Linguistics Colloquium

Causal Language and Causal Cognition

Speaker
Joshua Knobe
Affiliation
Yale University
Date
Fri May 19th 2023, 3:30 - 5:00pm

Abstract: Recent years have seen a growing connection between research on aspects of language that can be used to express claims about possibilities (modals, conditionals, etc.) and research in cognitive science on the capacities people use to think about possibilities (e.g., people's capacity to probabilistically sample possibilities from a distribution). I will be illustrating this larger trend by focusing on questions about causation. The goal will be to get further insight into the use of causal language by turning to research on the cognitive capacities people use to think about non-actual possibilities.

Note: The colloquium will be followed immediately by a social in the Linguistics Courtyard.