Jakub Szymanik

Computation, Language & Thought Lab

Output of ERC grant Cognitive Semantics and Quantities summing up much of my research between 2016- 2022.

me

I am an Associate Professor at the Center for Mind/Brain Sciences (CiMeC) and the Department of Information Engineering and Computer Science at the University of Trento. Before joining CiMeC through a direct call in 2022, I held the same position at the University of Amsterdam (2013–2022), where I led research projects at the Institute for Logic, Language and Computation. I hold the Italian National Scientific Qualification as a Full Professor in Linguistics (10/G1) and as an Associate Professor in Computer Science (INF01). My lab studies how human and artificial minds represent meaning, learn concepts, and reason about the world.

Keynotes at SPE 13 & OntoBRIX

By

I delivered a keynote at Semantics and Philosophy in Europe 13 (SPE 13), held jointly with OntoBRIX at PTH Brixen College in Bressanone (8–10 June 2026). In my talk, “The Cognitive Ontology of Logic: How Learnability Shapes the Universal Lexicon of Quantifiers,” I argued that learnability pressures shape which quantifier meanings recur across the world’s languages — connecting the CoLT Lab’s work on semantic universals to the workshop’s theme of ontology and semantics across linguistics, computer science, and philosophy.