GENERALIZED QUANTIFIERS
Formal Semantics Meets Computation and Cognition
GLLC-16


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.



Programme

March 5th
Location: Room P019, ILLC, Plantage Muidergracht 24 map

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-hard"
12.45−14.00   Lunch break
14.00−14.45   Paul Dekker "Conceptual Complexity"
14.45−15.00   Break
15.00−15.45   Jouko Väänänen "The Size of a Formula as a Measure of Complexity"
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 Westerståhl "On Possessive Quantifiers"
12.00−14.00   Lunch break

14.00−15.00   PhD defense of Jakub Szymanik

Location: Agnietenkapel, Oudezijds Voorburgwal 231 map



17.00   Conference Dinner