[lingtalks] EDWARD L. KEENAN Marschak Colloquium and lunch this Friday, November 18, 2005 (fwd)

[Maria Polinsky]

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EDWARD L. KEENAN, Professor of Linguistics, UCLA (Field/Subfield:
Linguistics/Semantics,
Syntax, Linguistic Universals, Logic) will be making a presentation to the
2005-2006
Marschak Colloquium at UCLA on Friday, November 18 from 1 to 3 P.M. in the UCLA
Anderson
School room C-301 on the topic:

“HOW MUCH LOGIC IS BUILT INTO NATURAL LANGUAGE?”

This presentation is cosponsored by the UCLA Department of Linguistics.
Professor
Keenan's abstract and biography are below, followed by a complete summary of
this year's
Marschak Colloquium and a cross-classification of all presentations in this
year's
Colloquium. All are welcome to attend.
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“HOW MUCH LOGIC IS BUILT INTO NATURAL LANGUAGE?” – ABSTRACT

         First Order Logic (FOL) with equality is a universal grammar for a class
of languages
– Elementary Arithmetic, Euclidean Geometry, Set Theory, ... It defines their
syntax,
semantics, and proofs. Learning a natural language (NL – English, Japanese,
Swahili,...) entails overt learning of many first order structures:
Function-Argument and
Predicate-Argument expressions, Recursion, and Boolean Operations: finitary and,
or, not
and unbounded all, some.
         NL falls short of FOL in precision: it lacks the full equivalent of
variable binding
operators and it allows structural ambiguities (“John told Bill he was bleeding”
–
he = John? Bill? a third party? “John didn’t leave because the children were
crying” (That wasn’t why he left, or, that’s why he didn’t leave). NLs exceed
the
expressive power of FOL with proportionality quantifiers (most, two out of
three,...),
cardinal comparison (more/fewer students than teachers signed the petition), and
non-intersective adjectives (a tall student) as well as non-extensional
expressions: too
many, not enough; skillful, good.
         Learning a NL also entails covert learning of logical notions. Some
grammaticality
patterns are conditioned by logical properties of the items in the pattern. For
example,
which NPs license the presence of words like ever and any in Ss like: “No
students /
Fewer than five students here have ever been to Minsk”, but ungrammatical is
“Some
students / More than four students here have ever been to Minsk”. Answer: NPs
that
denote monotone decreasing functions license ever, etc., monotone increasing
ones do not.
Additional instances will be given in the lecture.
         A last, deeper similarity to FOL: a NL is a closure system – a set of
“words”
closed under certain structure building operations. The “structure” of an
expression
is what is invariant under the structure preserving maps (automorphisms) induced
by these
operations. Speakers “know” this structure (in the sense in which they “know”
the
language) and treat expressions with the same structure as meaningful “in the
same
way”. So being meaningful in different ways implies difference in structure.
Example
the predicates good to eat and reluctant to eat in That fish is good to eat and
That
child is reluctant to eat are understood in different ways so they are predicted
to
exhibit structural differences. For example good to eat may frame a noun, as in
a good
fish to eat, but *a reluctant child to eat is not grammatical. A deeper example
concerns
the reference of the pronouns in “The juror expected to punish him / himself ”
versus
“the judge who the juror expected to punish him / himself”. Himself must refer
to the
the juror in the first case and him cannot. The opposite pattern obtains in the
second
case.
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EDWARD L. KEENAN <keenan at humnet.ucla.edu> – BIOGRAPHY

         Edward Keenan is Distinguished Professor of Linguistics at UCLA and a
former chair of
the department. He came to UCLA in 1974 from England, where he was a Fellow of
King’s
College, Cambridge. He has taught as a Visiting Professor at the universities of
Amsterdam, Tilburg, Stuttgart, Paris (7), Canterbury (New Zealand) and Tel Aviv.
He was a
Fulbright Scholar in Madagascar in 1995, following up his original linguistic
research
there in 1969-70. Professor Keenan is a member of the American Academy of Arts
and
Sciences. His research specialties are syntactic typology and formal semantics.
He has
written over a hundred articles and three books including Boolean Semantics for
Natural
Language (with Leonard Faltz) and Bare Grammar: Lectures on Linguistic
Invariants (with
Edward P. Stabler).
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THE 2005-2006 JACOB MARSCHAK INTERDISCIPLINARY COLLOQUIUM ON MATHEMATICS IN THE
BEHAVIORAL SCIENCES AT UCLA
Meeting alternative Fridays from 1 to 3 in the UCLA Anderson School, Room C-301
(other
than the January 27 JACOB MARSCHAK MEMORIAL LECTURE)
All are welcome to attend. Please also visit our website for more information on
the
Colloquium and updates for our programs:

http://www.anderson.ucla.edu/marschak.xml

November 18: Edward L. Keenan, Professor of Linguistics, UCLA
Field/Subfield: Linguistics/Semantics, Syntax, Linguistic Universals, Logic.
Topic: "How Much Logic is built into Natural Language?"
Cosponsored by the UCLA Department of Linguistics

December 2: Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi, C.S. and D.J. Davidson Professor of
Psychology and
Management, Director of Quality of Life Research
Center, The Peter F. Drucker and Masatoshi Ito Graduate School of Management,
Claremont
Graduate University.
Field/Subfield: Psychology/Creativity
Topic: "The Creative Person and the Creative Context"
Cosponsored by the UCLA Department of Psychology and the Behavioral Decision
Making Group
of the UCLA Anderson School
MEETING IN KORN CONVOCATION HALL, ANDERSON SCHOOL FROM 1 TO 3

January 20: Patrick Suppes, Lucie Stern Emeritus Professor of Philosophy,
Stanford
University
Field: Philosophy of Science, Mathematical Psychology, Computer-based Education
Topic: "A Theory of Rational Choice Based on Habits and Associations Rather than
Preferences"
Cosponsored by the UCLA Department of Philosophy

January 27: THE 2005-2006 JACOB MARSCHAK MEMORIAL LECTURE
Daniel McFadden, E. Morris Cox Professor of Economics at the University of
California,
Berkeley, Recipient of the 2000 Bank of Sweden Prize in Economic Sciences in
Memory of
Alfred Nobel for his work on the development of theory and methods for analyzing
discrete
choice.
Field/Subfield: Economics/Choice Theory
Topic: "The New Science of Pleasure: Consumer Behavior and the Measurement of
Well-Being"
Cosponsored by the UCLA Department of Economics.
MEETING IN KORN CONVOCATION HALL, ANDERSON SCHOOL FROM 1 TO 3

February 3: Michael O'Hare, Professor of Public Policy, University of
California,
Berkeley Goldman School of Public Policy
Field/Subfield: Public Policy/Aesthetics and Cultural Policy.
Topic: "Abundance, Selection, and Efficient Price Signals for Digital Goods:
Free Music
Doesn't Have to be Stolen (But How Will We Decide What to Listen to?)"
Cosponsored by the Department of Public Policy, UCLA School of Public Affairs

February 17: James C. Spohrer, Director, Almaden Services Research & Innovation
Champion,
IBM Almaden Research Center
Field/Subfield: Computer Science/Services in the Information Economy
Topic: "Service Sciences, Engineering, and Managements (SSEM): An Emerging
Multidiscipline"
Cosponsored by the UCLA Department of Computer Science; the Center for
Management in the
Information Economy, UCLA Anderson School; and the Decisions, Operations and
Technology
Management area of the UCLA Anderson School.

March 3: Paul Boyle, Professor, School of Geography & Geosciences, University of
St.
Andrews, Scotland,
Field/Subfield: Geography/Population geography and health geography
Topic: "The Role of Migration in the Widening Health Inequalities Gap in
Britain"

March 17 Robert L. Powell, Robson Professor of Political Science, University of
California, Berkeley
Field/Subfield: International Relations/Game-Theoretic Approaches to War and
International Conflict
Topic: "Allocating Scarce Resources Against Terrorist Attacks."
Cosponsored by the UCLA Department of Political Science

April 14: Todd O. Yeates, Professor of Chemistry & Biochemistry, UCLA, also
affiliated
with the Molecular Biology Institute, the UCLA-DOE Institute for Genomics and
Proteomics,
and the California NanoSystems Institute
Field/Subfield: Biology/Interface of Molecular Biology, Mathematics and
Computation
Topic: "Finding Useful Patterns in Genomes"

April 28: Noah Friedkin, Professor of Sociology, University of California, Santa
Barbara
Field/Subfield: Mathematical Sociology/Social Psychology, Social Networks &
Group
Processes
Topic: "Social Influence Network Theory and the Diffusion of Attitudes and
Behaviors"
Cosponsored by the UCLA Department of Sociology

May 12: Earl Hunt, Emeritus Professor of Psychology, University of Washington
Field/Subfield: Psychology/Mathematical Models of Cognition
Topic: "Patterns of Thought"
Cosponsored by the UCLA Department of Psychology

May 25: Duncan Watts, Associate Professor of Sociology, Columbia University and
Director,
Collective Dynamics Group, Institute for Social and Economic Research and Policy
Field/Subfield: Sociology/Mathematical Modeling, Collective Dynamics
Topic: "Search in Global Social Networks"
Cosponsored by the UCLA Department of Sociology

June 9: William A. V. Clark, Professor of Geography, UCLA
Field/Subfield: Geography/Demography
Topic: "Can We Solve Neighborhood Poverty by Moving People Around?"
Cosponsored by the UCLA Department of Geography
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MARSCHAK COLLOQUIUM, UCLA, 2005-2006
CROSS-CLASSIFICATION BY FIELD AND AFFILIATION
FIELD/SPEAKER, AFFILIATION (DATE)

Anthropology/ Sociology/ Geography
         Walter Goldschmidt, Anthropology, UCLA (10/21)
         Paul Boyle, Geography, University of St. Andrews, Scotland (3/3)
         WIlliam A. V. Clark, Geography, UCLA (6/9)
         Noah Friedkin, Sociology, University of California, Santa Barbara (4/28)
         Duncan Watts, Sociology, Columbia University (5/25)
Biology/ Public Health
         Todd O. Yeates, Chemistry & Biochemistry, UCLA (4/14)
Computer Science/ Engineering/ Systems Analysis/ Operations Research
         James C. Spohrer, IBM Almaden Research Center (2/17)
Economics/ Business Management
         Michael Rothschild, Economics, Princeton University (10/7)
         Harold Demsetz, Economics, UCLA (11/4)
         Daniel McFadden, Economics, UC Berkeley (1/27) THE 2005-2006 JACOB
MARSCHAK MEMORIAL
LECTURE
Mathematics/ Statistics
Philosophy/ Linguistics/ Artificial Intelligence
         Edward Keenan, Linguistics, UCLA (11/18)
         Patrick Suppes, Philosophy, Stanford University (1/20)
Political Science
         Robert L. Powell, Political Science, UC Berkeley (3/17)
Psychology/ Education
         Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi, Claremont Graduate University (12/2)
         Earl Hunt, University of Washington (5/12)
Public Planning/ Policy/ Other
         Michael O'Hare, University of California, Berkeley (2/3)

MICHAEL D. INTRILIGATOR, Ph.D.
PROFESSOR OF ECONOMICS, POLITICAL SCIENCE,
AND PUBLIC POLICY
UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA, LOS ANGELES
LOS ANGELES, CA 90095-1477
e-mail: <intriligator at econ.ucla.edu>