Hans Kamp
Also known as Johan Anthony Willem Kamp
Hans Kamp is a Dutch philosopher and linguist whose discourse representation theory (DRT) explains how people understand sentences in a continuous text. He introduced DRT in 1981 and worked for two decades at the Institute of Natural Language Processing in Stuttgart, where he took a professorship in 1988. He earned a UCLA doctorate under Richard Montague in 1968, and the Jean Nicod Prize followed in 1996. He retired from Stuttgart in 2008 and is a visiting professor at UT Austin. The Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences awarded him the Rolf Schock Prize in Logic and Philosophy in 2024, jointly with Irene Heim.
Timeline
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1958–1968
A UCLA doctorate under Montague
Born in the Netherlands in 1940, he studies physics and mathematics at Leiden from 1958. He completes a UCLA doctorate under Richard Montague in 1968.
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1981
Introducing discourse representation theory
As a philosopher and linguist, he introduces discourse representation theory (DRT) in 1981. DRT explains how people understand and interpret the meaning of sentences in a continuous text or conversation.
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1988
A Stuttgart professorship
He takes a professorship in formal logic and the philosophy of language at Stuttgart in 1988. There he works for two decades at the Institute of Natural Language Processing.
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1996–1997
Prize and academy membership
He receives the Jean Nicod Prize in 1996. In 1997 he becomes a corresponding member of the Royal Netherlands Academy of Arts and Sciences.
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2008
Retiring from Stuttgart
He retires from Stuttgart in 2008, after further advancing DRT with other scholars.
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2024
A shared Rolf Schock Prize
In 2024 the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences awards him the Rolf Schock Prize in Logic and Philosophy, jointly with Irene Heim of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.
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As of October 2026
Visiting professor at UT Austin
He is a visiting professor in the Departments of Linguistics and Philosophy at the University of Texas, Austin.
Sources and credits
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