Conference: Protolang

Conference: Protolang
Torun, Poland
September 19-21, 2011

Protolang is a biennial conference organised by the Department of English, Nicolaus Copernicus University, Torun. One of the primary goals of this conference is bringing together researchers representing a variety of areas in order to gain a multidisciplinary perspective on the range of currently available evidence relevant to early language evolution. The focus of the conference is on the early stages of the emergence of symbolic, language-like communication in hominids. The conference will reflect the inherently interdisciplinary nature of research into the evolution of language. We invite papers from a wide range of subjects related to language evolution.

Keynote Speakers:

John Gowlett (University of Liverpool; Lucy to Language British Academy Project) - "Language Beginnings – a view from the early archaeological record"

Juliane Kaminski (Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology) - "Do dogs get the point"

Adam Kendon (Institute for Research in Cognitive Science, University of Pennsylvania)- "An evolutionary approach to explaining why patterned visible bodily action commonly occurs when people speak"

Katie Slocombe (Department of Psychology, University of York)
"Vocal communication in chimpanzees"

Call for papers (due May 30) here: http://protolang.umk.pl