Logic, Language, and Information

Abstract

The rapidly evolving interdisciplinary field of Logic, Language and Information (LLI) treats a variety of topics, ranging from knowledge representation to the syntax, semantics and pragmatics of natural language. Moreover, it does so from a variety of perspectives. However, one word more than any other gives the flavour of much contemporary work in LLI: dynamics. The purpose of this chapter is twofold. First, we give an impression of what LLI is and why dynamics plays such a fundamental role there. Second, we relate the study of dynamics to relation algebra. The essential point that will emerge is that many LLI approaches to dynamics can be naturally viewed as explorations of fragments of relation algebra via their set-theoretic representations.

The research of the third author has been made possible by a fellowship of the Royal Netherlands Academy of Arts and Sciences.