Natural language research announcements

["Fleck, Margaret M" <mfleck AT cs.uiuc.edu>]

________________________________________
From: Linguistics Department 
[LING-DEPT-L AT LISTSERV.ILLINOIS.EDU]
 On Behalf Of Peter Lasersohn 
[lasersoh AT ILLINOIS.EDU]
Sent: Thursday, December 16, 2010 8:42 AM
To: 
LING-DEPT-L AT LISTSERV.ILLINOIS.EDU
Subject: Fwd: Identifier Semantics

Perhaps of interest to students in semantics and/or computational linguistics:

>LIS590SS    Identifier Semantics
>Credit 2 or 4 GR hours
>
>Description: Identifiers for such things as cultural objects, natural
>objects, persons, places and times, institutions, events, processes, data
>and datasets, substances, and even properties and mathematical values,
>play a fundamental role in information systems, and particularly in
>emerging areas such as contemporary metadata languages, ontologies, and
>"linked data". However exactly how identifiers identify remains very
>poorly understood. We review research on the semantics of referring
>expressions and explore applications of this work to URIs (Uniform
>Resource Identifiers), identifiers that provide not only the foundation
>for the World Wide Web, but are fundamental to the knowledge
>representation languages RDF and OWL. Authors of particular focus include
>Frege, Russell, Strawson, Searle, Kripke, Donnellan, Putnam, Salmon,
>Evans, and Soames, as well as current research on problems with the usef
>of URIs in RDF and OWL.  This course will be taught as a graduate seminar,
>so students should have an antecedent interest in the topic.
>
>Prerequisites: Basic working knowledge of predicate logic required; some
>familiarity with modal notions and semantic technologies recommended.
>Undergraduates should have relevant background in linguistics, philosophy,
>or computer science.