Recently in the headlines

• SD: Distinct features of autistic brain revealed in novel analysis of MRI scans
• LL: Vocal learning in wild parrotlets
• NS: Svante Pääbo: the man rewriting human evolution
• NS: Dolphins call each other by name
• SD: Have we met before? Direct connections found between areas of brain responsible for voice and face recognition
• SD: Human brain evolution, new insight through x-rays: experiment reveals brain shape of an early human ancestor
• SD: Australopithecus sediba paved the way for Homo species, new studies suggest
• SD: New evidence suggests that Au. sediba is the best candidate for the genus Homo
• BBC: How African fossils put new spin on human origins story (video)
• Cerebral Cortex: Sound to language: Different cortical processing for first and second languages in elementary school children as revealed by a large-scale study using fNIRS
• Cerebral Cortex: Musical expertise boosts implicit learning of both musical and linguistic structures
• SD: Watching the world in motion, babies take a first step in toward language

Recently in the headlines

• NG: Elephant makes a stool - first known aha moment for species
• TICS: Genetics of autism spectrum disorders
• SD: Two-year-old children understand complex grammar
• SD: Bilingual babies' vocabulary linked to early brain differentiation
• SD: Localizing language in the brain: study pinpoints areas of brain used exclusively for language
• PNAS: The motor origins of human and avian song structure

Recently in the headlines

• SD: Bird song-sharing like vocal sparring
• arXiv: The secret foraging behavior of bees
• BBC: Millie the mandril develops own sign language (video)
• SciAm: A signal for solitude: Monkeys create their own rudimentary language sign
• SD: Chinese-English bilinguals are 'automatic' translators
• Perspectives on Psychological Science: Mirror neuron forum
• Science: Human voice recognition depends on language ability
• Nature: What birds have to say about language

I'm going to try to publish news roundup posts more frequently in the future (~biweekly) so stories reach you in a more timely fashion. If there is interest in putting individual news items on twitter, I would be happy to do that as well.

Recently in the headlines

• SD: Birdsong independent of brain size: sex difference in the brain varies according to social status
• SD: Learning to count not as easy as 1, 2, 3: working with larger numbers matters
• SD: Unexpected function of dyslexia-linked gene: controlling cilia of cells
• NS: Parrots join apes & Aristotle in the club of reason
• SD: Components of speech recognition pathway in humans identified
• Youtube: Chomsky lectures at University of Cologne lecture 1, lecture 2
• NS: First evidence that birds tweet using grammar
• SD: Dyslexia linked to difficulties in perceiving rhythmic patterns in music
• Science: Chimps are good listeners, too
• NS: Project Nim: A chimp raised as a human
• SD: English for advanced learners: linguists examine obstacles to native-like proficiency in foreign language acquisition
• J of Neurosci: Neural coding of syntactic structure in learned vocalizations in the songbird
• Nature: Songbirds possess the spontaneous ability to discriminate syntactic rules
• Language Log: Finch linguistics
• BBC: Lizard has problem-solving skills
• LA Times: UC Berkeley asks incoming students to say more than 'hello'
• NS: Age no excuse for failing to learn a new language
• Geekosystem: Study shows parrot parents name their babies

Biolinguistics Vol 5 Issues 1-2 published

BIOLINGUISTICS has just published its latest issue at
http://www.biolinguistics.eu/index.php/biolinguistics. We invite you to
review the Table of Contents here and then visit our web site to review
articles and items of interest.

Thanks for the continuing interest in our work,
Kleanthes K. Grohmann and Cedric Boeckx
BIOLINGUISTICS Editors-in-Chief
editor@biolinguistics.eu

BIOLINGUISTICS
Vol 5, No 1-2 (2011)
Table of Contents
http://www.biolinguistics.eu/index.php/biolinguistics/issue/view/18

Editorial
--------
Biolinguistic Perspectives on Recursion: Introduction to the Special Issue
(001-009)
Uli Sauerland, Andreas Trotzke


Articles
--------
Learning Recursion: Multiple Nested and Crossed Dependencies (010-035)
Meinou de Vries, Morten Christiansen, Karl-Magnus Petersson

What in the World Makes Recursion so Easy to Learn? A Statistical Account
of the Staged Input Effect on Learning a Center-Embedded Structure in
Artificial Grammar Learning (AGL) (036-042)
Fenna Poletiek

Recursion in Language: A Layered-Derivation Approach (043-056)
Jan-Wouter Zwart

The Acquisition of Recursion: How Formalism Articulates the Child’s Path
(057-086)
Tom W. Roeper

The Neural Basis of Recursion and Complex Syntactic Hierarchy (087-104)
Angela Dorkas Friederici, Jörg Bahlmann, Roland Friedrich, Michiru
Makuuchi

Implicit Artificial Syntax Processing: Genes, Preference, and Bounded
Recursion (105-132)
Vasiliki Folia, Christian Forkstam, Martin Ingvar, Karl Magnus
Petersson, Karl Magnus Petersson

An Uncouth Approach to Language Recursivity (133-150)
Eleonora Russo, Alessandro Treves


Reviews
--------
“A Running Back” and Forth: A Review of Recursion and Human Language
(151-169)
David J. Lobina


BIOLINGUISTICS
--------
FRONT COVER
The Editors

BACK COVER
The Editors

FULL ISSUE
The Editors

Conference: Evolang IX (March 13-16, 2012, Kyoto)

Evolang IX Kyoto

The 9th International Conference on the Evolution of Language (Evolang IX) will be held in the historical city of Kyoto, Japan, from the 13th to 16th of March 2012.

Conference Website: 

http://kyoto.evolang.org/



Plenary Speakers:

Noam Chomsky
Terrence Deacon
Simon Fisher
Tetsuro Matsuzawa
Jenny Saffran
Minoru Asada
Simon Kirby
Tom Griffiths
Cedric Boeckx


Call for Papers:

The 9th International Conference on the Evolution of Language invites substantive contributions relating to the evolution of human language. Submissions may be in any relevant discipline, including, but not limited to, anthropology, archeology, artificial life, biology, cognitive science, genetics, linguistics, modeling, paleontology, physiology, primatology, and psychology. Normal standards of academic excellence apply. Submitted papers should aim to make clear their own substantive claim, relating this to relevant scientific literature, and briefly setting out the method by which the claim is substantiated, the nature of the relevant data, and/or the core of the theoretical argument concerned. Submissions may be theory-based, but empirical studies should not rest on preliminary results.


Types of Submission

Attendees are limited to one first-authored podium presentation and one first-authored poster per person. There is no limit on second-authored presentations or posters. There are two possible types of submission: Full Papers, which can have a length of between 6 and 8 pages, and Abstracts, which can be up to 2 pages long. All accepted submissions will be published in the proceedings of the conference in a bound volume. All papers or abstracts accepted will be allotted the same presentation length (probably 15 minutes plus 5 minutes discussion). In addition to podium presentations, a dedicated poster session will be held. There will be prizes for the best student presentation and the best poster (from any author); please see below. Please indicate whether your submission is to be considered for inclusion as a talk only, a poster only, or both. Submissions should be made via this website (check back soon for details).


Important Dates (Provisional)

Submissions due: 15 August 2011
Acceptance notifications: 15 October 2011
Final versions due: 1 November 2011

The full call for papers is available here.


**NOTE: Also, on the eve of Evolang 9, a symposium on biolinguistics is scheduled on March 12, 2012, in Kyoto, with Noam Chomsky as a specially invited speaker. Details of this symposium will be announced later.

Recently in the headlines

• SD: Be it numbers or words, the structure of our language remains the same
• SD: Bilingualism no big deal for brain, researcher finds
• SD: Can you hear me now? Songbirds tweak their tunes in different ways to cope with clamor
• BBC: Robots develop their own language
• Science Saturday: Who got what wrong? Jerry Fodor vs. Elliott Sober video
• SD: Whales have accents & regional dialects
• SD: Evolutionary adaptations can be reversed, but rarely