Mini-workshop 15 June 2011 (click here for link)

This is the webpage of a new interdisciplinary research program, supported by an NWO Vici grant. The started on 1 September 2010, and studies new directions in the analysis of the interface between formal semantics, psycholinguistics and computational linguistics. The program, supervised by Dr. Yoad Winter, investigates the interaction between word meanings and sentence meanings. While word meanings are often related to common sense aspects of semantic concepts, sentence meanings are derived using logical operators. The program will study how the two modules interact. Three issues will be addressed: (i) How should formal theories of meaning be modified in order to incorporate methods and ideas from the study of common concepts? (ii) How can psycholinguistic evidence help to explain this interaction? (iii) How can interactions between word meaning and logical meaning be exploited for automatic treatment of reasoning in natural language (entailment)? The program is combining methods from formal semantics, experimental psycholinguistics and machine learning.

Team: Sophia Katrenko, Eva Poortman, Marijn Struiksma, Assaf Toledo, Hanna de Vries, Yoad Winter.

More program information:

Program description

Project descriptions

Two recent papers:

Sivan Sabato and Yoad Winter (2011): Relational Concepts and the Logic of Reciprocity

Yoad Winter and Joost Zwarts (2011): Event Semantics and Abstract Categorial Grammar

Further information will be posted here as the research develops.