Linguistics @ Cyprus

Here a quick post, on a more or less personal note. Even though we may be far away from a lot of places, Cyprus does have a growing (bio)linguistic community. Here are just three interesting events:

LOT 1 (international postgraduate student conference): http://linguistlist.org/issues/21/21-675.html
GACL 4 (forget the acronym): http://www.punksinscience.org/kleanthes/GACL-4/index.html
LDG 3 (Language Disorders in Greek): http://www.euc.ac.cy/easyconsole.cfm/id/1056

If any BIOLINGUISTICS BLOG reader is interested in participating, and even giving a paper, please send me a quick email! LOT 1 and LDG 3 don't have much of a "website" and GACL 4's is basic (should I say "crappy"?), but there you are. Naama Friedmann, Theo Marinis, Alex Perovic, and Ken Wexler, all in two days, and Sonja Eisenbeiss, Tom McFadden, Peter Patrick, and Barbara Lust in three days a month earlier is no small feat by anyone's reckoning.

These events are, of course, to some extent pushed by the recently formed Cyprus Acquisition Team (CAT) and the new Gen-CHILD Project we were awarded. (Both sites are also still in development.)

We can organize crash space and try to keep all other costs low if anyone's interested in coming out here!

Kleanthes

Recently in the headlines

• Nature EMBOR: Speak to me, melody: Music's biological roots with language under scrutiny
• SD: Form or function: Evolution takes different paths, genetic study shows
• NYT: From a songbird, new insights into the brain (this has gotten a lot of coverage)
• SD: New period of brain 'plasticity' created with transplanted embryonic cells
• arXiv: The pace of evolution across fitness valleys
• SD: Why certain symmetries are never observed in nature
• SD: Hyenas' laughter signals decoded
• SD: How does a heart know when it's big enough?
• SD: In brain-injured children, early gesturing predicts language delays
• SD: Autism susceptibility genes identified
• SD: Words influence infants' cognition from first months of life
• SD: Human brain becomes tuned to voices and emotional tone during infancy

Conference on Language, Nature, & Cognition at VSSoL

Conference on Language, Nature, and Cognition at the Verbum Summer School of Linguistics
July 16-17, 2010 in Vigo, Galicia, Spain.

Abstracts are invited for presentation at the Verbum Summer School of Linguistics (VSSoL) Conference on Language, Nature, and Cognition, on any aspect of theoretical linguistics, experimental linguistics, and biolinguistics. There will also be a poster session.

Invited speakers are Juan Uriagereka (University of Maryland) and Manuel Carreiras (Basque Center on Cognition, Brain, and Language).

Call for papers (due May 21, 2010): here.