The 4th Tsinghua Interdisciplinary Workshop on Logic, Language, and Meaning
The Connectives in Logic and Language
[Tutorials]: March 29, 2024
[Workshop]: March 30-31, 2024
Tsinghua University, Beijing, China
Important dates
November 10November 25, 2023: deadline for submitting abstractsDecember 15December 25, 2023: notification of acceptance- March 29, 2024: tutorials
- March 30-31, 2024: workshop
Call for Papers
The Connectives in Logic and Language
4th Tsinghua Interdisciplinary Workshop on Logic, Language and Meaning
March 30–31, 2024, Tsinghua University, Beijing
Workshop web site: http://tsinghualogic.net/JRC/tllm/2024connectives/
The propositional connectives – and, or, not, if-then, etc. – are fundamental building blocks in formal as well as natural languages. In the Western tradition, they were first studied as such by the Stoics, and Propositional Logic is the fundament of practically all current systems of logic; every beginning logic course starts with it. Still, the proof theory and semantics of systems of propositional logic are far from trivial, and have been studied intensely by logicians in the last one and a half century, not least in recent decades. It is actually a vast area of research, as witnessed by Lloyd Humberstone’s 1500 page tome The Connectives (2011), which overviews much of that research. Perhaps the most familiar recent work in this area concerns conditionals in formal and natural languages. In this workshop we also focus on the apparently simpler connectives expressing (various versions of) conjunction, disjunction, and negation.
Researchers working from a cross-linguistic perspective also focus on how the connectives are encoded in different languages, and ask whether classical logic is capable of capturing the variations and universals exhibited. Even in well-studied languages like English, there are intricate phenomena that remain challenging for classical logic, including free choice disjunction, non-boolean conjunction, metalinguistic negation, to name just a few. There is also growing interest in the acquisition and processing of natural language connectives. In the context of the hotly discussed Large Language Models (LLMs), understanding connectives presents novel challenges that deserve in-depth exploration.
The idea behind the TLLM workshops is to bring together logicians and linguists around a specific theme of common interest. Thus, we welcome contributions on any general or particular aspect of the propositional connectives in logic or language. Below are just a few examples of possible topics for this workshop.
- semantics of negation: classical, non-classical, contra-classical
- inclusive versus exclusive disjunction in natural languages
- the meaning of connectives: model-theoretic, proof-theoretic, game-theoretic,…
- non-classical connectives: in intuitionistic logic, linear logic, relevance logic, orthologic, etc.
- free choice disjunction
- boolean and non-boolean conjunction
- acquisition of natural language connectives
- cross-linguistic variations of natural language connectives
- role of Large Language Models (LLMs) in understanding connectives: challenges, capabilities, and implications
Contributed Papers
We invite submissions of 2-page abstracts (including references) on any of the broad themes related to the connectives 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=tllm2024
The workshop will take place on site at Tsinghua University, Beijing.
Sponsors
- The Joint Research Center for Logic, Tsinghua University
- Department of Philosophy, Tsinghua University
- Department of Foreign Languages and Literatures, Tsinghua University
Invited Speakers
(UC Berkeley)
Vagueness and the Connectives
(University of Oslo)
Disjunction: Historical Cultural Anthropology of Logic in Comparative Perspective
(Heinrich Heine University Düsseldorf)
(University of Utrecht)
Plain disjunctive sentences, such as The mystery box contains a blue ball or a yellow ball, typically imply that the speaker does not know which of the two disjuncts is true. This is known as an ‘ignorance’ inference. We can distinguish between two aspects of this inference: the negated universal upper bound part (i.e., the speaker is uncertain about each disjunct), which we call ‘uncertainty’, and the existential lower bound part (i.e., the speaker considers each disjunct possible), which we call ‘possibility’. In the traditional approach, uncertainty is derived as an implicature, from which possibility follows. When disjunctions are embedded under a universal operator, such as It is certain that the mystery box contains a blue ball or a yellow ball, an inference analogous to possibility arises (i.e., it’s possible that the mystery box contains a blue ball and it’s possible that it contains a yellow ball). This inference is generally called a ‘distributive’ inference and the traditional approach derives it in the same way as in the unembedded case, from the corresponding negated universal inference (i.e. it is uncertain that the mystery box contains a blue ball and it is uncertain that it contains a yellow ball). In both the simple and the embedded cases, the traditional implicature approach predicts that the derived lower bound inference should never arise without the corresponding negated universal one. In this talk, we report on two experiments using a sentence-picture verification task based on the mystery box paradigm, the results of which challenge the traditional approach to ignorance and distributive inferences. Our findings show that possibility can arise without uncertainty, and that, in the same way, the distributive inference can arise without the corresponding negated universal one, thus calling for a reevaluation of the traditional view of disjunction and its inferences. We discuss how alternative theories can account for the observed patterns of inference derivation in a unified fashion and the open challenges that remain.
Team semantics was introduced by Hodges (1997) as a compositional semantics for independence-friendly logic (Hintikka and Sandu 1989). This framework was further refined by Väänänen in dependence logic (2007), and independently adopted by inquisitive semantics (Ciardelli and Roelofsen, 2011). In team semantics, formulas are evaluated with respect to teams, which are sets of assignments over a first-order model, or sets of propositional valuations, or sets of possible worlds in a Kripke model. The lifting from single assignments/valuations/possible worlds to the team level makes it flexible to introduce new variations of logical connectives (such as different versions of disjunction), each with distinct features. These new connectives may or may not preserve different closure properties. Some also give rise to phenomena uncommon in standard logics, such as the failure of uniform substitution, locality, and compositional translation. In this talk, we survey notable results regarding connectives in team semantics. We aim to explore their diverse features and implications, and to provide some insights into the intriguing landscape of connectives within this framework.
Committees
- Chairs
(Stockholm University, Tsinghua University)
(Tsinghua University)
(Tsinghua University)
- Program Committee
|
Maria Aloni |
Gennaro Chierchia (Harvard University) |
Xuping Li (Zhejiang University) |
| Jo-wang Lin (Academia Sinica) |
Fenrong Liu (Tsinghua University, University of Amsterdam) |
Mingming Liu (Tsinghua University) |
| Larry Moss (Indiana University Bloomington) |
Stanley Peters (Stanford University) |
Martin Stokhof (University of Amsterdam, Tsinghua University) |
| Jakub Szymanik (University of Trento) |
Frank Veltman (University of Amsterdam) |
Johan van Benthem (University of Amsterdam, Stanford University, Tsinghua University) |
| Yingying Wang (Hunan University) |
Dag Westerståhl (Stockholm University, Tsinghua University) |
Kaibo Xie (Wuhan University) |
| Xiaolu Yang (Tsinghua University) |
Linmin Zhang (New York University Shanghai) |
- Local Organizing Committee
| Jialiang Yan (chair) (Tsinghua University) |
Tutorials
Time: March 29, 10:00-11:35
Location: Room 413, Mengminwei Humanities Building
Abstract: T.B.A
Time: March 29, 13:00-14:45
Location: Room 413, Mengminwei Humanities Building
Abstract: We shall make a close study of those passages of the Mencius that are discussed in Mencius on the Mind (1932) by the world famous literary critic I.A. Richards who spent many years at Tsinghua to study the case of ancient China, and in particular the case of Mencius. We shall discuss problems of grammar, rhetoric and philosophical analysis, and especially of synonym studies. Within Thesaurus Linguae Sericae we shall be able to consult more than twenty different international translations of the relevant passages, and there will be instruction in the independent use of the many analytic tools available in TLS.
Registration
Registration fee
Earlier workshops had no registration fee, since they were mostly online, but for this onsite workshop there is a small registration fee, to cover some of the costs.
- Student: CNY 700
- Non-student: CYN 1000
Please note that the registration fee will be paid upon your arrival at the campus. We will provide further instructions later.
Registration Link:
>> For International participants
Contact
Should you need any assistance or additional information, please feel free to contact us.
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Contact Person: Dr. Jialiang Yan (jialiang.yann@gmail.com)
Sponsors
- Tsinghua University – University of Amsterdam Joint Research Centre for Logic
- Department of Philosophy, Tsinghua University
- Department of Foreign Languages and Literatures, Tsinghua University