Noortje Venhuizen

Dr. Noortje J. Venhuizen

Semantics, Cognitive Science, AI
—It's all about meaning

I am an assistant professor (universitair docent) in the Department of Cognitive Science and Artificial Intelligence at the Tilburg School of Humanities and Digital Sciences (TSHD), Tilburg University.

Short Bio

2022-present: Assistant professor, Department of Cognitive Science and AI, Tilburg University
2022: Principal investigator in SFB 1102, Saarland University
2016-2022: Scientific Staff, Saarland University
2015-2016: Postdoctoral researcher, SFB 1102, Saarland University
2015: PhD in Computational Semantics at the University of Groningen
2011: MSc in Logic at the ILLC, University of Amsterdam
2009: BSc in Artificial Intelligence at Utrecht University

Latest updates

December 2022: I joined the CSAI Department at Tilburg University!
September 2022: Our article on Distributional formal semantics in the journal Information and Computation is finally officially out of press!
June 2022: I am now a research group leader in Project C3 of SFB 1102!

Research interests

I am interested in formal (symbolic/ distributional/ probabilistic) models of linguistic meaning and how they can be applied and evaluated, using cognitive modeling, behavioral experiments, and computational methods in natural language understanding. Below, I list my current research topics. For more information about my current and past research, see my list of publications.

Distributional Formal Semantics (DFS)

DFS offers probabilistic distributed representations that are also inherently compositional. When used as part of a recurrent neural network, these representations allow for capturing incremental meaning construction and probabilistic inference.
Article (2022) Software

Neurocomputational modeling of ERPs

We aim to arrive at an explicit neurocomputational model of the electrophysiology of language comprehension, focusing on the N400 and the P600 component of the Event Related brain Potential (ERP) signal.
Article (2021)

Rational encoding and decoding

In Project C3 within SFB 1102, we investigate information-theoretic explanations of encoding and decoding behaviour, with an emphasis on the mechanisms that underlie the linearization of referring expressions
Article (2021)

My publications

Journal Articles

Venhuizen, N. J., Hendriks, P., Crocker, M. W., and Brouwer, H. (2022). Distributional Formal Semantics. Information and Computation, 287: 104763. doi: 10.1016/j.ic.2021.104763 PDF BibTex
Sikos, L., Venhuizen, N. J., Drenhaus, H., Crocker, M. W. (2021). Reevaluating Pragmatic Reasoning in Language Games. PLoS ONE, 16(3): e0248388. doi:10.1371/journal.pone.0248388 PDF BibTex
Brouwer, H., Delogu, F., Venhuizen, N. J., and Crocker, M. W. (2021). Neurobehavioral Correlates of Surprisal in Language Comprehension: A Neurocomputational Model. Frontiers in Psychology, 12:110. doi:10.3389/fpsyg.2021.615538 PDF BibTex
Venhuizen, N. J., Crocker, M. W., and Brouwer, H. (2019). Semantic Entropy in Language Comprehension. Entropy, 21(12):1159. doi:10.3390/e21121159 PDF BibTex
Venhuizen, N. J., Crocker, M. W., and Brouwer, H. (2019). Expectation-based Comprehension: Modeling the interaction of world knowledge and linguistic experience. Discourse Processes, 56(3):229-255. doi:10.1080/0163853X.2018.1448677 PDF BibTex
Venhuizen, N. J., Bos, J., Hendriks, P., and Brouwer, H. (2018). Discourse Semantics with Information Structure. Journal of Semantics, 35(1):127-169. doi:10.1093/jos/ffx017 PDF BibTex
Selected as part of the Linguistics article collection 2019 of Oxford University Press
Brouwer, H., Crocker M. W., Venhuizen, N. J., and Hoeks, J. C. J. (2017). A Neurocomputational Model of the N400 and the P600 in Language Processing. Cognitive Science, 41:1318-1352. doi:10.1111/cogs.12461 PDF BibTex

Book Chapters

Bos, J., Basile, V., Evang, K., Venhuizen, N. J., and Bjerva, J. (2017) The Groningen Meaning Bank. In Ide, N. and Pustejovsky, J. (eds.), Handbook of Linguistic Annotation, pp. 463-496. Springer Netherlands, Dordrecht. doi:10.1007/978-94-024-0881-2_18 PDF BibTex
Brouwer, H., Crocker, M. W., and Venhuizen, N. J. (2017). Neural Semantics. In: Wieling, M., Kroon, M., van Noord, G., and Bouma, G. (eds.), From Semantics to Dialectometry: Festschrift for John Nerbonne, pp. 75-83. College Publications. PDF BibTex

Conference Proceedings

Sikos, L., Venhuizen, N. J., Drenhaus, H., Crocker, M. W. (2021). Speak before you listen: Pragmatic reasoning in multi-trial language games. In: T. Fitch et al. (Eds.) Proceedings of the 43rd Annual Meeting of the Cognitive Science Society, pp. 1465-1471. PDF BibTex
Venhuizen, N. J., Hendriks, P., Crocker, M. W., and Brouwer, H. (2019). A Framework for Distributional Formal Semantics. In: Iemhoff, R., Moortgat, M., and de Queiroz, R. (Eds.), Logic, Language, Information, and Computation, Proceedings of the 26th International Workshop WoLLIC 2019, LNCS 11541, pp. 633-646. doi:10.1007/978-3-662-59533-6_39 PDF BibTex
Venhuizen, N. J., Bos, J., Hendriks, P., and Brouwer, H. (2014). How and Why Conventional Implicatures Project. In Todd Snider et al. (eds.), Proceedings of Semantics and Linguistic Theory (SALT) 24, pp. 63-83, New York, USA. PDF BibTex
Venhuizen, N. J. and Brouwer, H. (2014). PDRT-SANDBOX: An implementation of Projective Discourse Representation Theory. In Verena Rieser and Philippe Muller (eds.), Proceedings of the 18th Workshop on the Semantics and Pragmatics of Dialogue (SemDial-DialWatt 2014), pp. 249-251, September 1-3, Edinburgh, Scotland. PDF BibTex
Venhuizen, N. J., Bos, J. and Brouwer, H. (2013). Parsimonious Semantic Representations with Projection Pointers. In Katrin Erk and Alexander Koller (eds.), Proceedings of the 10th International Conference on Computational Semantics (IWCS'13) -- Long Papers, pp. 252-263, Potsdam, Germany. PDF BibTex
Venhuizen, N. J., Basile, V., Evang, K. and Bos, J. (2013). Gamification for Word Sense Labeling. In Katrin Erk and Alexander Koller (eds.), Proceedings of the 10th International Conference on Computational Semantics (IWCS'13) -- Short Papers , pp. 397-403, Potsdam, Germany. PDF BibTex
Roelofsen, F., Venhuizen, N. J. and Weidman Sassoon, G. (2013). Positive and negative polar questions in discourse. In Emmanuel Chemla, Vincent Homer and Grégoire Winterstein (eds.), Proceedings of Sinn und Bedeutung 17, pp. 455-472, Paris, France. PDF BibTex
Basile, V., Bos, J., Evang, K. and Venhuizen, N. J. (2012). UGroningen: Negation detection with Discourse Representation Structures. In Eneko Agirre, Johan Bos and Mona Diab (eds.), Proceedings of the First Joint Conference on Lexical and Computational Semantics (*SEM'12), pp. 301-309, Montréal, Canada. PDF BibTex
Basile, V., Bos, J., Evang, K. and Venhuizen, N. J. (2012). Developing a large semantically annotated corpus. In Nicoletta Calzolari et al. (eds.), Proceedings of the 8th International Conference on Language Resources and Evaluation (LREC'12), pp. 3196-3200, Istanbul, Turkey. PDF BibTex
Basile, V., Bos, J., Evang, K. and Venhuizen, N. J. (2012). A platform for collaborative semantic annotation. In F. Segond (ed.), Proceedings of the Demonstrations at the 13th Conference of the European Chapter of the Association for Computational Linguistics (EACL'12), pp. 92-96, Avignon, France. PDF BibTex

Software

PDRT-SANDBOX: A Haskell NLP library implementing (Projective) Discourse Representation Theory (in collaboration with H. Brouwer). Available under the Apache License, Version 2.0.
DFS Tools: A Prolog implementation of Distributional Formal Semantics (in collaboration with H. Brouwer). Available under the Apache License, Version 2.0.

Theses

Venhuizen, N. J. (2015). Projection in Discourse: A data-driven formal semantic analysis. PhD thesis, University of Groningen. (Supervisors: Prof. dr. J. Bos and Prof. dr. P. Hendriks; Jury: Prof. dr. N. M. Asher, Prof. dr. J. Hoeksema, and Prof. dr. R. A. van der Sandt; Opposition: Prof. dr. L. B. W. Geurts, Prof. dr. J. A. W. Kamp, dr. E. Maier, and dr. H. W. Zeevat) PDF BibTex
Venhuizen, N. J. (2011). Negation in Questions. Master's Thesis, ILLC, University of Amsterdam. (Supervisors: dr. Floris Roelofsen and dr. Galit Weidman Sassoon) PDF

Selected presentations

For a full list of presentations and posters, please ask for my CV. Selected slides and posters can also be found on ResearchGate.

Recent talks

Venhuizen, N.J. (2022). Expectation-based Semantics in Language Comprehension. Keynote talk at the Workshop on Processing meets Semantics (PROMS), September 1–3, Utrecht, the Netherlands.
Suurmeijer, L., Filip, H. and Venhuizen, N.J. (2022). Probabilities in language and the world: Modeling syllogistic reasoning. Talk presented at the Workshop on Bridges and Gaps between Formal and Computational Linguistics (BriGap), at the 33rd edition of the European Summer School of Logic, Language and Information (ESSLLI), August 8-12 Galway, Ireland.
Venhuizen, N.J. (2022). Expectation-based dynamic semantics. Invited talk at the Workshop in honor of Prof. Dr. h.c. Hans Kamp, The Dynamics of Semantics: Past, present and future ways of thinking about meaning, June 23–25, Stuttgart, Germany.

Selected posters

Sikos, L., Venhuizen, N. J., Drenhaus, H. and Crocker, M. W. (2021). Speak before you listen: Pragmatic reasoning in multi-trial language games. Poster presented at the 43rd Annual Meeting of the Cognitive Science Society: CogSci 2021 (Virtual meeting), July 26–29, Vienna Cognitive Science Hub. PDF
Sikos, L., Venhuizen, N. J., Drenhaus, H. and Crocker, M. W. (2019). Reevaluating Pragmatic Reasoning in Online Language Games. Poster presented at the 32nd Annual CUNY Conference on Human Sentence Processing, March 29-31, Boulder, CO, USA. PDF
Brouwer, H., Venhuizen, N. J. and Crocker, M. W. (2018). Indexing the N400 and the P600 in a Computational Model of Sentence Comprehension. Poster presented at the 31st CUNY Conference on Human Sentence Processing, March 15-17, Davis, CA, USA. PDF
Brouwer, H., Venhuizen, N. J. and Crocker, M. W. (2016). The Electrophysiology of Language Comprehension: A Neurocomputational Model. Poster presented at the 23rd Annual Meeting of the Cognitive Neuroscience Society (CNS 2016), April 2-5, New York, NY, USA. PDF
Venhuizen, N. J. and Brouwer, H. (2014). PDRT-SANDBOX: Implementing Projective Discourse Representation Theory. Poster presented at the 18th Workshop on the Semantics and Pragmatics of Dialogue (SemDial-DialWatt 2014), September 1-3, Edinburgh, Scotland. PDF
Venhuizen, N. J., Bos, J., Hendriks, P., and Brouwer, H. (2014). How and Why Conventional Implicatures Project. Poster presented at the 24rd Semantics and Linguistic Theory Conference (SALT 24), May 30-June 1, New York University, New York, USA. PDF

Teaching

Current

Research Workshop CSAI, BSc., Dept. Cognitive Science & Artificial Intelligence, Tilburg University. Spring 2023.
Bachelor Thesis CSAI, BSc., Dept. Cognitive Science & Artificial Intelligence, Tilburg University. Spring 2023.

Past

Semantic Theory, MSc, Dept. Language Science and Technology, Saarland University. Yearly: Summer 2015 - Summer 2022.
Foundations of Linguistics: Semantics, MSc, Dept. Language Science and Technology, Saarland University. Winter 2020, 2021.
Information Theory (Guest Lecturer), MSc, Saarland University. Summer 2019.

Contact details

Work:
Department of Cognitive Science and Artificial Intelligence, Tilburg University
Dante Building, Room D 133
Warandelaan 2, 5037 AB Tilburg

Short Bio

Latest updates

Research interests

Distributional Formal Semantics (DFS)

Neurocomputational modeling of ERPs

Rational encoding and decoding

My publications

Journal Articles

Book Chapters

Conference Proceedings

Software

Theses

Selected presentations

Recent talks

Selected posters

Teaching

Current

Past

Contact details