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Humanities and Arts

Non-maximality and vagueness: Revisiting the plural Sorites paradox

This paper is an attempt at a synthesis of two superficially conflicting approaches to non-maximality: the issue-based approach (Malamud 2012, Križ 2015, Križ & Spector 2021 a.o.), which generates clear-cut truth conditions once the issue parameter has been fixed, and the strict/tolerant approach (Burnett 2017 a.o.), on which non-maximal construals involve vagueness. I argue that there a...
Posted 4 months ago

Humanities and Arts

A higher-order plurality solution to Xiang's (2021) puzzle

Xiang (2021) notes the following puzzle: plural wh-questions involving certain collective predicates are predicted to carry a uniqueness presupposition (Dayal 1996), yet intuitively they don’t (cf. Gentile & Schwarz 2020). She proposes that such questions have ‘higher-order readings’ (Spector 2007, 2008), and crucially that they have answers naming boolean conjunctions. I show that f...
Posted 4 months ago

Humanities and Arts

Ordinal numbers: Not superlatives, but modifiers of superlatives

The few existing accounts of the semantics of ordinal numbers attribute to them all or almost all of the semantic properties of superlatives. This work discusses a construction problematic for existing theories of ordinals: the ordinal superlative construction (e.g. Joel climbed the third highest mountain). Existing theories give ordinals and superlatives such similar semantics that they s...
Posted 4 months ago

Humanities and Arts

Are You There?

With or without cameras on, my students always feel out of reach to me. There is a screen--and a few boroughs, in some cases even states or countries--between us. I can’t tell how they’re feeling; I can’t watch their faces or their hands as they work on a piece for our writing class. The whole enterprise has started to feel epistolary. I am never sure if my recipient is going...
Posted 4 months ago

Humanities and Arts

Not One Space for Y

I see Y reading the comments her teacher left on her paper. She uses Google Translate to add perfectly spelled words clarifying a detail about her grandmother’s aspiration to become literate. At least this is how I imagine Y to have prepared her college essay. I have not met Y. But I am certain that she never expected her writing to be the focus of a teachers’ planning meeting.
Posted 4 months ago

Humanities and Arts

Maintaining Dialogue in Remote English Classes

This week, I’ve been thinking a lot about one of our students who has disclosed to my CT (Cooperating Teacher) that she has been living on her own for the past two semesters and works full time to support herself. Due to her work schedule, she goes through periods of time when she is unable to attend classes, and other periods of time when she can. She asked my CT to reach out to her oth...
Posted 4 months ago

Humanities and Arts

Reflections from Supervision Amid a Pandemic

Nearly overnight, we found ourselves adapting to a new normal: constantly worrying about loved ones, balancing life-at-home, and teaching and learning in “Brady Bunch” boxes. At first, I must admit, it was alarming. We all thought it: If cameras and videos are off, are the students even there? And more importantly, are students learning?

Humanities and Arts

Interconnected Dynamic Components of Learner Language

Second language development can be viewed as a complex and dynamic process in which learners follow non-linear trajectories and develop their language over a period of time (Larsen-Freeman, 2006). Intrinsic to the view of Complex Dynamic Systems Theory (CDST), a system is composed of hierarchical, interdependent subcomponents (learner, learner language, and environment) in dynamic relation...
Posted 4 months ago

Humanities and Arts

Crosslinguistic Influence and Second Language Learning

The multilingual turn in second language acquisition (SLA) research signals an epistemic reorientation of the field (Ortega, 2014). It manifests the move away from the monolingual bias that measures learner language with the idealized competence of native speakers as the yardstick. In so doing, the focus has shifted to disentangling the cognitive, linguistic, and psycholinguistic mechanism...
Posted 4 months ago

Humanities and Arts

Attractor States in Second Language Development

Identifying changing patterns of stability and variability is crucial when examining second language development (SLD) from a complex dynamic systems theory (CDST) perspective (Larsen-Freeman, 2020). By studying attractor states, or recurrent patterns of stability, light can be shed on the underlying dynamics of a complex dynamic system (van Geert & Verspoor, 2015). In the context of SLD, ...
Posted 4 months ago

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Humanities and Arts