清华大学金岳霖学术讲座 | Edward Keenan: LOGIC AND NATURAL LANGUAGE

主讲人

Edward Keenan

Professor Keenan finished his Ph.D. in Linguistics at the University of Pennsylvania in 1969. That was followed by a year's fieldwork in Madagascar, then four years as a Fellow of King's College, Cambridge (England). He has been a professor in the Dept of Linguistics, UCLA (University of California at Los Angeles) since 1974, and a Distinguished Research Professor there since his retirement in 2013. Professor Keenan has published extensively in syntactic typology and formal semantics of natural language.

His recent work in typology includes several articles on Malagasy and a largescale two volume workHandbook of Quantifiers in Natural Language(SpringerVerlag) co-edited with Denis Paperno. In formal semantics we note two of many articles: “Individuals Explained Away” inOn Reference, A. Bianchi (ed), 2015, Oxford University Press, and “A Note on Conservativity”, with Richard Zuber inJ. of Semantics, 2019. Two recent books areMathematical Structures in language, CSLI, with Lawrence Moss, andEliminating the Universe, WorldScientific Pub. Ltd.

讲座信息

-第一次讲座

时间:北京时间4月20日上午8:30-9:30

题目:A LOGICIAN'S LOOK AT NATURAL LANGUAGE

-第二次讲座

时间:北京时间4月21日上午8:30-9:30

题目:NATURAL LANGUAGE CONTRIBUTIONS TO LOGIC

注册:请感兴趣的老师和同学发邮件到xiekaibozju@gmail.com登记注册。登记注册的截止时间为2021年4月16日,之后我们会为已注册的听众提供会议链接及handout。

组织方

– 清华大学-阿姆斯特丹大学逻辑学联合研究中心

– 清华大学人文学院哲学系

更多相关信息请查询网站:

http://tsinghualogic.net/JRC/?page_id=603

讲座摘要

LECTURE 1

A LOGICIAN'S LOOK AT NATURAL LANGUAGE

We draw on standard Predicate Logic for insights into the semantic analysis of natural language (NL). We show how to assign a boolean structure to content categories of NL expressions. This allows us to interpret sentences like No teachercriticized every studentdirectly, with no appeal to “hidden” structure. Only audible expressions are semantically interpreted.What you see is what you get.We also show that boolean compounds (inand,or, andnot) make sense in any category, regardless of whether the language syntactically forms such expressions or not. We see that quantifiers, including non-first order ones, are representable directly as boolean functions of individuals, with no appeal to variable binding operators. Should you be reluctant to venture into boolean structure I remind you that

If you sup with the devil you need a long-handled spoon.

LECTURE 2

NATURAL LANGUAGE CONTRIBUTIONS TO LOGIC

In this lecture we begin with motivation from traditional linguistics for the treatment in Lecture 1 of generalized quantifiers (GQs). We adhere to what I call

THE FIRST HEURISTIC

Assume things are as they appear until evidence to the contrary.

GQs satisfy argument requirements of predicates, mapping n-place predicates Pn's to nS1 place ones. APassiveoperation, prominent in traditional linguistic study, derives (in the simplest case) a P1 likewas openedfrom a P2,open(Ed opened the door →The door was opened).Causativeoperations (Turkish, Malagasy, Swahili...) increase the number of arguments:The childrenlaugh→Edmakes laughthe children.Reflexiveoperators force binding relations between two arguments of a predicate:xadmiresyvsxadmireshimself. We recall that the existence of two (or greater) place predicates forces a provable increase in logical expressive power. And we also exhibit cases where natural language (NL) presents logically significant properties not studied in Predicate Logic. And we note one major way that NL negation differs from that in standard PL.

关于金岳霖讲座

以金岳霖先生命名的学术讲座从2015年开始设立,邀请国际知名学者在清华大学做系列学术报告,与清华大学和其他高校的师生进行学术交流和思想碰撞,进一步推动逻辑学的学科交叉、前沿研究和普及教育。该活动由清华大学逻辑学联合研究中心和哲学系共同组织。到目前为止,已经成功举办3届。2015:John Perry(斯坦福大学;加州大学伯克利分校);2017:Joseph Halpern(康奈尔大学);2019:Michael Wooldridge(牛津大学)。详情见逻辑中心网站:www.tsinghualogic.net/JRC

今年正值清华大学校庆110周年。本次活动作为校庆的一部分,更具特殊涵义。回顾金岳霖先生一个世纪前在清华创立哲学系,开始培养逻辑学和哲学人才。今天这一传统能在系列讲座、学术交流中得以承继,未来可期!




文章来源于TsinghuaLogic ,作者清华逻辑