The 11th Tsinghua Logic Colloquium: Logic Meets Conversation
- Time: 2:00 PM-5:00 PM, July 9th-10th, 2024
- Venue: Room 329, Mengminwei Humanities Building, Tsinghua University
Program
9th July 2024
|
Time |
Speaker(s) |
Title |
|
14:00-14:10 |
Opening |
|
|
14:10-14:40 |
Mingming Liu (Tsinghua University) |
Free Choice Disjunction in Mandarin Chinese |
|
14:40-15:10 |
Yiqian Wang (Harvard university) |
Presupposition Projection of Disjunction in Mandarin: Symmetry and Exclusivity |
|
15:10-15:20 |
Break |
|
|
15:20-15:50 |
Jialiang Yan (Tsinghua University) |
Ordered Disjunction in BSML |
|
15:50-16:20 |
Zhengyi Hong (Zhejiang University) |
Conceptual Integration and Information Flow of Metaphor |
|
16:20-17:00 |
Discussion |
|
10th July 2024
|
Time |
Speaker(s) |
Title |
|
14:00-14:30 |
Fengkui Ju (Beijing Normal University) |
A Logical Theory for Strong/Weak Historical/Temporal Necessities in Branching Time |
|
14:30-15:00 |
Kaibo Xie (Wuhan University) |
Causal Reasoning with Uncertain Causal Structures |
|
15:00-15:10 |
Break |
|
|
15:10-15:40 |
Zilu Wang (Peking University) |
Permission of Permission |
|
15:40-16:10 |
Shumian Ye (Peking University) |
From Ignorance to Empty Set: Pragmatic Strengthening of Rhetorical Wh-questions |
|
16:10-17:00 |
Discussion |
|
discussant:
Maria Aloni
Abstract
A sentence in natural language can have different types of meanings. Among them, presupposition is usually characterized by being a speaker commitment in various non-assertive environments, e.g., “Did John stop smoking?” still commits to “John has smoked.” One central problem for presuppositions is how do they project from simple sentences to complex sentences, through different connectives, predicates, and quantifiers. As for binary connectives, a fundamental problem that still lacks empirical verification is whether presupposition projection is symmetric. A pioneering robust experimental study has showed that it is asymmetric for conjunction (Mandelkern et al., 2020). A following study has showed that it is symmetric for disjunction (Kalomoiros, 2023). However, subtle differences in Kalomoiros’ results seem to suggest a potential confounding factor – exclusive implicature of disjunction, which has been independently brought up to solve the proviso problem (Mayr & Romoli, 2016).
To probe this confounding factor, the present study used different Mandarin disjunctions in different monotonic environments to test whether exclusivity of disjunction affects its presupposition projection and whether the symmetry of presupposition projection of disjunction holds cross-linguistically. The results proved robustly that the exclusivity of disjunction has no effect on presupposition projection at all, providing pioneering empirical evidence that the computation of implicatures does not precede that of presuppositions, supporting the classic view. The results also showed that presupposition projection of disjunction in Mandarin is overall symmetric, though with slight asymmetry, providing evidence that the mechanism of presupposition projection of disjunction holds cross-linguistically.
A disjunction can be interpreted as an ordered expression in a given context, indicating that one disjunct is more emphasized than the other. In this talk, I will explore and analyze this phenomenon, arguing that this interpretation results from some pragmatic operations. We will illustrate this using a case involving parentheses. Under such effects, the information of one disjunct is weakened.
This phenomenon affects certain logical characteristics, such as the commutative law of disjunction, and their behavior under modals. To provide a formal account, we define an ordered disjunction, a disjunction involving ordering under pragmatic effects, is based on the Bilateral State-based Modal Logic (BSML) framework.
This talk is based a joint work with Chen Ju and Wei Wang.
Metaphors involve the association and interaction of information in different conceptual domains, which often lead to ambiguity of expressions and uncertainty of understanding. Following the basic framework of conceptual integration theory, we show how information flow theory can be used to formalize a dynamic metaphorical cognition process in limited contexts. The relationships among the source domain, the target domain, and the blended domain construct an information flow model. In this model, the correspondence between objects and properties is accomplished by infomorphisms, and the information-carrying from a source to a target domain can be accomplished by conventional constraints. In this way, we can give a relatively strict characterization to the basic form of metaphorical understanding process.
In this paper, we present a logical theory for four notions of necessity in branching time: strong/weak historical/temporal necessities. The four notions of necessities are more motivated from a linguistical perspective. Strong and weak historical necessities concern possible futures of the present world. Strong and weak temporal necessities concern possible timelines of the world. Our approach to the four notions of necessities is as follows. The agent has a system of ontic rules, determining expected timelines. She treats some ontic rules as undefeatable, determining accepted timelines. The domains for strong and weak historical necessity respectively consist of accepted and expected timelines passing through the present moment. The domains for strong and weak temporal necessity respectively consist of accepted and expected timelines. We study the expressivity of the logical theory and show its completeness. We also compare it to some related work.
This is joint work with Zhou Woxuan.
According to some resent work on causal reasoning based on possible world semantics, the causal knowledge of an agent is represented by a set of assignments. This approach characterizes how an agent learns the value of causal variables via observation and intervention. However, it only concerns the situation when an agent knows the causal dependencies from the beginning. In this talk, I will propose a model which concerns agent’s uncertainty about causal structures as well.
In deontic logic, little attention has been paid to the iteration of deontic modalities. Depending on whether they are applicable to sentences or actions, the iteration of deontic modalities is either taken for granted when they are applicable to sentences, or totally banned when applicable to actions. For the latter, the main reason is that technically, it is hard to treat an obligation, permission or prohibition also as an action, which can further occur in the scope of deontic operators. In this talk, we focus on the modality of (strong) permission and assume that it should be applied to actions. We will introduce our bundled framework for strong permission and show how permissions can be treated as actions and thus be permitted in our framework. So, though permission is still applied to actions, our framework successfully admits the iteration of permission. We will also present relevant completeness results.
