Tbilisi 2009: Eighth International Tbilisi Symposium on Language, Logic and Computation

Tbilisi 2009: Preliminary Programme

Preliminary program

Program Grid


Monday Tuesday Wednesday Thursday Friday
9:00 - 10.00 Tutorial Computation 1
Carlos Areces
Tutorial Logic 1
Mai Gehrke
Tutorial Computation 2
Carlos Areces
Tutorial Computation 3
Carlos Areces
Tutorial Logic 3
Mai Gehrke
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10:15 - 11.15 Tutorial Language 1
Pauline Jacobson
Tutorial Language 2
Pauline Jacobson
Tutorial Logic 2
Mai Gehrke
Tutorial Language 3
Pauline Jacobson
Session La4/Co3-Lo4
(see below)
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11:30 - 12.30 Invited Lecture
Norbert Preining
Invited Lecture
Carlos Areces
Invited Lecture
Sebastian Löbner
Invited Lecture
Achim Jung
Session La5/Lo5
(see below)
(lunch)




14.00 - 15.30 Session La1/Lo1
(see below)
Workshop (Excursion Session Lo2/La3
(see below)
(Trip
(break)




16.00 - 17.30 Session La2/Co1
(see below)
for to Session Lo3/Co2
(see below)
back to
(break)




18.00 - 19.00 Invited Lecture
Frans Groen et al.
Leo Esakia and
Dick de Jongh
Borjomi) Invited Lecture
Pauline Jacobson
Tbilisi)



Workshop dedicated to the birthdays of Leo Esakia and Dick de Jongh

In honour of Leo Esakia and Dick de Jongh, their importance for international logic and for the Georgian symposia, a workshop is held Tuesday September 22. Speakers may include: and Leo and Dick themselves of course.
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Detailed schedule for contributed talks


MONDAY
Session Language (La1) Session Logic (Lo1)
14.00 - 14.30 Sabine Gründer
Michal Walicki, Marc Bezem, and Clemens Grabmayer
14.30 - 15.00 Maarten Janssen and Olga Borik
Robert Samuel Ralph Myers
15.00 - 15.30 Lucia Tovena
Nikolas Vaporis

Session Language (La2) Session Computation (Co1)
16.00 - 16.30 Rusudan Asatiani
A.S. Andreyeva
16.30 - 17.00 Anna Chutkerashvili
Paul Meurer
17.00 - 17.30 Thomas Wier
Mircea Marin and Besik Dundua

THURSDAY
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Session Logic (Lo2) Session Language (La3)
14.00 - 14.30 Anton Benz and Fabienne Salfner
Claudia Casadio and Mehrnoosh Sadrzadeh
14.30 - 15.00 Maria Spychalska
Marine Ivanishvili and Ether Soselia
15.00 - 15.30 Grégoire Winterstein
Yoad Winter and Eric Reuland

Session Logic (Lo3) Session Computation (Co2)
16.00 - 16.30 Matthias Baaz and Agata Ciabattoni
Konstantine Pkhakadze et al.
16.30 - 17.00 Michal Pelis and Ondrej Majer
Mikheil Rukhaia
17.00 - 17.30 Levan Uridia
Tomoyuki Suzuki, Alexander Kurz and Emilio Tuosto

FRIDAY
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Session Language (La4) Session Computation and Logic (Co3-Lo4)
10.15 - 10.45 Elizaveta Bylinina (cancelled)
Henk Zeevat
10.45 - 11.15 Kerstin Schwabe and Robert Fittler
Marta Bilkova

Session Language (La5) Session Logic (Lo5)
11.30 - 12.00 Sumiyo Nishiguchi
Dragisa Zunic et al.
12.00 - 12.30 Maria Tsyurupa (cancelled)
Luca Spada

END

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Authors, titles and abstracts

Tutorials

Carlos Areces
Logics: A computational perspective

In this tutorial we will start from the very beginning by introducing propositional logic, and using it as an example to discuss fundamental notions like model, proof, expressive power, satisfiability / unsatisfiability, contradiction / tautology / contingency. We will then introduce different inference tasks and define algorithms that solve them. We will discuss what these algorithms tell us about the logic, and which is their complexity. We will then show that propositional logic is, at the same time, very expressive and not expressive enough: even though we can represent complicated problems using propositional logic, we cannot properly represent `trivial' arguments like "If all my students are intelligent", and "I have at least one student", then "I have at least one intelligent student". We will then investigate ways in which we can extend the expressive power of our logic to overcome this limitation, and see that our fundamental notions (model, proof, satisfiability, etc.) still 'work,' and that we can even adapt our inference algorithms, in a simple way, to the new logics. By repeating the game of `what I can/cannot say in my logic' and extending its expressivity when needed, we will arrive to very complex languages (first and second order) in a uniform way (and on our way there, we will have learned one or two things about model theory, inference methods, expressive power and complexity theory).

LORIA, INRIA Nancy.
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Mai Gehrke
Canonical extensions

The theory of canonical extensions is an order-algebraic tool that addresses a central issue in the study of propositional logics ranging from classical, modal, intuitionistic, intermediate to substructural logics. This issue is the relationship between syntax (in the form of algebraic semantics) on the one side and semantics (in the form of relational semantics, Kripke style) on the other. The three tutorial lectures will be based on three chapters of a book-in-preparation by Hilary Priestley and the lecturer. It will cover the basics of canonical extensions and the connections with topological duality and relational semantics.

Institute for Mathematics, Astrophysics and Particle Physics, Radboud Universiteit, Nijmegen.
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Pauline Jacobson
The Syntax/Semantics Interface: Compositionality Issues

The broad objective of this tutorial is to focus on some theories of how the syntax and semantics of natural language interact and the consequences of these for the notion that the semantics of natural language is “compositional”. Particular emphasis will be given to the view that the syntax is seen as a system proving expressions well-formed while the semantics works “in tandem” with this to provide an interpretation for each syntactic expression as it is “built” (proven well-formed) in the syntax. (This view was well-known especially in work in so-called “classical Montague Grammar”.) We will, however, be also looking at some alternative views of the syntax/semantics interface which maintain that the semantics is compositional, but works from a level of representation (Logical Form) which is more abstract than the pronounced version of an expression. The data will be drawn entirely from English, but the major goal is to introduce the issues and the tools used to model the relevant data.
The different theories - and what is at stake - will be elucidated by looking at a number of phenomena which at times have been thought to present challenges to a strong view of compositionality. I will begin with two very classic phenomena - the analysis of quantified NPs (or “DPs”) and the analysis of coordinated expressions (and the interaction of these two). After looking at some classic results on these - and on how these results bear on the issue of the syntax/semantics interface and compositionality - we will turn to some questions raised by the binding and distribution of pronouns, by the interpretation of “missing” material in ellipsis constructions, and on the interactions of all of these. This is a huge and open-ended domain; so the goal will be to pick a few interesting cases to show what is at stake in analyzing them, and what kinds of tools are motivated by these constructions.

Cognitive and Linguistic Sciences, Brown University.
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Invited Speakers

Carlos Areces
To B or not to B, is that the question?

In this lecture, I will talk about Logic from a computational point of view. In particular, I will review a number of logical languages (propositional logic, first order logic, modal logics), present some classical reasoning tasks (model checking, satisfiability checking) and discuss their properties. These classical inference tasks have been investigated in detail and their characteristics are, in many cases, well known. I will then discuss other reasoning tasks (model equivalence, retrieval, verification, model building). Some of them can be seen as more complex reasoning tasks defined in terms of satisfiability and model checking. But I will argue that they deserve to be treated as first class citizens. We will even dare question the basic definition of what a satisfiability relation should be: Should we evaluate a formula in a model, or rather `evaluate a model in a formula'.

LORIA, INRIA Nancy.
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Frans Groen, Gregor Pavlin, Patrick de Oude
Efficient design and inference in distributed Bayesian Networks

In modern society sensors and mobile communication devices have become inexpensive and wide spread. This creates the opportunity to create large distributed networks consisting of both human and sensors to monitor the environment. The design of robust and flexible fusion systems to create the mapping between heterogeneous observations and hypotheses of interest can be realized by probabilistic causal models like Bayesian networks Given the heterogeneity and complexity of a distributed monitoring system, in which modules are created by different developers, we introduce inference modules which can assemble adequate domain models at runtime as the information sources become available. We show how the challenges of such a system can be addressed by using two techniques: (i) design rules which facilitate creation of BN modules supporting globally coherent decentralized inference and (ii) an information theoretic approach to discovery of modeling faults.

Informatics Institute, Faculty of Science, Universiteit van Amsterdam.
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Pauline Jacobson
Direct Compositionality: The case of short answers

This talk will consider the analysis of “short” answers to questions (as in the dialogue in (1a-b) and their consequences for the hypothesis of direct compositionality:

(1a) Who left the party at midnight?
(1b) Claribel.

The hypothesis of direct compositionality maintains that the syntax and semantics work in tandem, with the consequence that each local expression has an interpretation. It will be shown that such a view would lead us to doubt an analysis of (1b) whereby it is elliptical for a full sentence (as has been proposed in, e.g., Morgan 1973, Merchant 2003, and many others). Rather I will defend (with modifications) the proposal in Groenendijk and Stokhof (1984) (see also, among others, Ginzburg and Sag 2000) according to which short answers are not syntactically sentences nor, by themselves, semantically propositions. There is, however, a compositional semantic rule relating question-answer pairs, and hence the proposition that Claribel left the party at midnight is derived from combining the meanings of the question with that of the answer. Unlike G and S, however, I will argue that only (1b) is a proper linguistic answer. The full reply Claribel left the party at midnight serves the purpose of priving a response, but it is not a true answer in the sense of a lingusitic question/answer pair.

I will discuss some past argument for the ellipsis account, showing that these do not go through. Second, I will provide some new evidence against ellipsis. Consider for example (2a) and the possible responses in (2b) and (2c);

(2a) Which mathematics professor left the party at midnight.
(2b) Jill.
(2c) Jill left the party at midnight.

(2b) is a proper answer and presupposes that Jill is a mathematics professor; (2c) seems like a “best I can do” answer (and does not commit to whether Jill is a mathematics professor). Similar contrasts emerge in questions which explicitly ask for an exhaustive answer:

(3a) Who all left the party at midnight?
(3b) Jill and Tom
(3c) Jill and Tom left the party at midnight.

(3b) commits to the answer being an exhaustive listing; (3c) does not. It will be shown that this follows from the analysis defended here. However, these contrasts will prove problematic for the ellipsis account. Such an account will need a condition that ellipsis is possible only if the reply is an actual “answer” to the question, but it will be shown that no reasonable definition of “answerhood” will get all of the relevant facts. Finally, the evidence that short answers are not elliptical in turn provides new evidence for a purely local treatment of a variety of phenomena, thus supporting the general worldview of direct compositionality.

Cognitive and Linguistic Sciences, Brown University.
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Achim Jung
Domains, Logic, and Probability

In this talk, I want to re-trace the efforts that have been made to incorporate probabilities into the semantics of programming languages. I will begin by explaining Dana Scott's Domain Theory, and the dual view of domains as ordered structures and as topological spaces. The topology on a domain lends itself in a very natural way to a third view, that of a logical theory. This discovery by Samson Abramsky is based on Stone Duality, and led to the extremely fruitful research programme "Domain Theory in Logical Form." I will then introduce Jones's and Plotkin's way of capturing measures on domains, known as the probabilistic powerdomain. This construction, too, can be studied from an order-theoretic and a topological angle, with interesting results in both cases. Viewed as a construction on topological spaces, it is natural to ask what the corresponding logical description might be. Answering the question gave rise to logical theories which are unusual in that the reflexivity axiom "A => A" is no longer valid. Although the emergence of these theories seems inevitable, it took Drew Moshier and myself several years to completely understand their raison d'etre from an abstract perspective. This can only be hinted at in this talk but if time permits then I will try to show at least how the framework can be used to answer a concrete question about probabilistic systems.

School of Computer Science, University of Birmingham.
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Sebastian Löbner
Function, logic and grammar of nouns and determination

There are four basic logical types of nouns. The prototypical type is <e,t> (`common' or `sortal' noun, woman, book, noun); proper names, personal pronouns and `individual concept' (sun, pope, linguistics) nouns, `individual nouns' for short, are of type e; two-place relational nouns (part, sun, complement) are <e,<e,t>>; finally, there are functional nouns of type <e,e> (mother, head, temperature). Although the types can be easily shifted, it is argued that an underlying type is fixed for the lexical meaning(s) of a given noun.
Nouns of different types lend themselves naturally to corresponding types of reference (or 'determination'), which, in turn, are indicated by means of corresponding types of determiners. In a given context, sortal and relational nouns (<e,t>, <e,<e,t>>) specify an open number (0, 1, >1) of referents; their unmarked use is indefinite, while definite use requires special circumstances. Conversely, the inherently unique types of individual and functional nouns are natural with singular definite reference, while requiring special circumstances for indefinite use. Arity of the noun provides the second dimension of type oppositions: relational and functional nouns have an additional argument to be specified; hence they occur naturally with possessive determination. Sortal and individual nouns on the other hand, require special circumstances for possessive reference.

It will be argued that the types of nouns and types of determination not only correspond to each other, but actually coincide:

sortal et indefinite, absolute
individual e definite, absolute
relational eet indefinite, possessive
functional ee definite, possessive

The central proposal of the talk is this:

- The function of (non-quantificational) determiners is to indicate the logical type of the NP token; the token type is built upon the lexical type of the head N, but NP token type and lexical N type may differ.

- If the lexical N type coincides with the NP token type, it remains unchanged. This case constitutes the unmarked option.

- If the two types differ, the lexical type of N is shifted to the type indicated by the determiner. This is the marked option.

- Type shifts may involve regular lexical shifts, mechanisms of semantic composition, as well as the exploitation of given context information.

A logical analysis is offered for the system of possible combinations of noun types and types of determiners (all combinations are possible). Statistical and typological evidence will be presented which corroborates the proclaimed markedness phenomena.

Institut für Sprache und Information, Heinrich-Heine-Universität, Düsseldorf.
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Norbert Preining
Semantics for First Order Gödel Logics -- the 9-headed Hydra

Over the time span of about 50 years the same logic has been discussed and reinvented again and again. Today generally called "Gödel Logic" it is interesting out of many different reasons: On the syntax side it is the only logic in the class of t-norm based logics allowing a recursive axiomatization. And on the semantic side one can find a big selection of different semantics, going from real valued truth-values, via Kripke style semantics, to algebraic semantics. And each of these semantics throws a different light on the underlying logic and its strength and weakness.

In this talk we present a general introduction to first order G¨o;del logics, present the different semantics and pick for each of the semantics one particularly interesting example where the (often present) gap between logic and (more general) mathematics is bridged.

Institute of Discrete Mathematics and Geometry, Vienna University of Technology.
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Workshop

Lev Beklemishev
On topological interpretation of Japaridze's provability logic

The well-known polymodal provability logic GLP (introduced by Giorgi Japaridze) is known to be incomplete w.r.t. Kripke frames. We study natural topological models of GLP, in the spirit of Esakia, where modalities correspond to derived set operators acting on a poly-topological space. We show topological completeness for the fragment of GLP with two modalities. On the other hand, for more than two modalities, completeness w.r.t. natural ordinal spaces turns out to be dependent on large cardinal axioms of ZFC and various facts on stationary sets and reflection. In particular, it is consistent (relative to ZFC) that GLP is incomplete. However, under the assumption of large cardinal axioms one can establish at least some partial completeness results. Under the assumption V=L we show that the bimodal fragment of GLP is complete w.r.t. the cardinal $\aleph_\omega$ (taken with the interval topology and the club filter topology). Partly joint work with Thomas Icard and Guram Bezhanishvili.

Steklov Mathematical Institute, Russian Academy of Sciences, Moscow.
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Nick Bezhanishvili
Generalized Esakia duality and generalized Jankov-de Jongh formulas

The Esakia duality between the category of Heyting algebras and the category of Esakia spaces---special order-topological spaces---provides a good understanding of the phenomenon of the Jankov-de Jongh formulas. In this talk, I will discuss a generalization of the Esakia duality. This generalization will enable us to develop a similar approach towards Zakharyaschev's canonical formulas and to view these formulas as generalized Jankov-de Jongh formulas.

Department of Computing, Imperial College, London.
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David Gabelaia
Topology and Modal logic in Tbilisi

In this talk I will present a brief survey of research areas where Modal Logic and General Topology meet. In particular, the talk will be concerned with the two topological semantics for modal logic (diamond-as-closure and diamond-as-derivative interpretations) introduced by McKinsey and Tarski on the one hand and the order-topological duality theory for S4-algebras on the other hand. I will present a short overview of the results obtained and the methods developed in these areas by Leo Esakia and his school in Tbilisi. I will also present two new results - one about the C-logics generated by subsets of the real line (joint work with Guram Bezhanishvili) and another about the d-logics of the class of Stone spaces and the class of compact Hausdorff spaces (joint work with Guram Bezhanishvili and Leo Esakia).

Razmadze Mathematical Institute
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Mai Gehrke
One-sided and two-sided completions: the relationship between presentations of dcpo algebras and canonical extensions

This talk reports on joint work with Jacob Vosmaer. The canonical extension of a lattice is in an essential way a two-sided completion. Domain theory, on the contrary, is primarily concerned with one-sided completeness. In this talk, after an introduction to one- and two-sided completions, we show two things. Firstly, that the canonical extension of a lattice can be given an asymmetric description in two stages: a free co-directed meet completion, followed by a completion by selected directed joins. Secondly, we show that the general techniques for dcpo presentations of dcpo algebras used in the second stage of the construction immediately give us the well-known canonicity result for bounded lattices with operators.

Institute for Mathematics, Astrophysics and Particle Physics, Radboud Universiteit, Nijmegen
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Rosalie Iemhoff
Terms and quantifiers in nonclassical proofs

Skolemization, Herbrand's theorem, and the epsilon calculus are methods to compare quantifiers and terms in proofs. It has long been known that these methods, although applicable, do not behave well in a nonclassical setting. We present alternatives to the three mentioned methods that possess many of the useful properties that their classical counterparts have. We will apply the results to various constructive theories, such as the theory of equality, the theory of groups, and Heyting Arithmetic. (Due to unfortunate circumstances this talked had to be cancelled.)

Department of Philosophy, Utrecht University.
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D. Pataraia and Mamuka Jibladze
A new proof of total disconnectedness for compact Hausdorff boolean algebras

All known proofs of the fact stated in the title use the Peter-Weyl theorem which requires highly nontrivial use of measure theory, invariant integration, representation theory, etc.
A proof avoiding all of this will be presented. Instead, the proof involves an interesting topological boolean algebra structure on the infinite-dimensional sphere previously considered by Gavin Wraith.

Mathematical Institute of the Georgian Acedemy of Sciences
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Contributions

A.S. Andreyeva
Use of Non-Standard Lexical-Functional Correspondences in Machine Translation

Lexical functions (LFs) are used in systems of natural language processing, in particular in systems of machine translation, in several ways. The most important of them is providing proper translation equivalents. Information about LFs can be easily used for providing proper translation equivalents when corresponding word-combinations from two languages represent the same lexical function. But if an LF construction in one language does not correspond to the word-combination representing the same LF in the other language, information about lexical functions can still be used for providing proper translation equivalents. The paper describes cases when an LF construction corresponds to the LF construction representing the other LF or to the value of the other LF only. It gives the reasons for the existence of such correspondences between Russian and English and shows how these correspondences can be implemented in machine translation system.

Lomonosov Moscow State University.
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Rusudan Asatiani
Functional Analysis of Conjunctions Showing Contrast in Georgian

Linguistic structuring of reality based on the notions `same-different' proceeds through `oppositions'. An opposition means that there are at least two items one of which is `marked' and another is `unmarked'. Structuring of information, its packaging, also proceeds through the foregrounding of such contrastive constituents: one part of information stands out against a background of the other part of information. As a result different formal models of various types of topics and focuses arise.
The paper examines the role of conjunctions in the process of structuring of contrastive topics and/or focuses in Georgian. There are 8 conjunctions aramed?o?ond?tumca? magram?k'i//k'idev?xolo?tu?da in Georgian, which show different kinds of contrast. On the basis of functional-semantic analysis of the conjunctions seven binary differential semantic features are suggested: +/-[Contrast], +/-[Opposition], +/-[Correction], +/- [Expectation], +/-[Wish], +/-[At least one], +/-[Strong underlining]. Definite combinations of the features express main functions of the conjunctions, which are relevant for formal representations of contrastive topics and/or focuses during the unification of some constituents or sentences.

Institute of Oriental Studies.
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Matthias Baaz and Agata Ciabattoni
On the limits of analiticity

In this lecture we present sufficient conditions for a first-order logic do not admit any analytic calculus of a reasonable kind.

TU Wien.
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Anton Benz and Fabienne Salfner
Discourse Relations and Embedded Relevance Implicatures: Some Remarks and Observations about their Interdependencies

We look at the dependencies between rhetorical discourse structure and `relevance' implicatures. We follow Benz and v. Rooij (2007) and infer `relevance' implicatures from the assumption that an answer provides optimal information for solving an explicitly or implicitly given decision problem of the inquirer. Such a decision problem can be identified with a question raised in the conversation. Background questions not only depend on explicit questions under discussion but may also be raised by rhetorical relations such as CONCESSION or CONTRAST. In this talk, we are especially concerned with implicatures of embedded questions, and show by some examples that determining the rhetorical relation that connects two text spans and setting up a pragmatic model that explains the implicatures of embedded sentences interact with each other.

ZAS Berlin.
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Marta Bilkova
On Normal Forms and Uniform Interpolants

The aim of this talk is to illustrate how uniform interpolants can be constructed naturally from suitable normal forms. We mainly consider modal logics, K being a basic example. In this case such normal forms lay in the hart of coalgebraic nature of modal logic. We will show how to use deep inference calculi to visualize construction of uniform interpolants via erasing atoms from a normal form, to do this we propose a new calculus for modal logic K. Next we revisit Pitts' proof of uniform interpolation for intuitionistic logic and discuss similar issues there.

Charles University in Prague, Department of Logic.
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Elizaveta Bylinina (cancelled)
Wh-reduplication, possible worlds and distributivity

The focus of this work is the indefinite pronoun series formed by reduplication of wh-words. They are found in various languages and have very stable semantics typologically: they have narrow scope and tend to occur in non-specific contexts. To provide semantics for these items, we try to make use of the idea that reduplication and distributivity are connected. We use Landman's plurality theory of distributivity and show that treating predicates in intentional contexts as plural in their special way results in a good analogy with 'ordinary' distributivity. The sum/group shifting mechanism from Landman's theory gives us some of the particular language data for free, though some remains unaccounted for. Treating plurality of worlds as an instance of predicate plurality opens a promising view on non-specific indefinites and possible-world semantics in general: indefinites are plurals with distributive interpretation with respect to intentionally plural predicate.

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Claudia Casadio and Mehrnoosh Sadrzadeh
Cyclic Pregroups and Clitic Movement in Persian and Italian

In this paper, we provide a general setting for clitic movement in Persian and Italian by adding a `clitic rule' to a pregroup, a calculus of (left and right) adjoints recently developed by J. Lambek as a non conservative extension of his Syntactic Calculus. This proposal is motivated by the non-commutative (additive, multiplicative) logic developed by Abrusci as a cyclic formulation of the Syntactic Calculus. We show that in this version of a pregroup, the types of the verbs with postverbal clitics are derivable from the types of the verbs with pre-verbal pronouns. Arguments are also presented for the fomulation of the `clitic rule' as a meta-rule (in the sense assumed in Lambek's pregroups) vrt. as a logical axiom of the calculus of a cyclic pregroup.

University `G. D'Annunzio', Chieti and Computing Laboratory, Oxford University.
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Anna Chutkerashvili
The Functions of Discourse Clitics `mxolod' and `mart'o' in Georgian

The functions of the discourse clitics mxolod and mart'o are considered in the paper. These particles can both indicate to focus as well as the topic of the sentence. They often have the similar functions in discourse and can substitute each other, but they also have different meanings. In the paper these particles are analyzed in different types of sentences.

Tbilisi State University.
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Sabine Gründer
Aspectual Shifts With and Without Type Conflict

The paper offers a new type of approach to the semantic phenomenon of adverbial aspect shift. It accounts for standard data that resisted a full theoretical explanation so far and deals with some challenging new data, moreover. The theory combines concepts from the fields of theoretical computer science (regular languages), artificial intelligence (hierarchical abstraction), philosophical logic (supervaluations), and theoretical linguistics (syntactic phases; aspectual viewpoint). According to the proposal, temporal prepositions are dynamic presuppositions that can aspectually underspecify a situational concept. The simple algorithm underlying it derives the correct set of possible interpretations on the basis of lexical semantic input only, and, furthermore, may claim cognitive plausibility.

Department of Computer Science, University of Leipzig.
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Marine Ivanishvili and Ether Soselia
Preverbs in Megrelian

  • The preverb system of Megrelian is much more complicated and distinctive than the Georgian one.
  • In contrast to Georgian, compound preverbs in Megrelian are derived from the simple ones by adding following elements: ko-, c'o-, to-, no-, la-, ?a-, da-.
  • The semantics of a compound preverb is not a simple sum of the constituents.
  • Some phonetic changes are caused by adding either positive or negative particle-prefixes (ko- and va- correspondingly) to the preverbial forms.
  • Combinations of preverbs and verbal vowel prefixes are put to the phonetic changes according to the general phonetic rules in Megrelian: a + i > e; o + o > a; o + i > i.
  • Preverbs: a-, ga-, da-, c'a-, ?a- are regarded as Georgian borrowings, and it seems quite natural due to the mutual Zan-Georgian isoglosses.
We are going to give the answers to the abovementioned questions in the paper.

Acad.G.Tsereteli Institute of Oriental Studies, Tbilisi.
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Maarten Janssen and Olga Borik
Past Perfective and Telicity

It has often been argued that some languages conflate the categories of tense and aspect in so-called "aspectual" tenses, such as the perfective and imperfective past in Romance languages (e.g. de Swart 1998). As shown by Cipria and Roberts (2000), these tenses are not telic, and the terminativity of these tenses has to be modelled in a different way. We take this claim further by showing that tense in fact never logically entail termination, but only strongly 'suggests' it. In other words, termination with the past tense is not an entailment, but a (strong) pragmatic inference.

IULA, Universitat Pompeu Fabra and CTL Universitat Autonoma de Barcelona.
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Mircea Marin and Besik Dundua
System Description: PRhoLog

We describe a system for rule based programming in Prolog. The system is called PRhoLog, and is based on the RhoLog calculus that we proposed recently for rule based programing.
The computational model has a logic programming semantics where program clauses define strategies that act on sequences of trees (also known as hedges). Besides, it has an expressive pattern matching mechanism with logical variables for terms, hedges, function symbols, and term contexts.
The outcome is a highly declarative extension of Prolog that is expressive enough to support concise implementations for specifying and prototyping deductive systems, solvers for various equational theories, tools for querying and translating XML, evaluation strategies, etc.

University of Tsukuba and Johannes Kepler University.
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Paul Meurer
A finite state approach to Abkhaz morphology and stress

Although Abkhaz features a daunting number of verbal prefixes and suffixes that may combine to form an inflected verb form, the Abkhaz verb has rather regular agglutinative (slot) morphology. There is little suppletivism, and there are only a few phonological processes, the most prominent of them being assignment of word stress. The stress pattern of an Abkhaz word form determines the orthographic (and phonetic) realization of Schwa. Thus, one has to take stress into account even if only orthographic forms are to be analysed or generated. The derivation of the stress pattern of Abkhaz word forms is complicated an still not fully understood. Arie Spruit, building on work by V. Dybo, gives a detailed account of Abkhaz stress and its relationship to morphology. More recently, Loren Trigo tried to refine Spruit's analysis.

In my talk, I will show how Spruit's and Trigo's analysis can be exploited to build a morphological analyser for Abkhaz in the finite state framework.

Aksis/Unifob.
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Robert Samuel Ralph Myers
Applications of Tableaux for Multisorted Coalgebraic Modal Logic

We present generic tableau algorithms which build possibly multisorted coalgebras for endofunctors on Set^m and focus on some appli- cations. Two generic languages are considered: coalgebraic hybrid logic and a fragment of the coalgebraic mu-calculus. The hybrid language in- volves nominals, the global modality and the difference modality. It has applications in description logic and norm-governed multiagent systems. The fixpoint language may be thought of as a generalisation of Kleene's theorem, which associates deterministic automata with regular expres- sions. It has applications in automata synthesis, program analysis and reactive programming languages.

Imperial College London.
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Sumiyo Nishiguchi
Neo-Davidsonian Extension of GL for Possessive Disambiguation

This paper proposes the elaboration of the qualia structure of the Generative Lexicon (GL) in Pustejovsky (1995) and the Extended Generative Lexicon theory (Lenci et al. 2000). I argue that qualia roles of nouns should be expanded to incorporate Neo-Davidsonian event semantics. My proposal is based on the Japanese genitive postposition no. The Japanese ``NP1-no NP2" construction expresses a wider range of relations between two entities than does the English possessive ``NP1's NP2," such that the Pustejovskian qualia roles encoded in NP2 do not supply the necessary relations between two entities, which Vikner and Jensen (2002) succeeded to certain degree. The genitive phrase modification detects event argument of nouns other than deverbal nouns discussed in Larson (1998).

Osaka University.
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David Pearce, Pedro Cabalar and Sergei Odintsov
Axiomatic foundations for well-founded and partial stable semantics

Which logic yields an adequate foundation for the partial stable model semantics of Przymusinski (1991) and the well-founded semantics of Van Gelder, Ross and Schlipf (1991) in the sense that its minimal models (appropriately defined) coincide with the partial stable models of a logic program? Initial work on this problem was undertaken by Cabalar (2001) who proposed a frame-based semantics for a suitable logic which he called $HT^2$. Preliminary axioms for $HT^2$ were given in Cabalar et al (2006). In this paper we analyse $HT^2$ frames and identify them as structures of a logic $N^*$ having intuitionistic positive connectives and Routley negation and give a natural axiomatics for $HT^2$. We define a notion of minimal, total $HT^2$ model which we call partial equilibrium model and show that for logic programs these models coincide with partial stable models.

Universidad Politecnica de Madrid.
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Michal Pelis and Ondrej Majer
Dynamic epistemic logic with questions

The aim of our article is to explore questions in the process of communication in a group of agents using the framework of dynamic epistemic logic. We start with representation of questions by means of the standard multiagent epistemic logic S5 and then we use the framework of public announcement logic to model information exchange in the process of asking questions in a group of agents. Our framework allows us to discuss complex processes like the flow of information in a group of agents seeking cooperatively an answer to a publicly announced question.

Institute Of Philosophy, Academy of Sciences of the Czech Republic.
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Konstantine Pkhakadze, George Chichua, Lasha Abzianidze, Aleksandre Maskharashvili, Aleksandre Vashalomidze, Merab Chiqvinidze and Nika Pkhakadze
Toward Complete Mathematical and Mechanical Foundation of the Georgian Language and Thinking

We present the basic results of our researches for the complete mathematical and mechanical foundation of the Georgian Language and Thinking (GLT). Since 2003, the researches go under the theoretical and technological aims declared by the State Priority Program (SPP) `Free and Complete Inclusion of a Computer in the Georgian Natural Language System'. By now, we are working out the project `Foundations of Mathematical Theory of the Georgian Language and Thinking and Sub-systems of the 1-version of the Voice Managed Georgian Intellectual Computer System', which is funded by St. Andrew the First Called Georgian University of The Patriarchy of Georgia. This project is a current subproject of the SPP whose theoretical bases will be the main themes of our paper. More strictly, in the paper, we will concentrate on our lingual ideology, which we call as Georgian Lingual Ideology (GLI) and our new theoretical approaches, which are elaborated for the aim to create Georgian Reader-Listener System with User's Possibility to Build in an Own Synthetic Voice (GeoRLSwithUV).

I.Vekua Institute of Applied Mathematics of TSU.
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Mikheil Rukhaia
Second Order Cut-Elinimation

This paper is about implementation of the second order cut elimination. We define LKII, second order calculus, extending LK with second order quantifier introduction rules. The goal was to extend CERES system for the LKII-proofs, but method CERES cannot be extended to the second order calculus in the straightforward way. We decided to extend Gentzen's method to LKII. We extended reduction rules for the second order quantifiers. We implemented reduction rules and specific algorithm to apply reduction rules to the LKII-proof and integrated it into the CERES system. So, system was extended to the second order calculus.

Vienna University of Technology.
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Kerstin Schwabe and Robert Fittler
On the interpretations of embedded questions in German

The paper presents the semantic properties of German matrix predicates – the con¬sistency conditions – which explain the different interpretations of ob-forms [cf. F weiß/sagt, ob M kommt `F knows/tells whether ?' vs. F bedenkt ob ? `F considers whether ?'] as well as of wh-forms [cf. F weiß/sagt, wer kommt `F knows/tells who is coming' vs. F bedenkt (es), wer kommt `F considers (it) who is coming']. Verbs like wissen/sagen exhibit the external ob-form and the exhaustive wh-form since they are objective. Verbs like es bedenken/darüber nach-denken, on the other hand, only exhibit the internal whether-form and the non-exhaustive wh-form. The internal ob-form is only allowed if the consistency conditions do not exclude tautologies, the non-exhaustive wh-form is only possible if the consistency conditions license the internal ob-form or a factive interpretation together with an appropriate correlate.

ZAS Berlin and Mathematisches Institut, FU Berlin.
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Luca Spada
Advances in the theory of fixed points in many-valued logics

This is a work in progress addressing the problem of nested fixed points in Lukaisewicz logic.

Department of Mathematics and Computer Science, University of Salerno.
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Maria Spychalska
Experimental study on reasoning with quantifiers ``most'' and ``some''

We report on our experimental work concerning reasoning in natural language with quantifiers ``some'' and ``most'', with a special regard to scalar implicatures. We analyzed people's readiness to accept given direct inferences as correct. Our results included (1) high frequency of scalar implicatures of ``most'' and ``some'' in natural reasoning (2) higher frequency of accepting ``some'' as a conclusion from ``most'' than from ``all'' (3) higher frequency of evaluation ``Some A's are not B'' than ``Most A's are not B'' as a correct conclusion from ``Some A's are B''.
Based on our results we propose how scalar implicatures of quantifiers ``some'' and ``most'' can be modeled with the use of fuzzy semantics.

University of Warsaw, Institute of Philosophy.
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Tomoyuki Suzuki, Alexander Kurz and Emilio Tuosto
Nominal Kleene Algebras and Nominal Regular Languages

We study how to lift the classical theory of regular languages to the nominal case and define nominal regular languages. More precisely, we generalise Kleene algebras to nominal sets. This generalisation allows us to use the framework of History-Dependent automata HDA to characterise the regular expressions induced by the class of nominal Kleene algebras. In fact, HDA constitute a trait d'union between regular languages associated with nominal Kleene algebras and the resource aware computations as e.g. those expressed by the so-called nominal calculi.
This research paves the way towards a new theory of formal languages with binders suitable for representing resource-aware computations.
The main contributions of this work are as follows. Firstly, we give the definition of the class of nominal Kleene algebras and of corresponding class of regular expressions and nominal regular languages. Secondly, we show the correspondence between regular expressions on nominal Kleene algebras and HDA. Finally, we characterise the class of nominal regular languages accepted by finite HDA.

University of Leicester.
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Lucia M. Tovena
The imperfect measure of internally plural events

In this paper, we explore the hypothesis that internal pluractional verbs describe events as not being canonical, namely either as not full-blown or in excess of something, because the measure of one dimension of the event is explicitly made inappropriate for the purpose.

Université Paris VII.
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Maria Tsyurupa (cancelled)
Modifier of Resultative State Duration

In this paper we discuss one of the verbal actionality parameters - modifier of resulting state duration (MRSD) in Russian. Modifier of duration (for an hour) and modifier of time of completion (in an hour) have been discussed in numerous research papers, but MRSD has recieved less attention. In part 2 of this paper, semantics of the modifier is discussed, as well as its aspectual impact: shifting the focus from the process to the resultative state, MRSD makes the whole VP momentative. In parts 3-4, we discuss some semantic restrictions the verb must meet to be compatible with MRSD. These restrictions are not purely thematic or aspectual.They are best accounted for if we assume that MRSD is in fact three different constructions.

Most examples the research is based on are from the Russian national corpus (ruscorpora.ru). Others are constructed for elicitation purposes and tested on native speakers.

VINITI RAS (All Russia Institute for Scientific and Technical Information).
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Levan Uridia
Boolean Modal Logic wK4B - Doxastic Interpretation

We consider the boolean modal logic wK4$_B$ for which we prove topological and kripke completeness results. The main result is to show that wK4$_B$ is expressively equivalent to the extended language with common and distributed belief operators.

Universidad Rey Juan Carlos.
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Nikolas Vaporis
The extension property up to $n$ and $T_n$-projectivity

Our contribution is a refinement of a well-known theorem of Ghilardi which establishes the equivalence between projectivity and the extension property. We first define the notion of $T_n$-projectivity by changing the underlying logic in the definition of projectivity from IPC to $T_n$, where $T_n$ are the Gabbay-de Jongh intermediate logics of finite $n$-ary Kripke tree frames. Then, we prove that a propositional formula is $T_n$-projective if and only if it has the extension property up to $n$, the last is a refinement of the extension property defined by Iemhoff.

University Utrecht.
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Michal Walicki, Marc Bezem, and Clemens Grabmayer
Graph Kernels, Logic and Choice Axioms

Our contribution is threefold. First, we establish a link between the existence of kernels of digraphs and the satisfiability of corresponding theories of propositional logic. This correspondence relates infinitely branching digraphs to infinitary propositional logic, and finitely branching ones to the usual propositional logic. Second, for three set-theoretical axioms concerning different forms of `choice' we present reformulations in terms of digraph kernel existence: for the axiom of choice, the axiom of countable choice, and Weak Koenig's Lemma we give equivalent statements over the subsystem RCA of second-order arithmetic in terms of the existence of kernels for special classes of digraphs. Third, we show that the existence of kernels of recursive graphs is Sigma-1-1-complete. As a consequence the existence of kernels of recursive, finitely-branching trees is not provable in RCA.

Bergen University and Utrecht University.
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Thomas Wier
Topic, Focus and the (Non)configurational Properties of Georgian Syntax

Georgian word order is traditionally described as 'free', whereas in fact there are two major constraints on it: clause boundaries and discourse structural effects of topic and focus. I will also examine how infinitival constructions based on nominalizations (masdars, -isa-s gerundives, and purposive infinitives based on the future participle) confound common nouns of word order in Georgian.

University of Chicago.
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Yoad Winter and Eric Reuland
Binding without identity: Reference by proxy and the functional semantics of pronouns

Binding without Identity: reference by proxy and the functional semantics of pronouns One of the well-known properties of reflexive pronouns is their ability to have `proxy readings'. This is illustrated in (1) (Jackendoff 1992):
  1. (Upon a visit in a wax museum:) All of a sudden Ringo started undressing himself.
Himself in (1) can refer to the `real' Ringo, but also to a statue of the Ringo denoted by the subject. We show that such `proxy reference' can appear with all pronouns, not only with reflexives, and study the implications for the combinatorics of anaphora and the reflexivizing element self/zelf in Dutch and English. Basing ourselves on Jacobson's (1999) variable-free semantics, we propose that: (i) the context specifies a reflexive proxy relation that defines possible `proxies' for the entities referred to; (ii) pronouns denote Skolem functions that take proxy relations as their argument; (iii) elements like self/zelf are ordinary relational nouns, and their only special property is their ability to compose as lexical proxy relations with pronouns and binding operators. We show that these assumptions mesh well with the syntactic conditions on locally bound versus exempt SELF-anaphors, and the observed absence of the proxy reading (1) with simplex anaphors such as Dutch zich (Reuland 2001).

OTS, Utrecht University.
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Grégoire Winterstein
Optional Additivity and Exhaustivity

This work deals with the optional nature of too in certain examples. We claim that although this appears as a counter-example to recent accounts of too in terms of obligatory presupposition, this can rather be explained by the interplay between these analyses and the optional exhaustive interpretation of an utterance. We further motivate our claim with empirical evidence. We then briefly look at the consequences our claim has on theories of exhaustification and on the relationship between additive and adversative markers.

LLF - Université Paris Diderot -- Paris 7.
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Henk Zeevat
Bayesian Interpretation

The paper makes the case for applying bayes' theorem to the interrpetation of NL utterances. It discusses the repercussions for pragmatics, language production and language evolution.

ILLC/Universiteit van Amsterdam.
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Dragisa Zunic, Silvia Ghilezan, Pierre Lescanne and Jelena Ivetic
Intuitionistic sequent-style calculus with explicit structural rules

In this paper we extend the Curry-Howard correspondence to the intuitionistic sequent calculus with explicit weakening and contraction. We study a system derived from lambda-Gentzen calculus of Espirito Santo by adding explicit operators for weakening and contraction, which we call linear-lambda-Gentzen and which contains only linear terms. For the proposed calculus we introduce the type assignment system with simple types. The presented system has a natural diagrammatic representation, which can be used for proving the subject reduction property. We prove the strong normalisation property by embedding our calculus into the simply typed lambda-lxr calculus of Kesner and Lengrand.

University Business Academy, Faculty of Engineering, University of Novi Sad, and Ecole Normale Superieure de Lyon.
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