Congratulations, Naomi!

It is a pleasure to announce that Naomi Francis (MA 2014, now at MIT) received the Student Paper Award for 2014 from the Canadian Linguistic Association for her talk, entitled "This predicate is tasty: Predicates of personal taste, faultless disagreement, and the ideal judge.”

Naomi's talk addressed problems in the semantics and pragmatics of statements such as "This cake is tasty,” proposing that the truth of such assertions is evaluated with reference to a notional 'ideal judge' and showing how this proposal can account for, among other things, the fact that two speakers may disagree about the truth of such a statement without either of them being objectively wrong.

The judges were impressed by the depth and sophistication of the content, by the clear and engaging presentation style, and by the excellent responses to the many comments and questions that the talk inspired.

Leslie Saxon, president of the Canadian Linguistic Association, in writing about the award, says that she heard the talk and it really was fantastic.

Congratulations, Naomi!

(Post courtesy of Keren Rice.)