[SydPhil] History and Philosophy of Linguistics Reading group

[Nick Riemer]

History and Philosophy of Linguistics Reading group

Next meeting: Tuesday June 10, 5–7pm, Woolley S302

Reading: Paul Egré,  Vincent de Gardelle &  David Ripley, "Vagueness and Order Effects in Color Categorization",
Journal of Logic, Language and Information, December 2013, Volume 22, Issue 4, pp 391-420

Abstract This paper proposes an experimental investigation of the use of vague predicates
in dynamic sorites. We present the results of two studies in which subjects had
to categorize colored squares at the borderline between two color categories (Green
vs. Blue, Yellow vs. Orange). Our main aim was to probe for hysteresis in the ordered
transitions between the respective colors, namely for the longer persistence of the
initial category. Our main finding is a reverse phenomenon of enhanced contrast (i.e.
negative hysteresis), present in two different tasks, a comparative task involving two
color names, and a yes/no task involving a single color name, but not found in a corresponding
color matching task. We propose an optimality-theoretic explanation of
this effect in terms of the strict-tolerant framework of Cobreros et al. (J Philos Log
1–39, 2012), in which borderline cases are characterized in a dual manner in terms of
overlap between tolerant extensions, and underlap between strict extensions.

Enquiries: nick.riemer at sydney.edu.au

All welcome!
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