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On November 11, the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences in Stockholm has awarded Hans Kamp the prestigious Rolf Schock Prize in the Logic and Philosophy category. The retired University of Stuttgart professor is one of the pioneers of Formal Semantics. His Discourse Representation Theory (DRT) is considered groundbreaking in its explanation of the human language system.
“It is astonishing how we take language for granted - and how little we know about the mechanisms by which language creates meaning and thus defines the difference between true and false. We speak, we listen, we interpret. When we use language, we follow linguistic rules - without being able to explain what they are”, says Hans Kamp, retired Professor of Formal Logic and Philosophy of Language at the University of Stuttgart. With his Discourse Representation Theory (DRT), Kamp has made a significant contribution to explaining the “human language system”. On November 11, 2024, he received the internationally renowned Rolf Schock Prize in the Logic and Philosophy category. The prize is awarded by the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences, which is also responsible for the Nobel Prizes in Chemistry and Physics. Kamp, a formal logician, shares the prize with linguist Professor Irene Heim from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.
Networked disciplines: Pioneer of Formal Semantics
"My research focuses on a subject familiar to everyone, yet rich with endless possibilities for discovery. This exciting field has always fascinated me,” says Kamp. He is one of the pioneers of a relatively new scientific field - so-called Formal Semantics. Originating in the 1970s, this field of research combines classical linguistics and semantics with formal logic and mathematics in an interdisciplinary approach. The aim is to examine the exact meaning of sentences, parts of sentences and words in their respective contexts and thereby understand how thinking, language and reality are connected. Formal logicians such as Kamp make use of mathematical methods for this purpose: They specify language structures and relationships between linguistic units and their meanings with the help of mathematical formulas. The insights gained in this way not only shape linguistics, philosophy of language and psychology, they are also used wherever precise assignments of meaning are required: In computer linguistics, legal language or technical specifications.
Made in Stuttgart: Discourse Representation Theory
Kamp’s Discourse Representation Theory (DRT) is at the core of his research. DRT explains how people understand and interpret the meaning of sentences in a continuous text or conversation. In particular, it reveals how we track information about people or objects across multiple sentences. This can be illustrated by the following example: “A woman enters a restaurant. She orders a coffee.” When reading the first sentence, the brain creates a kind of “cheat sheet”: There is a woman, and she is important for the rest of the story. When reading the second sentence, it is therefore clear that the word “she” in this context refers to the woman in the first sentence.
Kamp was the first to reveal the logical language structures behind these “mental cheat sheets” that we use to make sense of texts. To achieve this, he developed a method that defines the meaning of words and parts of sentence through cross-sentences linking rules, known as DRT construction algorithm. "This method translates texts into formal discourse structures, which share many similarities with other formal semantics formulas but differ in one key aspect: With each new sentence, the discourse structure of the text is extended by applying rules that connect the new sentence to the already processed portion of the text. The method therefore interprets each sentence against the background of the understanding of the previous text and at the same time expands this understanding.”
The central idea of DRT was born in Stuttgart: At the end of the 1970s, Kamp, who was working at the University of London at the time, came to the University of Stuttgart several times for research visits. “During one of these visits, in 1978, I discussed a particular semantic problem with Christian Rohrer, then Professor for Romance Linguistics at the University of Stuttgart, that we couldn't solve with any of the existing explanatory models. The sticking point: All existing theories treated sentences as isolated units. However, the challenge clearly had to do with the semantic linking of sentences to create coherent texts.” Kamp quickly identified the missing piece of the puzzle: A model that offered a deeper understanding of the linking principles. Over several years, during which he frequently returned to Stuttgart for research visits, Kamp continued refining his solution and applied it to other semantic challenges. The result was DRT - a completely new, dynamic tool for analyzing text structures.
University of Stuttgart: A research hub
In 1988, Kamp accepted a professorship in formal logic and the philosophy of language at the University of Stuttgart. Until his retirement in 2008, he conducted research and taught at the University of Stuttgart, where he, along with other scholars, further advanced DRT. Even in retirement, he continues to make active and valuable contributions to the field. “For decades, the University of Stuttgart has been a place where I’ve had the privilege of sharing the joy and excitement of collaborative research with many great colleagues. Without the University of Stuttgart, there would have been no DRT and without DRT, I probably wouldn't now have the honor of accepting the Rolf Schock Prize."
An impressive life as a researcher: About Hans Kamp
Professor Hans Kamp was born in the Netherlands in 1940. After studying physics and mathematics, he received his doctorate from the University of California in Los Angeles (UCLA) in 1968. His doctoral supervisor was Richard Montague, one of the most important pioneers of formal logic and semantics. After holding several academic positions in Europe and the USA, Kamp was appointed professor at the University of Stuttgart in 1988. In Stuttgart, he researched and taught for two decades at the Institute of Natural Language Processing and headed the Department of Formal Logic and Philosophy of Language. Kamp is highly recognized internationally in his field. Tilburg University awarded him an honorary doctorate in 1987, and in 2014 he received an honorary doctorate from the French University of Lorraine. Kamp was elected a 'Corresponding Fellow' of the British Academy, an honor reserved for exceptionally distinguished scholars in the humanities and social sciences. Kamp was also appointed a member of the prestigious Royal Netherlands Academy of Arts and Sciences (KNAW) and the Academia Europea for his scientific achievements. In 2015, Kamp was elected a member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences - an honor that only a few non-Americans have ever been granted.
Important international recognition: About the Rolf Schock Prize
The Rolf Schock Prizes have been awarded every two years since 1993 in the fields of logic and philosophy, mathematics, visual arts and music. The winners in the fields of logic and philosophy are nominated by the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences, which also awards the Nobel Prizes in Chemistry and Physics. This year's award ceremony took place on November 11, 2024, at the Royal Academy of Fine Arts in Sweden. This is the first time that the Prize for Logic and Philosophy has been awarded to a German university. Kamp shares the prize and the prize money of 600,000 Swedish kronor with linguist Irene Heim from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.
https://www.uni-stuttgart.de/en/university/news/all/Understanding-the-logic-of-l...
Professor Hans Kamp
Uli Regenscheit
University of Stuttgart
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Professor Hans Kamp
Uli Regenscheit
University of Stuttgart
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