In the late 1970s and early 80s, Kamp’s Discourse Representation Theory and Heim’s File Change Semantics marked the beginning of the line of research which has come to be known as ‘dynamic semantics’. During the 1980s, these ideas were made more precise in a revision of central notions of formal semantics, such as ‘truth’, ‘truth conditions’ and ‘satisfiability’, which were replaced by ‘update’ and ‘context change potential’. Meanwhile, the significance of these basic concepts of dynamic semantics is acknowledged by philosophers and linguists as witnessed by theories on reference, context dependence, conditionals, modal operators, quantification, tense and aspect, presupposition theory, information structure, and vagueness.

The meeting ‘Dynamics in Semantics, Pragmatics and Logic’, to be held on the occasion of the 70th birthday of Hans Kamp, aims at covering important aspects of this development. The overarching theme of the meeting is directed toward dynamic approaches within philosophy, logic, linguistics and computer science. We have invited leading international experts in four areas within which Hans Kamp has made important contributions, as listed below. On the one hand, we hope to enhance the understanding of the importance of dynamic concepts and methods in the relevant areas, and on the other hand, we wish to contribute to the further development of these fields by advancing the exchange between them. All talks will be given by invited speakers.

Participation

We encourage researchers and PhD students to participate. Since seating is limited, please register by e-mail before August 8th, 2010. The registration fee of 50 Euro can be paid on-site. For further practical information please visit the conference website.