29th Workshop on Logic, Language, Information and Computation
WoLLIC 2023

Halifax, Canada
July 11–14, 2023

WoLLIC is an annual international forum on inter-disciplinary research involving formal logic, computing and programming theory, and natural language and reasoning. Each meeting includes invited talks and tutorials as well as contributed papers.

The 29th WoLLIC was held at Dalhousie University in Halifax, Nova Scotia, Canada, July 11–14, 2023. WoLLIC 2023 was a hybrid event, with all invited speakers presenting on-site to facilitate meaningful interaction and discussions.

The conference was scientifically sponsored by the Association for Symbolic Logic (ASL), the Interest Group in Pure and Applied Logics (IGPL), the Association for Logic, Language and Information (FoLLI), the European Association for Theoretical Computer Science (EATCS), the European Association for Computer Science Logic (EACSL), and the Sociedade Brasileira de Lógica (SBL).

Contributions were invited on all pertinent subjects, with particular interest in cross-disciplinary topics. Typical but not exclusive areas of interest were: foundations of computing, programming and Artificial Intelligence (AI); novel computation models and paradigms; broad notions of proof and belief; proof mining, type theory, effective learnability and explainable AI; formal methods in software and hardware development; logical approach to natural language and reasoning; logics of programs, actions and resources; foundational aspects of information organization, search, flow, sharing, and protection; foundations of mathematics; philosophical logic; philosophy of language.

Post-conference information

The meeting is now over, but the information on this website will remain for future reference. Many speakers have made their slides available, which are linked in the program. Speakers who have not yet sent their slides are encouraged to do so.

Important dates

  • March 6, 2023 AoE: abstract submission
  • March 13, 2023 AoE: full paper submission
  • April 11, 2023: Student travel grant application
  • May 15, 2023: notification of authors
  • May 25, 2023: deadline to book on-campus accommodations
  • May 25, 2023: early registration deadline
  • June 15, 2023: final version deadline (firm)
  • July 11–14, 2023: conference

Program

Click here for the Program. There is also a handy schedule overview on a single page.

Invited speakers

Tutorials:

There were four tutorials. Click here for the abstracts.

  • Michael Moortgat (Utrecht University, Netherlands). Tutorial: Compositionality: categorial variations on a theme. Slides
  • Magdalena Ortiz (University of Umeå, Sweden). Tutorial: Description logics and other decidable logics for graph-structured data. Slides
  • Aybüke Özgün (University of Amsterdam, Netherlands). Tutorial: Dempster-Shafer theory and topological models for evidence. Slides
  • Dusko Pavlovic (University of Hawaii, USA). Tutorial: Prerequisites for the talk on incompleteness of static theories and completeness of dynamic beliefs, in people and in bots. Slides

Invited speakers:

There were talks by the following invited speakers. Click here for the abstracts.

  • Thomas Bolander (Technical University of Denmark). From dynamic epistemic logic to socially intelligent robots. Slides
  • Makoto Kanazawa (Hosei University, Japan). Learning context-free grammars from positive data and membership queries. Paper, Slides
  • Michael Moortgat (Utrecht University, Netherlands). Lambek calculus and its modal extensions. Slides
  • Magdalena Ortiz (University of Umeå, Sweden). A short introduction to SHACL for logicians. Paper, Slides
  • Aybüke Özgün (University of Amsterdam, Netherlands). Beliefs based on conflicting and uncertain evidence: connecting Dempster-Shafer theory and the topology of evidence. Slides
  • Dusko Pavlovic (University of Hawaii, USA). From incompleteness of static theories to completeness of dynamic beliefs, in people and in bots. Paper, Slides
  • Richard Zach (University of Calgary, Canada). The epsilon calculus in non-classical logics: recent results and open questions. Slides

Special session: Movie screening "Journeys of Black Mathematicians"

In a special session at WoLLIC 2023, we showed clips from a documentary film that explores the groundbreaking achievements of African American mathematicians. "Journeys of Black Mathematicians" (zalafilms.com) is a powerful film that traces the history of these pioneering individuals and their impact on mathematics. This film is not only a tribute to their achievements, but also an inspiration for Black and other minority students to pursue their studies and consider careers in mathematics.

The film is currently in production and its filmmaker, George Csicsery, has agreed to show us excerpts from a rough cut of this film. He was also available via Zoom to hear feedback and answer questions.

Registration

The early registration deadline was May 25. The fees listed below are early / late.

  • Regular participants: CAD $300 / $325
  • Students: CAD $150 / $175
  • Online-only registration, regular: CAD $200 / $225
  • Online-only registration, students: CAD $100 / $125
  • Additional dinner ticket: CAD $80

Local information

All talks were held in room 319 of the Chase Building. The Chase building is building C280 on the campus map.

Here is a Google map of the area:

Other things to do in Halifax

There were several other events in Halifax that overlapped with or were adjacent to WoLLIC:

Here are some videos with additional suggestions for what to do in Halifax:

Travel

Most foreign nationals need an electronic travel authorization before flying to Canada. This applies to all visa-exempt foreign nationals (for example, European citizens). It only costs $7 and can be done efficiently at the eTA website. The eTA requirement does not apply to U.S. citizens, nor to visitors who need an actual visa to travel to Canada.

For information on how to get to Halifax from the airport, see the Airport Transportation Page.

Paper submission

Note: paper submission is now closed. The following information is retained for reference.

Proposed contributions should be in English, and consist of a scholarly exposition accessible to the non-specialist, including motivation, background, and comparison with related works. Articles should be written in the LaTeX format of LNCS by Springer (see author's instructions at http://www.springer.com/computer/lncs?SGWID=0-164-6-793341-0). They must not exceed 12 pages, with up to 5 additional pages for references and technical appendices. The paper's main results must not be published or submitted for publication in refereed venues, including journals and other scientific meetings. It is expected that each accepted paper be presented at the meeting by one of its authors either in person or via remote connection. (At least one author is required to pay a full, on-site (regular or student) registration fee before granting that the paper will be published in the proceedings.) Papers must be submitted electronically at the WoLLIC 2023 EasyChair website https://easychair.org/conferences/?conf=wollic2023.

Student support

Student participation is encouraged at WoLLIC. Students will pay a reduced registration fee.

Thanks to ASL's scientific sponsorship, students who are ASL members can apply for a modest travel grant (deadline: 90 days before the event starts, i.e.: April 11). See http://www.aslonline.org/studenttravelawards.html for details. An ASL student membership costs USD $54, so this might be a good deal.

In addition to the ASL travel grants, we are also able to offer a limited amount of support for travel and accommocations directly to some students. Students who have already applied for an ASL travel grant will be given priority. If you are interested in the additional support, please send a request to selinger@mathstat.dal.ca by April 11. Please also arrange for a letter of reference from your supervisor, or appropriate other person, to the same email address, explaining whether the student has access to funding from local sources and how much.

Proceedings

The proceedings of WoLLIC 2023, including both invited and contributed papers, have been published as a volume in Springer's LNCS series.

You can access the proceedings here. When using the following link, access to the proceedings will be free for a limited period of time.

Logic, Language, Information, and Computation

In addition, abstracts will be published in the Conference Report section of the Logic Journal of the IGPL, and selected contributions will be published (after a new round of reviewing) as a special post-conference WoLLIC 2023 issue of a scientific journal (TBA).

Committees

Program committee

  • Bahareh Afshari, University of Gothenburg, Sweden and University of Amsterdam, Netherlands
  • Zena Ariola, University of Oregon, USA
  • Adriana Balan, University Politechnica of Bucharest, Romania
  • Marta Bílková, Czech Academy of Sciences, Czech Republic
  • Ranald Clouston, Australian National University, Australia
  • Willem Conradie, University of the Witwatersrand, South Africa
  • Josée Desharnais, Laval University, Canada
  • David Fernández-Duque, Universitat de Barcelona, Spain
  • Santiago Figueira, Universidad de Buenos Aires, Argentina
  • Silvia Ghilezan, University of Novi Sad & Mathematical Institute SASA, Serbia
  • Sujata Ghosh, Indian Statistical Institute, India
  • Nina Gierasimczuk, Technical University of Denmark, Denmark
  • Helle Hvid Hansen, University of Groningen, Netherlands (co-chair)
  • Andreas Herzig, CNRS, University of Toulouse, France
  • Juha Kontinen, University of Helsinki, Finland
  • Roman Kuznets, TU Wien, Austria
  • Martha Lewis, University of Bristol, UK
  • Johannes Marti, University of Oxford, UK
  • George Metcalfe, University of Bern, Switzerland
  • Cláudia Nalon, University of Brasilia, Brazil
  • Carlos Olarte, Université Sorbonne Paris Nord, France
  • Sophie Pinchinat, University of Rennes, France
  • Francesca Poggiolesi, CNRS, University Paris 1 Panthéon-Sorbonne, France
  • Sylvain Pogodalla, INRIA Nancy, France
  • Revantha Ramanayake, University of Groningen, Netherlands
  • Mehrnoosh Sadrzadeh, University College London, UK
  • Andre Scedrov, University of Pennsylvania, USA (co-chair)
  • Philip Scott, University of Ottawa, Canada
  • Viorica Sofronie-Stokkermans, University of Koblenz-Landau, Germany
  • Kazushige Terui, Kyoto University, Japan
  • Mladen Vuković, University of Zagreb, Croatia

Steering committee

Samson Abramsky, Agata Ciabattoni, Anuj Dawar, Juliette Kennedy, Ulrich Kohlenbach, Daniel Leivant, Leonid Libkin, Lawrence Moss, Luke Ong, Valeria de Paiva, Elaine Pimentel, Ruy de Queiroz, Alexandra Silva, Renata Wassermann.

Advisory committee

Johan van Benthem, Joe Halpern, Wilfrid Hodges, Angus Macintyre, Hiroakira Ono, Jouko Väänänen.

Organizing committee

  • Neil J. Ross, Dalhousie University
  • Peter Selinger, Dalhousie University (co-chair)
  • Anjolina G. de Oliveira, Univ Federal de Pernambuco, Brazil
  • Ruy de Queiroz, Univ Federal de Pernambuco, Brazil (co-chair)

Financial sponsors

We gratefully acknowledge financial support from:

Contact

WoLLIC 2023 is organized by the Department of Mathematics and Statistics of Dalhousie University, and by the Centro de Informática, Universidade Federal de Pernambuco, Brazil.

For questions related to submissions and the scientific program, please email one of the PC co-chairs: Helle Hvid Hansen or Andre Scedrov. For questions about the local organisation, please email Peter Selinger or Julien Ross. For general questions about the WoLLIC conference series, please email Ruy de Queiroz.