CFP: Advances in Biolinguistics (SLE 44, preliminary)

CALL FOR PAPERS: Advances in Biolinguistics
WORKSHOP DATES: 10–11 September 2011
CONFERENCE: SLE 44 (http://sle2011.cilap.es)
LOCATION: Logroño (La Rioja), Spain
CFP DEADLINE: 14 November 2010

Contact Person: Kleanthes Grohmann (kleanthi@ucy.ac.cy)

Biolinguistics is concerned with exploring the basic properties of the language faculty, how it matures in the individual, how it is put to use in thought and action (including communication), what brain circuits may implement it, and how it emerged in the human species. In asking these questions, biolinguists try to determine which components of the brain are unique to language, as opposed to shared with other cognitive domains such as music and mathematics, and especially those that also seem unique to humans. If, as seems reasonable to suppose, our linguistic capacity is both uniquely human and, in part, uniquely comprised of language-specific mechanisms, significant conceptual and empirical issues arise concerning its evolution, form, maturation, and function.

We encourage submissions of abstracts that touch on any of the issues listed above, or any other that contributes to our understanding of the biological foundations of the language faculty. Of special interest are contributions that bring biological considerations to bear on linguistic theorizing.

Advances in Biolinguistics is a workshop intended for the 44th Annual Meeting of the Societas Linguistica Europaea (http://sle2011.cilap.es). Since we will need to submit a proposal with a preliminary list of speakers by November 15, we need preliminary titles and mini-abstracts (3-5 sentences) from potentially interested participants. The deadline for these is Sunday, November 14, 2010. Please note that expressing an interest in participation by sending us a title and mini-abstract is not binding. The final deadline for regular abstracts, to be submitted via the conference site, is January 15, 2011. We will send interested participants a reminder about this, and we will of course also let them know, by mid-December, whether the workshop was accepted.

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• PLoS ONE: Rhesus monkeys do recognize themselves in the mirror

Recently in the headlines

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Podcast: WNYC Radiolab on Words

The August 9 edition of WNYC Radiolab, which you can find here, has a linguistic theme, and features Elizabeth Spelke. The website summarizes the show as follows:

"It’s almost impossible to imagine a world without words. But in this hour of Radiolab, we try to do just that. We speak to a woman who taught a 27-year-old man the first words of his life, and we hear a firsthand account of what it feels like to have the language center of your brain wiped out by a stroke."

There are more links to earlier language-related episodes and some short videos on that same page.

Conference: GLOW 34

Conference: GLOW 34

April 27 - May 1, 2011

Universität Wien

Topic: It is uncontroversial that language has both a sound and a meaning component. In addition to the latter two, a narrow syntactic component is postulated by linguists. But is narrow syntax a real, empirically identifiable subcomponent of the human ability to use language in the most general sense, or is it merely an analytical artifact? Are there principled grounds for separating ”Merge” from prosody, implicature, presupposition, parsing, functional structure, the lexicon, morphology, phonology, stylistic movement, and binding theory? While there are various conceptual lines of reasoning to adopt a position on these issues, this position must always be backed up by empirical evidence. Are there mechanisms in the sound and meaning components that achieve the same results as Merge? And, if so, do they require an extra level of quasi-syntactic processes to achieve them? What do we know about how narrow syntax interfaces with these other systems? Abstracts relating to these questions but not limited to them are invited for presentation at GLOW34. The questions should not only be addressed from the viewpoint of syntax, or current syntactic theories, but should also be addressed from within phonology, morphology, semantics and pragmatics, vis-a-vis-syntax, as well as by psycho-linguistics.

Call for papers (due Nov. 1) here.

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• SD: Neurological process for the recognition of letters and numbers explained
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