Sixth Workshop on Lambda Calculus and Formal Grammar

Workshop to be held at the Computer Science Department,
Technion, Haifa, October 15-16, 2008

This is the sixth installment of an informal workshop series that started three years ago. (The programs of the previous workshops are available.) The theme of the workshop is the interface between the lambda calculus and formal grammar, with a particular emphasis on the grammar formalism known as Abstract Categorial Grammar or Lambda Grammar. The workshop is open to all interested people.

The workshop is funded by the Technion and by The Netherlands Organization for Scientific Research (NWO).

Abstract Categorial Grammars / Lambda Grammars

Abstract Categorial Grammars (ACGs) and Lambda Grammars (LGs) are two new approaches to the logical architecture of natural language. The two approaches were proposed simultaneously but independently and can be considered to be a single new theory of type logical grammar that distinguishes itself from existing accounts in that that its type system is undirected. This follows a proposal made as early as 1961 by H.B. Curry, whose distinction between "tectogrammatics" (abstract syntax) and "phenogrammatics" (concrete syntax) is also adopted. The theory is very simple from a mathematical point of view, unifies treatments of syntax and semantics, solves some empirical problems of standard categorial grammars, invites the definition of a hierarchy of languages reminiscent of the Chomsky hierarchy of phrase structure grammars, and has a natural relation to modern theories of hyperintensionality.

Date and Place

Speakers

Gilad Ben-Avi, Technion, Haifa
Nissim Francez, Technion, Haifa
Philippe de Groote, INRIA Nancy - Grand Est
Makoto Kanazawa, National Institute of Informatics (NII), Tokyo
Reinhard Muskens, Tilburg Center for Logic and Philosophy of Science (TiLPS)
Sylvain Salvati, INRIA Bordeaux - Sud-Ouest
Yoad Winter, Technion, Haifa

Program

Wednesday, October 15

Thursday, October 16