Jeroen Groenendijk (20 July 1949 - 17 October 2023) started studying philosophy in 1969, initially combining it with Dutch language and literature and later with general linguistics. He specialized in logic and the philosophy of language and graduated in 1974. Most of his studies were supervised by Simon Dik, who held the chair of general linguistics, and by Johan van Benthem, a newly appointed assistant professor of logic.
His master thesis, coauthored by Martin Stokhof and supervised by Renate Bartsch, who was the newly appointed chair in Philosophy of Language, led to the 1975 Theoretical Linguistics paper 'Modality and Conversational Information'. This marked his first foray into applying logical methods to the semantics and pragmatics of natural language, a field in which he worked throughout his academic career.
After graduating, Groenendijk and Stokhof worked as scientific researchers on a project run by Teun van Dijk, a lecturer in text linguistics. The project, which was funded by the Dutch Research Council ZWO, the precursor of NWO, focused on the analysis of performatives.
In 1976, Stokhof and Groenendijk were appointed as assistant professors with Renate Bartsch. During this time, they wrote several papers on different topics: the analysis of personal pronouns in Montague Grammar, the structure of the theory of meaning, the analysis of specificity, and the formal analysis of performative sentences. They also developed the framework of epistemic pragmatics, which became the starting point for a joint PhD project. However, this project was never completed, although they did publish a joint paper with Peter van Emde Boas as a spinoff, using the framework to analyze the Conway-paradox.
A challenge posed by Simon Dik —"But what about questions?"— initiated a move toward the analysis of questions. Groenendijk and Stokhof found the prevailing semantic theory of the time, proposed by Lauri Kartunen, lacking. As a result, they developed an alternative known as the `partition theory of questions,' which allowed for an integrated analysis of semantic and pragmatic aspects of questions and answers. A first publication on this topic was the 1982 paper 'A semantic analysis of wh-complements', published in Linguistics and Philosophy. Several other publications followed, and the project culminated in a joint 1984 dissertation, Studies on the Semantics of Questions and the Pragmatics of Answers, supervised by Renate Bartsch and Johan van Benthem. This dissertation is still regularly cited.
Although work on topics connected with questions and answers continued, a decisive shift in focus occurred when in 1986 Jeroen Groenendijk was temporarily working at the Philips Nat Lab with the language technology group led by Jan Landsbergen. How to semantically handle cross-sentential anaphora was a hot topic, as were several other open questions regarding quantifiers and scope. Working on these issues, Groenendijk and Stokhof developed 'dynamic predicate logic' and, subsequently, a dynamic version of Montague Grammar. The 1991 Linguistics and Philosophy paper `Dynamic Predicate Logic' had a broad impact and continues to be cited today. It was selected by the Philosopher's Annual as one of the best ten papers to appear in philosophy in 1991.
Work on dynamic semantics continued when Groenendijk and Stokhof joined forces with Frank Veltman, who had developed Update Semantics in the late 1980s. Veltman's analysis of epistemic modalities was combined with dynamic predicate logic in a series of publications, the main one being the 1996 paper `Coreference and Modality', which appeared in the Blackwell Handbook of Contemporary Semantic Theory. The resulting system was refined and applied to various semantic phenomena.
In October 1998 Stokhof and Groenendijk succeeded Renate Bartsch as chairs in the Philosophy of Language. Around this time Jeroen Groenendijk began working on a combination of ideas about questions and information exchange, resulting in what he referred to as `the logic of interrogation'. Much of his work in these years remains unpublished, but it led to the development of an entirely new semantic framework called `inquisitive semantics'. He developed and applied this framework in close cooperation with his former students, Floris Roelofsen and Ivano Ciardelli. Other students and researchers in Amsterdam and abroad have also begun adopting the framework, and to date, it is one of the most productive semantic theories. The authoritative statement of the framework's principles, its logic, and various applications can be found in the book Inquisitive Semantics, written by Ciardelli, Roelofsen, and Groenendijk and published by Oxford University Press in 2018.
Shortly after his retirement in 2014, health problems forced Jeroen Groenendijk to change course again. He continued following the work of his colleagues and former students, but he could no longer contribute actively.
Apart from being a highly successful researcher, Jeroen Groenendijk was also active as an organizer of scientific events and collaborations. He was one of the initiators of the Amsterdam Colloquium, a series of biannual conferences in formal semantics and pragmatics of natural language. Started in 1976, this series continues to be one of the main venues of the semantics and pragmatics community. He actively participated in the two large-scale, international, EU-funded cooperative research programs Dyana and Dyana 2, working with Hans Kamp, Gennaro Chierchia, Maria Aloni, David Beaver, Paul Dekker, Craige Roberts, and others. In an NWO-funded project, Sources and Streams of Information, he cooperated with Robert van Rooij, Albert Visser, the late Cees Vermeulen, and Reinhard Muskens. Later, a large NWO-funded project supported the development of the inquisitive semantics framework.
Jeroen Groenendijk was also a dedicated teacher and supervisor, and he contributed to administration in important ways. He was one of the authors of the Gamut two-volume textbook on logic and Montague grammar, a work that has been translated into English, Spanish, and Chinese. Furthermore, the `Logic and the Linguistic Turn' course, which he coordinated for many years, was recognized as the best course taught in the Faculty of Humanities in 2006/2007. In the late 1990s, he served as the director of teaching in the philosophy department, and in 2009 he was the scientific director of the ILLC.
| Home | Papers etc | Links |