Formal Semantics and Philosophical Logic

Marek Holan: Input level of digital humanities experiment – Semantic dimension and its possible formalization


Speaker: Marek Holan
Title: Input level of digital humanities experiment – Semantic dimension and its possible formalization
Date:
Time: 16:00 - 17:30
Location: ILLC Seminar Room and Online

Abstract. The area of digital humanities has been an expanding one during the latter half of the last century and it has been given a new spin at the turn of this century with a rising interest in digital forms of communication. New analyses are produced rapidly and experiments in digitized approaches to some traditional scientific fields are conducted at various departments from language-focused to media- or even art-oriented ones. The aim of this talk focuses on a particular segment of these interactions: the digital humanities experiment [meaning 'experiment' in general] and namely its input level. The main question is: can we (and if so, then how?) formalize something as amoebic as meaning? Have we been able to make some progress after decades of formal semantics and logical approaches to language development? We can systemize input data according to some syntactic criteria but can we somehow 'count' the semantic dimension of these data? All these questions lead us to another unease – we have to take into account the fact that even though on one end of this experimental chain there is a perfectly precise machine, on the other end there is always a human being.