Welcome in 2018 edition on quantifiers & cognition

This year we will focus on the interaction between logic and cognitive science in the realm of formal semantics and pragmatics. In particular, we will be interested in the study of quantifier expressions in natural language. Recent progress in the study of computational constraints on quantifier processing in natural language has laid the groundwork for extending semantic theory with cognitive aspects. In parallel, cognitive science has furthered the study of non-linguistic quantity representations. This project will review current approaches to formal modeling of quantifier meaning. The seminar is closely related with the Cognitive Semantics and Quantity project.

I will jump start the course by giving a few lectures introducing various logical and computational approaches to the study of generalized quantifiers in natural language. Effectively, the first part of the  course will give an introduction to the generalized quantifier theory, overviewing some crucial notions of formal semantics and logic. I will survey how mathematical methods may be rigorously applied in linguistics to study the possible meanings, the inferential power, and computational properties of quantifier expressions. I will mostly focus on approaches combining classical generalized quantifier themes with a computational perspective and explicitly connecting the formal theory with psycholinguistic research. Among others we will discuss quantifier universals, computational models of quantifier processing and quantifier learnability. In this “introductory” section of the course I will mostly follow Quantifiers and Cognition book.

Then, in the second part of the course, we will discuss in a more seminar manner recent research papers on formal models of quantification.

Welcome in 2017/18

This year we will focus on more methodological and philosophical aspects of cognitive computational modeling, and its relations to logic, language and information processing. We will discuss famous Marr’s levels of analysis for cognitive science. 

I will jump start the course by giving a few lectures introducing various methodologies of computational cognitive modelling, mostly following, Part II of The Cambridge Handbook of Computational Psychology edited by Ron Sun. Then, in a more seminar manner, we will discuss a collection of articles mostly from 2015 issue of Topics in Cognitive Science `Thirty years after Marr’s Vision: Levels of analysis in Cognitive Science’. I suggest you already start browsing through the articles, both in the handbook and TopiCS. It should give you a quite detailed impression about the content of the course. Also, already in the first week I will ask you to choose an article you will present, a different paper for which you will write a short summary, and other chapters for which you will be co-responsible for the Q&As.

Schedule is now complete

The schedule is now complete, see here.

I would suggest substituting reading Ch. 5 of the book with: Alistair Isaac, Jakub Szymanik, and Rineke Verbrugge. Logic and complexity in cognitive science, Johan van Benthem on Logical and Informational Dynamics, A. Baltag and S. Smets (Eds.), Outstanding Contributions to Logic, Vol. 5, 2014, pp. 787-824.  (PDF). My lecture was also more or less based on this paper but to make it easier for everyone I have placed some of the discussed papers in the separate folder on Dropbox.

Welcome in 2016 edition of the course

This year we will focus on cognitive computational modeling, and its relations to logic, language and information processing. We will use The Cambridge Handbook of Computational Psychology edited by Ron Sun.

I suggest you already start browsing through the articles. It should give you a quite detailed impression about the content of the course.  In order to schedule the talks I would like to hear from you as soon as possible whether you are committed to participate in the class. Also in the first week I will ask you to choose a chapter you will present, a different chapter for which you will write a short summary, and other chapters for which you will be co-responsible for the Q&As.

Before the first meeting!

Please have a look at the course schedule and the selection of papers. I suggest you spend some time browsing through the articles.  In the first class I will ask you to choose a paper you will present, a different paper for which you will write a short summary, and 3 other papers for which you will be responsible for the Q&As.  As for the format you will need to present the paper following the authors’ argumentation and then be critical about it, which means you should come up with own critiques (or critiques you read about the paper) and use those critiques in the discussion. It is a nice way of generating discussion.