Laia Mayol – Reflexive beliefs and thoughts in Spanish and Catalan

Seminari del CLT

Reflexive beliefs and thoughts in Spanish and Catalan

LAIA MAYOL (UPF)

Joint work with Amir Anvari (École Normale Supérieure), Mora Maldonado (UPF) and Andrés Soria Ruiz (Universidade Nova de Lisboa)

Divendres, 15 d’octubre de 2021
Hora: 15:30
Aula 402

Abstract:
In this talk, I will present some joint work with Amir Anvari (École Normale Supérieure), Mora Maldonado (UPF) and Andrés Soria Ruiz (Universidade Nova de Lisboa) on the interpretation of reflexive belief and thought predicates in Spanish and Catalan. In Spanish, creerse  implies the falsity of the complement clause: ‘La María se cree que la pandemia ya se terminó’ strongly implies that the pandemic is not over. The same is true for pensarse, although its distribution is much more restricted, particularly when embedded under negation. The opposite seems to be the case in Catalan with creure’s being marginal when unembedded. I will discuss some ideas on how to account for the inference, as well as for the differences between predicates and languages.