The Third Tsinghua Interdisciplinary Workshop on Logic, Language, and Meaning
“Dynamics in Logic and Language”
[Tutorials]: March 31.
[Workshop]: April 1–4, 2022.
Venue: Online
Program
All the time slots below are based on Beijing Time (UTC+08:00).
March 31,2022
Time | Lecturer | Topic |
---|---|---|
18:30 – 18:35 | Opening | |
18:35 – 19:20 | Maria Aloni | Dynamics in Language Abstract |
19:20 – 19:30 | Break | |
19:30 – 20:15 | Maria Aloni | Dynamics in Language |
20:15 – 20:30 | Break | |
20:30 – 21:15 | Johan van Benthem [Recorded lecture, with Chenwei Shi and Lingyuan Ye available for questions] | Dynamics in Logic Abstract |
21:15 – 21:25 | Break | |
21:25 – 22:10 | Johan van Benthem [Recorded lecture, with Chenwei Shi and Lingyuan Ye available for questions] | Dynamics in Logic |
April 1, 2022
Time | Speaker | Title | |
---|---|---|---|
Opening. Chair: LIU Fenrong | 18:40 – 19:00 | PENG Gang (Vice President, Tsinghua University) Dag Westerstahl (Jin Yuelin Professor, Department of Philosophy) DENG Dun (Associate Professor, Department of Chinese language and Literature) |
|
Keynote lecture. Chair: Dun Deng | 19:00 – 20:00 | Haihua Pan | Revisiting Chinese donkey sentences Abstract |
Break | 20:00- 20:20 | ||
Contributed talks. Chair: Ting Xu | 20:20 – 20:50 | Haoze Li | A dynamic approach to short answers |
20:50 – 21:20 | LInmin Zhang | Post-suppositions and uninterpretable questions | |
21:20 – 21:50 | Jan Heylen | The dynamic approach to knowability: a critical appraisal | |
21:50-22:20 | Thomas Hardy | Projected content of novelty of -te and -ney and subject constraint in Korean |
April 2, 2022
Time | Speaker | Title | |
---|---|---|---|
Keynote lecture Chair: Fenrong Liu | 19:00-20:00 | Johan van Benthem [Possible Q&A Sessions: 18:00-18:30 (CET) for European audience; 10:00-10:30 (CST) April 3, for Chinese audience] | Logical Dynamics of Agency Meets Natural Language Abstract |
Break | 20:00-20:20 | ||
Contributed talks Chair: Haihua Pan | 20:20-20:50 | Fausto Carcassi & Giorgio Sbardolini | The importance of being earnest: Compositionality in the Arena of Use |
20:50-21:20 | Xuetong Yuan | Establishing discourse relations:two contrastive markers in Mandarin | |
21:20-21:50 | Yi-Hsun Chen | Updating contexts: ignorance and concession |
April 3, 2022
Time | Speaker | Title | |
---|---|---|---|
Keynote lecture Chair: Linmin Zhang | 19:00-20:00 | Maria Aloni | Disjunction and Negation in Dynamic Semantics Abstract |
Break | 20:00-20:20 | ||
Contributed talks Chair: Tomoyuki Yamada | 20:20-20:50 | Beibei Xu | Contextual evidence and belief update in Kratzerian Modality theory: Nandao-Qs as an example |
20:50-21:20 | Tue Trinh | Comparing the derivation of modal domains and strengthened meanings | |
21:20-21:50 | Tomoyuki Yamada and Katsuhiko Sano | Acts of Commanding and Promising in Dynamified Common Sense Term-Sequence-Deontic-Alethic Logic |
|
21:50-22:20 | Paul Law | Scope reconstruction and interpretation of copies |
April 4, 2022
Time | Speaker | Title | |
---|---|---|---|
Contributed talks Chair: Kaibo Xie | 19:00-19:30 | Xinyu Wang & Momoka Fujieda | Static World vs. Dynamic Argument: a dual argumentation theory based on Kripke Semantics |
19:30-20:00 | Wojciech Rostworowski | Demonstratives as anaphora – a dynamic approach | |
20:00-20:30 | Patrick Elliott | Disjunction in a predictive theory of anaphora | |
20:30-21:00 | Yusuke Yagi | Dynamics of Situations and Semantic Parameter within English | |
21:00-21:20 | Break | ||
Keynote lecture Chair: Mingming Liu | 21:20-22:20 | Hans Kamp | Proper Names in Attitude Attributions Abstract |
Closing | 22:20-22:25 | Mingming Liu |
Tutorials

(University of Amsterdam)
Topic: Dynamics in Language
Details

(Stanford University and Tsinghua University)
Topic: Dynamics in Logic
Details
Invited Speakers

(University of Amsterdam)
Title and Abstract

(Stanford University and Tsinghua University)
Title and Abstract

(University of Texas, Austin and University of Stuttgart)
Title and Abstract

(The Chinese University of Hong Kong)
Title and Abstract
Registration
- Notice: participation is free, but registration is required, in particular to get the instruction and zoom links.
Call for Papers
Dynamics in Logic and Language
3rd Tsinghua Interdisciplinary Workshop on Logic, Language and Meaning
April 1–4, 2022, Tsinghua University, Beijing+Virtual
The ‘dynamic turn’ in logic and language is now almost fifty years old. The mid- to late 1970s and early 80s saw the appearance both of adaptations of logics for reasoning about programs in computer science to the setting of modal logic and Kripke semantics, such as Propositional Dynamic Logic (PDL, Pratt, Fischer and Ladner, Segerberg, and others), and of proposals in natural language semantics, such as the Discourse Representation Theory (DRT) of Kamp and the File Change Semantics of Heim, to extend ‘static’ truth-conditional semantics for propositions to a dynamic semantics for discourse. Of course, ‘dynamic’ is a vague term. Kripke style semantics, with its rich repertoire of relations between states (of information, of program execution, of belief, of common ground, …), is well suited as a framework for describing dynamic processes. Such descriptions can still take the meaning of a sentence, classically, to be the set of states in which it is true. Kamp and Heim style semantics changes the notion of meaning itself, now viewed as an instruction for how to update the current set of states when the sentence is accepted; put differently, as a context/information change potential.
Since then, logical dynamics and dynamics in linguistic semantics have each developed into vast and fairly well-defined areas of research, largely independent of each other although there have also been points of contact. In logic, besides describing the behavior of programs, systems modeling the actions of agents based on their attitudes (knowledge, belief, goals, …) have been developed by scholars at the interface of logic, philosophy, computer science, artificial intelligence, and social sciences. The basic setting is still modal; Dynamic Epistemic Logic (DEL) brings updating actions like announcements with various degrees of persuasive power explicitly into the object language syntax, while other approaches keep a more standard syntax but assign new dynamic meanings. In linguistics, Kamp and Heim style dynamic semantics was originally introduced to deal with anaphora, quantification, and presupposition projection. It has since been applied to an array of linguistic phenomena, such as epistemic modals, conditionals, plurals, tense and aspect, generalized quantifiers, propositional attitudes, vagueness, and discourse relations. Other approaches to extending classical truth-conditional meaning to a dynamic setting include situation semantics, dynamic predicate logic (DPL), variants of game-theoretic semantics, and more recently, inquisitive semantics which treats statements and questions on a par. Do these two distinct perspectives on dynamics have something to learn from each other? That is one theme of this workshop, which brings together scholars from both traditions. But we welcome contributions on any general or particular aspect of dynamics in logic and/or language, for example, along the following lines:
- original contributions to, or applications to specific phenomena of, dynamic approaches in a broad sense, in logic
- applications of dynamic approaches (of various kinds) to specific phenomena across languages (English, Chinese, etc.)
- questions about the extent of the overlap, in content, methods, or motivation, between the two frameworks
- philosophical/conceptual contributions concerning, for example, what is essential to a dynamic approach, and how one can define the dynamic/static contrast more generally
- relatedly, in both frameworks, questions about in what ways dynamic approaches essentially extend or replace static ones, and to what extent this is desirable
- issues related to the semantics/pragmatics distinction, for example, where this distinction is properly located between the two extremes of (i) relegating all dynamic phenomena to pragmatics, and (ii) seeing dynamic semantics as incorporating most of pragmatics
- issues about static vs. dynamic meaning, in particular about compositionality
Contributed PapersWe invite submissions of 2-page abstracts (including references) on any of the broad themes related to dynamics in logic and language as suggested above. After a review procedure, authors of accepted abstracts will have the opportunity to present their papers at the workshop. After the workshop, a volume of full papers (properly refereed) will be published. Details on submission of full papers will follow. Abstracts should be submitted via Easychair: https://easychair.org/conferences/?conf=tllm2022 The workshop is planned to take place on site at Tsinghua University, Beijing. If travel restrictions still make this difficult, we plan to postpone it until the fall of 2022, and/or hold the workshop online. Important dates
November 20, 2021December 5, 2021: deadline for 2-page abstractsDecember 20, 2021January 10, 2022: notification of acceptance- March 31, 2022: tutorials
- April 1-4, 2022: workshop
Committees
- Chairs

(Tsinghua University)

(Stockholm University, Tsinghua University)

(Tsinghua University)

(Tsinghua University)
- Program Committee
Gennaro Chierchia (Harvard University) |
Dun Deng (Tsinghua University) |
Thomas Icard (Stanford University) |
Xuping Li (Zhejiang University) |
Jowang Lin (Academia Sinica) |
Fenrong Liu (Tsinghua University, University of Amsterdam) |
Mingming Liu (Tsinghua University) |
Larry Moss (Indiana University Bloomington) |
Stanley Peters (Stanford University) |
Floris Roelofsen (University of Amsterdam) |
Martin Stokhof (University of Amsterdam, Tsinghua University) |
Jakub Szymanik (University of Amsterdam) |
Frank Veltman (University of Amsterdam) |
Yingying Wang (Hunan University) |
Dag Westerståhl (Stockholm University, Tsinghua University) |
Yicheng Wu (Zhejiang University) |
Tomoyuki Yamada (Hokkaido University) |
Linmin Zhang (New York University Shanghai) |
- Local Organizing Committee
Zhenkun Hu (Tsinghua University) |
Kaibo Xie (Tsinghua University) |
Jialiang Yan (Tsinghua University) |