Title: Mini-Course on Update Semantics (Session I)

Speaker: Frank Veltman (UvA)

Time: 2025/11/4 (Tuesday) 15:10-18:00 

Location: Room 211, Natural Sciences Teaching Building (理教), Peking University 

Abstract:

This two-session mini course (three hours per session) introduces update semantics, a dynamic approach to meaning.

Update semantics departs from standard truthconditional semantics by equating the meaning of a sentence not with its truth conditions, but with its potential impact on the cognitive state of an addressee.

The first part of this mini course introduces the core ideas of this framework and illustrates them through a closer examination of the epistemic modal might and of indicative conditionals.

We will then turn to counterfactual conditionals, beginning with a critical look at the classic analysis developed of David Lewis. Building on this discussion, I will develop an alternative account that gives a dynamic twist to the Premise Semantics for counterfactuals proposed independently by Angelika Kratzer and myself in the 1970s and 1980s.

In the final part, Identity and Identification, we will explore how names, demonstratives, definite descriptions, and pronouns differ in their logical behavior, especially when they occur in identity statements within or outside the scope of epistemic and alethic modalities.