TOTh 2021 Opening Talk - Nicola Guarino: "Events and their names" - 3 June 2021

Thanks to distribute (with apologies for cross postings)

*Nicola Guarino: **"***Events and their names*"*
*TOTh 2021 Opening Talk
*

3 June 2021 (on-site and online)
http://toth.condillac.org/opening-talk

*Abstract:* In a famous book, Jonathan Bennett claimed that the 
semantics of event names (mainly verbs and their nominalizations) 
ultimately depends on “local context and unprincipled intuitions”. Yet, 
terminologists presuppose some systematic connection between terms and 
reality, so they must face the hard task of verb semantics.
Contra Bennett, i will show in this talk that a systematic connection 
between events and their names exists (at least for a large class of 
verbs), although it is not always immediate. To understand it, I will 
first introduce a new proposal for an ontology of events that is 
independent of the properties we ascribe to them, abandoning Kim’s view 
of events as property exemplifications. Then I will show how cognition 
selects relevant clusters of simple events, and how the lexicon provides 
systematic principles for individuating such clusters, classifying them 
into kinds, and imposing a figure/ground structure on them.
*Biography: *Nicola Guarino is a retired research associate at the 
Institute of Cognitive Sciences and Technologies of the Italian National 
Research Council (ISTC-CNR), and former director of the ISTC-CNR 
Laboratory for Applied Ontology (LOA) based in Trento. He has been 
playing a leading role in the ontology field, developing a strongly 
interdisciplinary approach that combines together Computer Science, 
Philosophy, and Linguistics. Among the most well known results of his 
lab, the OntoClean methodology and the DOLCE foundational ontology. He 
has been founder and co-editor-in-chief of the Applied Ontology journal, 
founder and former president of the International Association for 
Ontology and its Applications (IAOA), and editorial board member of Int. 
Journal of Semantic Web and Information Systems and Journal of Data 
Semantics. He is also fellow of the European Association for Artificial 
Intelligence (EurAI).
On the theoretical side, his current research interests are focusing on 
the ontological foundations of knowlege representation and conceptual 
modeling and specifically the ontology of events and relationships, 
while on the application side he is focusing on enterprise modeling, 
services, and manufacturing.

*TOTh web site*: http://toth.condillac.org/

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Prof Christophe ROCHE

Condillac Research Group - LISTIC Lab.
Université Savoie Mont-Blanc - Campus Scientifique
73376 Le Bourget du Lac cedex - France

christophe.roche@univ-savoie.fr
www.christophe-roche.fr  -www.condillac.org
tel: +33 (0) 479 758 779 - cell:+33 (0) 686 250 705
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