A European phenomenon?
When I started my PhD I had the somewhat naïve idea that few other grad students shared my interest in harmony and proof-theoretic semantics in general. Of course, as it turns out, there are plenty of PhD students and young researchers who have spent time with similar projects. In fact, a number of people in the UK are writing (or have recently written) their thesis on the topic.
This includes (not exhaustively) Nils Kurbis (UCL), and Julien Murzi (Sheffield), and Florian Steinberger (Cambridge). In addition, there are people like Michael Gabbay (KCL) and Marcus Rossberg (Arché/UConn) who have also done exciting research on proof-theory and harmony. Close, but not in the UK, we have Pål Fjeldvig Antonsen (TCD) working on harmony in a broader philosophical setting. A bit further away, on the continent, there are Theodora Achourioti (Uni of Amsterdam) also in the process of writing on harmony, and Henri Galinon (IHPST) writing about interrelations between truth and proof. Among young researchers there are Denis Bonnay (Ecole Normale Supérieure) and Patrick Allo (Vrije Universiteit Brussel). And I'm sure there are many more.
Now here is the question. Who is doing related work in the US? Although I don't know enough about the US departments to say anything definitely, my impression is that there is less work being done on these topics, perhaps because figures like Dummett and Prawitz had/have less influence in the US. Please let me know that there is no divide.
UPDATE As Kevin and Noam points out in the comments, OSU and Pitt/CMU are probably good candidates for places with students/faculty working with related topics. The faculty most will know, but who are the students. I know of Noam Zeilberger (CMU) and also Shawn Standefer (Pitt).
This includes (not exhaustively) Nils Kurbis (UCL), and Julien Murzi (Sheffield), and Florian Steinberger (Cambridge). In addition, there are people like Michael Gabbay (KCL) and Marcus Rossberg (Arché/UConn) who have also done exciting research on proof-theory and harmony. Close, but not in the UK, we have Pål Fjeldvig Antonsen (TCD) working on harmony in a broader philosophical setting. A bit further away, on the continent, there are Theodora Achourioti (Uni of Amsterdam) also in the process of writing on harmony, and Henri Galinon (IHPST) writing about interrelations between truth and proof. Among young researchers there are Denis Bonnay (Ecole Normale Supérieure) and Patrick Allo (Vrije Universiteit Brussel). And I'm sure there are many more.
Now here is the question. Who is doing related work in the US? Although I don't know enough about the US departments to say anything definitely, my impression is that there is less work being done on these topics, perhaps because figures like Dummett and Prawitz had/have less influence in the US. Please let me know that there is no divide.
UPDATE As Kevin and Noam points out in the comments, OSU and Pitt/CMU are probably good candidates for places with students/faculty working with related topics. The faculty most will know, but who are the students. I know of Noam Zeilberger (CMU) and also Shawn Standefer (Pitt).
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5 comments:
I imagine many of Tennant's students have looked into it, but you're right that Dummett's influence in the US is far less than it should be. I had to stumble upon Wright, Dummett, and Tennant merely by accident, never encountering (much of) them in any of my courses.
It's all intensional semantics over here, (which is part of the reason I dropped out of graduate school).
Martin-Löf's Siena Lectures (and indirectly through those, Prawitz's and Dummett's proof-theoretic semantics) have had a significant influence on the theoretical programming languages research done at some US schools, particularly here at CMU. The thesis I'm writing is tangentially on proof-theoretic semantics, though it is mainly about exploring the mathematical consequences of a particular proof system with a natural PTS.
You might also be able to find some influence in linguistics departments. NYU's Anna Szabolcsi has written about proof-theoretic semantics, although she means it in a more general sense than Prawitz/Dummett. So has Nissim Francez, who isn't in the US but isn't in Europe either (Israel).
Kevin, Noam,
Thanks for your comments. I suspect that OSU and Pitt/CMU are among the places to look in the US. I'm not sure who's working with Tennant these days, but I do know former students of his who are very interested. On example: Roy Cook, a former Arché post doc wrote a nice paper on tonk.
In Pittsburgh there is a long-standing tradition for related philosophy I guess. Particularly because of Brandom and Belnap, but also because of the excellent proof-theory group at CMU.
Nissim I've already met, and he surely qualifies as someone who's working within the field. But perhaps not a "young researcher", whatever that is supposed to mean. Anna Szabolcsi's work I didn't know, so thanks for pointing it out!
The impression one got from attending Szabolcsi and Barker's ESSLLI 2007 seminar "New Directions for Proof Theory in Linguistics" was that Szabolci is only nominally aware of, to say nothing of interested in, proof theory, let alone proof-theoretic semantics. Saying her work is informed by proof-theory is a bit like saying Donald Davidson's was informed by Chomskian Syntax. But she does collaborate with some Europeans who do do high powered stuff with proof theory and logic more generally (e.g., Raffa Bernardi, who definitely counts as a "young researcher").
But there are American linguists who are very deeply involved in using proof theory to do serious linguistic analysis. Probably the two most prominent ones out there right now are Ken Shan (Rutgers) and Carl Pollard (Ohio State). Chris Barker (NYU) is Shan's collaborator, but his expertise is mostly on the linguistic side of things.
Pollard invented HPSG, but has now abandoned that framework for a new one he calls Convergent Grammar (CVG), which is completely specified proof-theoretically (The reason he calls it Convergent Grammar is because it can simultaneously be viewed as (i) a logical reconstruction of Chomsky's minimalism, or (ii) as a proof-theoretic version of HPSG).
Shan, on the other hand, does work that is deeply informed by proof-theory and functional programming. His dissertation won the Beth Prize from FoLLI. He also qualifies as a "young" researcher, since he got his PhD only a few years ago.
But, as has always been the case, most of the action in applying proof-theory to linguistics goes on in Europe. There are loads of young researchers who work in this area on the continent, mostly concentrated around De Groote (INRIA Lorraine I think), Moortgat (Utrecht), and Morrill (Universitat Politècnica de Catalunya). I wonder if this sociological fact about linguists can be connected with the similar fact about philosophers that Ole is mentioning.
I have not read much of Szabolcsi's work other than "Questions about proof theory vis-a-vis natural language semantics" from the ESSLLI course, so am not qualified to summarize it, but it's true that proof-theoretic semantics in the Prawitz/Dummett sense is only mentioned offhandedly in that paper. I have read a lot of Ken Shan's work and it is is indeed brilliant. His papers don't explicitly invoke Prawitz/Dummett and company, but the idea of proof-theoretic semantics is definitely there in his overall approach, emphasizing the ideas (from programming languages) of type systems and operational semantics (which directly assigns a meaning to terms by way of evaluation) in addition to denotational semantics (which assigns them a meaning by way of interpretation in a separate mathematical structure). (I actually found out about the Szabolcsi paper from Ken's website, so should have thought to mention him.)
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