François Recanati - "Polyphony in speech act theory"

(Bi/mensuel annuel (24 h = 6 ECTS)). Jeudi de 14h à 16h, du 10 décembre 2015 au 14 avril 2016. Salle des Actes, Ecole normale supérieure, 45, rue d'Ulm 75005.

Pas de séance pendant les vacances scolaires, ni les 28 janvier et 10 mars. La séance du 21 janvier sera consacrée à un exposé de Oliver Massin, dans le cadre de son cycle de conférences annoncé par ailleurs, et les quatre dernières séances (à partir du 24 mars) seront occupées par un cycle de conférences de Stefano Predelli.

Séances spéciales :

Jeudi 7 janvier 2016 de 14h à 16h  - ENS, salle des Actes, 45 rue d'Ulm 75005 Paris.
Indrek Reiland (IJN), "Constitutive rules".

Abstract:
"It is frequently thought that games like chess, languages like English, and speech acts like assertion are constituted by rules. To argue productively over whether this is true it would be useful to know what being constituted by rules amounts to. John Searle famously suggested in Speech Acts that rules constitute things by making possible the performance of actions related to those things. The idea is that rules constitute things like games, languages, and speech acts by making possible playing them, speaking them and performing them. But what are constitutive rules like? And what is it to perform rule-constituted actions? In this talk I'll offer new answers to these questions."

Jeudi 17 mars de 14h à 16h
Benoit de Cornulier (IEA Nantes), "Embedded "interrogatives" as dependence poles".

Abstract:
The semantic function of so-called embedded 'interrogatives' such as 'whether P' in 'asking whether P', 'knowing whether P' or 'depending on whether P' is generally considered to be related to the notion of interrogation, or question, or some more general notion such as percontatif in French linguistics. In some recent more or less formalised analyses, the semantic  characterization of these subordinates turns around the notion of answer, which in turn may imply that of question.
    I propose an alternative analysis of 'knowing whether' in terms of the notion of dependence. It happens that, in definitions of 'knowing whether P' à la Hintikka (e.g.: A knows whether P iff : 1 – If P, A knows that P ; 2 – If not-P, A knows that not-P), the definiens has dependential structure. The distribution of 'whether P' subordinates in English will be examined from this perspective.