GENERALIZED QUANTIFIERS
Formal Semantics Meets Computation and Cognition
GLLC-16
Amsterdam (The Netherlands), 5-6 March 2009
http://staff.science.uva.nl/~szymanik/GLLC

About the Workshop

Quantifier expressions occur whenever we describe the world, and
communicate about it. Generalized quantifier theory is therefore one of
the basic tools of linguistics today, studying the possible meanings and
the inferential power of quantifier expressions by logical means. The
classical version was developed in the 1980s, at the interface of
linguistics, mathematics and philosophy. Until now, advances in
"classical" generalized quantifier theory mainly focused on definability
questions and their applications to linguistics. This misses out on
computation, the third pillar of language use and logical activity. The
workshop will help lay a groundwork for extending generalized quantifier
theory with computational and cognitive aspects, a goal proposed, and
partly achieved in the dissertation of Jakub Szymanik. One major focus
will be computational complexity and its interplay with "difficulty" as
experienced by subjects in cognitive science. To achieve this the workshop
will combine classical generalized quantifier theory (linguistics and
mathematics) with newer generalized quantifier theory (computation and
cognition).

This 16th Game, Logic, Language and Computation (GLLC) Workshop will
gather logicians, computer scientists, linguists and cognitive scientists
working on quantifiers. They will share their expertise and try to find
unifying themes and methods. The workshop will be hosted by the Institute
for Logic, Language and Computation (ILLC) of the Universiteit van
Amsterdam (UvA), on the occasion of the PhD defense of Jakub Szymanik. It
will be the 16th event in the workshop series GLLC whose previous editions
were very successful. The workshop is sponsored by The Netherlands
Organisation for Scientific Research and GLoRiClass.

The Workshop is organized by Johan van Benthem and Jakub Szymanik.

Preliminary Programme
March 5th
Location: TBA

10.00-10.45   Marcin Mostowski "Truth Definitions in Finite Models,
Examples and Applications"
10.45-11.00   Break
11.00-11.45   Johan van Benthem "Semantic Automata Revisited"
11.45-12.00   Break
12.00-12.45   Jakub Szymanik "Most of the NPs aren't NP"
12.45-14.00   Lunch break
14.00-14.45   Paul Dekker "Conceptual Complexity"
14.45-15.00   Break
15.00-15.45   Jouko Väänänen "TBA"
15.45-16.00   Break
16.00-16.45   Robin Clark "Collectivity, Distributivity and the
Neuroscience of Linguistic Decisions"

March 6th
Location: Room 001, Department of Philosophy, Vendelstraat 8 map

09.30-10.15   Jan van Eijck "An Inference Engine with a Natural Language
Interface"
10.15-11.00   Bart Geurts "Scalar Quantifiers: Semantics, Acquisition, and
Processing"
11.00-11.15   Break
11.15-12.00   Dag Westerståhl "On Possessive Quantifiers"
12.00-14.00   Lunch break

14.00-15.00   PhD defense of Jakub Szymanik
Location: Agnietenkapel, Oudezijds Voorburgwal 231