Workshop
Reasoning, Argumentation and Logic in Natural Language: Experiments and Models
Date & Venue:
April 3-5 2019 Ruhr University Bochum, Germany
Plenary Talks by:
Richard Breheny (University College London)
Paul Engelhardt (UEA)
Eugen Fischer (UEA)
Yosef Grodzinsky (Hebrew University of Jerusalem)
Stefan Heim (RWTH Aachen University)
Lucy MacGregor (Cambridge University)
Ken McRae (Western University, London, Ontario)
Milena Rabovsky (Free University Berlin)
Maria Spychalska (University of Cologne)
Jakub Szymanik (University of Amsterdam)
Matthias Unterhuber (Ruhr University Bochum)
Markus Werning (Ruhr University Bochum)
Organization: Markus Werning (BayesPrag@EEG, U Bochum), Matthias Unterhuber (BayesPrag@EEG, U Bochum), Maria Spychalska (ImpliPer, U Cologne), and Eugen Fischer (UEA)
The workshop examines reasoning, argumentation and logic from the perspective of experimental pragmatics. Whereas these issues have a long tradition in the philosophy of language and theoretical linguistics, research in experimental pragmatics has come to focus on them only recently. This is surprising since pragmatic phenomena exert strong influence on which arguments count as sound and valid in everyday reasoning. Relevant phenomena include (a) the disambiguation of polysemous words, (b) context effects on the interpretation of content words and (c) pragmatic properties of logical connectives (e.g., order effects associated with and) as well as of quantifiers (e.g., the scalar implicature from some to not all). The workshop focuses on (i) experimental approaches and (ii) empirically driven models regarding these as well as other pragmatic phenomena in the domain of argumentation and reasoning.
The topics of the workshop include (but are not limited to) the following:
• Scalar and other implicatures of natural language quantifiers and logical connectives
• Rational Speech Act Theory/Bayesian pragmatics and natural language reasoning
• Polysemy and homonymy in the context of natural language argumentation
• Neuro-cognitive modelling of comprehension, communication and reasoning
• EEG, fMRI and eye tracking methods, applied to comprehension, communication and reasoning
• Experimental pragmatics as applied to argumentation and reasoning
CALL FOR PAPERS:
Deadline for Submissions: 20.2.2019, new deadline: 27.2.2019
Notification of Acceptance: 1.3.2019
Format: One-page abstract (pdf); a second page may contain references, graphs and tables.
Submissions can be made for presentations, posters, or both. Please submit abstracts here: https://easychair.org/conferences/?conf=ralnatlang19.
Childcare for the duration of the workshop can be arranged. Please let us in advance if you intend to use this option.
This workshop is supported by the framework program XPrag (SPP1727) by the DFG.
