affairs in terms of subsequent courses of events, even if the latter do not come to pass. Well-known examples of this are “counterfactual” before-clauses (‘The police defused the bomb before it exploded’) and progressives (‘Mary was drawing a circle when she ran out of ink’). Numerous proposals have been made to capture the modal component of each of these constructions, such as Beaver and Condoravdi (2003) for before and Landman (1992) for the progressive. Both refer to possible worlds and processes or events, but ultimately rely on notions that are less well understood (reasonably probable worlds; continuation branches of events). The connection to conditionals (‘If the police hadn’t defused the bomb, it would have exploded’; ‘If she hadn’t run out of ink, she would have drawn a circle’) looms large but is not explored in detail.

Assuming that causal models are a useful tool for modeling (the relevant kind of) counterfactual reasoning, what might they tell us about the relationship between before-clauses, progressives and counterfactual conditionals? Are events crucially involved, and if so, how should they be represented in the causal model? A close look at all three constructions reveals striking similarities, but also stark differences. The similarities suggest to me that pretty much the same kind of causal reasoning is involved in before-clauses and progressives. The differences suggest that the notion of “event” that figures in the analysis of the progressive is not as useful in before-clauses. It turns out that the causal structure is useful precisely for abstracting away from other particulars of the events.

Yixuan Yan (Pepper) | New Student

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Hi, my name is Yixuan Yan (Pepper), I was born in northern mainland China. Basically I’m interested in formal semantics and pragmatics, and the development and processing of them as well. Before coming to UConn, I was a research assistant doing language acquisition and experimental linguistics in the Department of Linguistics and Modern Languages at The Chinese University of Hong Kong (CUHK). In addition to linguistics, I have knowledge of movies, Japanese anime and TV series; I enjoy hiking and badminton, yet more of the time I prefer to sleep. (The selfie was taken at my previous EEG Lab in CUHK.)

Shangyan Pan | New Student

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I am Shangyan Pan from Xuzhou, China. I graduated from Bucknell University with a B.A and honors in Linguistics in 2022. I also received minors in Math (Statistics) and Econ. My primary research interests are syntax and semantics. I also got really interested in learning Russian over the past year. In my free time, I love singing, going to Broadway shows and all things musical theater.
I look forward to learning and growing at UConn in the next few years!

Hanyu Liu | New Student

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My name is Liu Hanyu (lit., cold rain). I come from a town where, in many winters, the west wind brings copious water vapor from the Bay of Bengal, drenching the city with perpetual precipitation.

I was at Fudan University, the University of Western Australia (exchange) and UCL before coming to Storrs. What lured me into linguistics at an early age was historical phonology, and I’ve enjoyed the collateral games along the way.

For hedonism, I binge-watch TV shows, stream POV drives, and daydream living in some fiction. Geography is always important in my story-telling. I try to learn more, so I can use my imagination more freely.

Thanos Iliadis | New Student

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My name is Thanos Iliadis and I was born in Greece. I completed my undergraduate studies in Philology with a specialization in Linguistics at the University of Athens in 2018. In 2021 I received a master’s degree in Linguistics from UCL and currently I am a first-year graduate assistant at UConn’s Linguistics department. My research interests lie in syntactic theory, as well as in the syntax-phonology and syntax-semantics interfaces, within the framework of generative linguistics and the Minimalist Program.

Sharmin Ahmadi | New Student

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My name is Sharmin Ahmadi; I’m from a beautiful city named Sanandaj, a city in Iran. I did my BA in English Language and Linguistics from the University of Kurdistan. Before starting the next level of my education, I happened to hear and read about Linguistics. Starting to read linguistics books in its various areas, I began to look at languages, specifically my own language (Kurdish), from a different angle. My mind started to be immersed with a lot of questions and puzzles, ending in my passion for this major. That’s why I have an MA in General Linguistics from the University of Tehran, where I figured out that the area which I’m most curious about and interested in is Syntax. Among the questions I had in mind, I chose to solve the question and puzzle I encountered regarding what has been examined under the topics of three-place predicates, ditransitives, and double-object constructions.

Following my passion and interests, I am doing my Ph.D. in Linguistics at the University of Connecticut now.

Besides my academic life, I do enjoy shopping, walking, mountain climbing, spending time with my family and friends, watching films … 🙂