Mission Statement

From their first beginnings in ancient Greece and India, logic and the study of language have been closely entwined. Logic takes its source in the process of reasoning; language is the basic means for carrying it out it, as well as the principal vehicle for its communication.

At times in their history, logic and the study of language have turned their faces away from each other in their quests for inspiration. The nineteenth century, for example, was a great period in the development of historical and comparative linguistics with a predominantly empirical emphasis; the early twentieth century was for logic a moment of triumph with its deep characterization of deductive reasoning as carried out in mathematics.

But with the entry of the computer into all domains of life, logic and the study of language have taken up new challenges beyond their past achievements, and are looking again to each other for cooperation and synergy. The discipline of natural language processing has been born, with its objectives of computational analysis, interpretation and generation of text, speech and dialogue. The very process of computation provides a reference against which to compare the hidden operations of the human mind. Logic has provided some of the essential ingredients for constructing artificial programming languages, and seeks to unlock the keys to forms of human reasoning beyond deduction, opening onto the exciting domain coming to be known as the practical logic of cognitive systems.

The Group of Logic, Language, and Computation, based in the Department of Computer Science of King's College London, takes up this challenge. It provides courses that permit the student to come abreast of developments in both these areas and to specialize in one in full awareness of the techniques of the other, leading to the MSc and the PhD. Its members conduct research, as individuals and in teams, in both natural language processing and the logical structure of human/computer interaction.