JRC for Logic
Tsinghua University – University of Amsterdam Joint Research Centre for Logic
JRC for Logic
Tsinghua University – University of Amsterdam Joint Research Centre for Logic

[workshop] Interdisciplinary Workshop on Logic, Language and Meaning (April 20-21, 2019)

Time: 2019 April 20-21

Interdisciplinary Workshop on Logic, Language and Meaning

Purpose:This workshop aims to bring together Chinese and international scholars from various disciplines, in particular logic, linguistics, and philosophy, who are working in areas related to natural language semantics.

Theme: The theme of the workshop is the logic, semantics, and syntax of quantifiers cross-linguistically. Quantified expressions are ubiquitous in all languages, be it as determiners, noun phrases, adverbs, auxiliaries, affixes, or other constructions. The basic quantifiers ‘’all’’, ‘’some’’, ‘’no’’ have been studied in philosophy since Aristotle, but it is only with the advent of formal semantics in the 1960’s and 70’s, and in particular the logical theory of generalized quantifiers, that theorists have acquired proper tools to express the rich and varied meanings of a wide range of quantified phrases. This has resulted in substantive research, still very much ongoing, in several directions. For example, can we give uniform accounts of the meaning of common linguistic constructions involving quantifiers? And given that we have these meanings, how do they fit into a compositional semantics based on current theories of syntax, for different languages? How do quantified expressions figure in inference? Are there particular inference patterns involving quantifiers in natural languages, building on, or simplifying, or extending the modes of reasoning studied in logic for formal languages? In recent years, several specific linguistic phenomena related to quantifiers have been studied in depth (e.g. polarity items, definites and indefinites, possessives, exception phrases,…), and various inference systems based on natural language syntax have been proposed (e.g. ‘natural logic’, logics for conditionals, dynamic epistemic logic, monotonicity reasoning, syllogistic reasoning, …). The workshop will present recent progress in the logical and linguistic study of quantifier expressions and their meaning.

Speakers: 
  • Johan van Benthem  (Stanford University and Tsinghua University)
  • Dun Deng (Tsinghua University)
  • Fenrong Liu (Tsinghua University)
  • Mingming Liu (Tsinghua University)
  • Qiongpeng Luo (Nanjing University)
  • Jo-wang Lin (Institute of Linguistics at Academia Sinica, Taiwan)
  • Haihua Pan (The Chinese University of Hong Kong)
  • Stanley Peters (Stanford University)
  • Wei-tian Tsai (National Tsinghua University, Taiwan)
  • Dag Westerstahl (Stockholm University and Tsinghua University)
Conveners:
  • Dun Deng  (Department of Chinese Language and Literature, Tsinghua University)
  • Mingming Liu (Department of Foreign Languages and Literature, Tsinghua University)
  • Dag Westerstahl (Stockholm University and Tsinghua University)
Local organizers:

Poster:

the Program of the workshop