Cool Logic

Angelica Hill (ILLC)

An introduction to Event Calculus as a model for the semantics of tense in natural language

March 1st at 18:00, in F1.15

Event Calculus (EC) was originally created for modeling commands in programming within the field of Artificial Intelligence. However, in their book, "The Proper Treatment of Events" the ILLC's Michiel van Lambalgen and his co-author Fritz Hamm take a cognitive scientific approach and show that EC is also an extremely effective model for the semantics of tense in natural language (as opposed to say, possible world semantics).

In the presentation we'll go over the basics of EC, dive into the wonderful world of tense, aspect, and events, and see how EC intuitively captures our understanding of temporality expressed in language. I'll also discuss what I am currently working on, specifically, how I intend to use EC to tackle some current issues with a certain type of conditional. It's gonna be inTense!