5-6 March 2009
Amsterdam, The Netherlands
GENERALIZED QUANTIFIERS Formal Semantics Meets Computation and Cognition GLLC-16 Amsterdam (The Netherlands), 5-6 March 2009 http://staff.science.uva.nl/~szymanik/GLLC About the Workshop Quantifier expressions occur whenever we describe the world, and communicate about it. Generalized quantifier theory is therefore one of the basic tools of linguistics today, studying the possible meanings and the inferential power of quantifier expressions by logical means. The classical version was developed in the 1980s, at the interface of linguistics, mathematics and philosophy. Until now, advances in "classical" generalized quantifier theory mainly focused on definability questions and their applications to linguistics. This misses out on computation, the third pillar of language use and logical activity. The workshop will help lay a groundwork for extending generalized quantifier theory with computational and cognitive aspects, a goal proposed, and partly achieved in the dissertation of Jakub Szymanik. One major focus will be computational complexity and its interplay with "difficulty" as experienced by subjects in cognitive science. To achieve this the workshop will combine classical generalized quantifier theory (linguistics and mathematics) with newer generalized quantifier theory (computation and cognition). This 16th Game, Logic, Language and Computation (GLLC) Workshop will gather logicians, computer scientists, linguists and cognitive scientists working on quantifiers. They will share their expertise and try to find unifying themes and methods. The workshop will be hosted by the Institute for Logic, Language and Computation (ILLC) of the Universiteit van Amsterdam (UvA), on the occasion of the PhD defense of Jakub Szymanik. It will be the 16th event in the workshop series GLLC whose previous editions were very successful. The workshop is sponsored by The Netherlands Organisation for Scientific Research and GLoRiClass. The Workshop is organized by Johan van Benthem and Jakub Szymanik. Preliminary Programme March 5th Location: TBA 10.00-10.45 Marcin Mostowski "Truth Definitions in Finite Models, Examples and Applications" 10.45-11.00 Break 11.00-11.45 Johan van Benthem "Semantic Automata Revisited" 11.45-12.00 Break 12.00-12.45 Jakub Szymanik "Most of the NPs aren't NP" 12.45-14.00 Lunch break 14.00-14.45 Paul Dekker "Conceptual Complexity" 14.45-15.00 Break 15.00-15.45 Jouko Vnnen "TBA" 15.45-16.00 Break 16.00-16.45 Robin Clark "Collectivity, Distributivity and the Neuroscience of Linguistic Decisions" March 6th Location: Room 001, Department of Philosophy, Vendelstraat 8 map 09.30-10.15 Jan van Eijck "An Inference Engine with a Natural Language Interface" 10.15-11.00 Bart Geurts "Scalar Quantifiers: Semantics, Acquisition, and Processing" 11.00-11.15 Break 11.15-12.00 Dag Westersthl "On Possessive Quantifiers" 12.00-14.00 Lunch break 14.00-15.00 PhD defense of Jakub Szymanik Location: Agnietenkapel, Oudezijds Voorburgwal 231