Conference: Language as an evolutionary system

Conference: Language as an evolutionary system: a multidisciplinary approach
Edinburgh, July 12-13, 2010
http://www.ling.ed.ac.uk/~monica/LES

These two days of talks and discussion will bring together scholars from a range of disciplines to discuss the value of applying evolutionary thinking to the cultural evolution of language as well as the commonalities and differences between various existing applications.

Presentations by: Bill Croft, Tom Griffiths, Alex Mesoudi, Russell Gray, Kenny Smith, Gerhard Jaeger, Monica Tamariz, & Simon Kirby

Conference: PLM 2010 - Competing explanations of language change & variation

Conference: 41st Poznań Linguistic Meeting

Thematic discussion session: Competing explanations of language change and variation

Gniezno, September 23-26, 2010

Plenary: Nikolaus Ritt (Vienna), “Agents or Vehicles? The role of speakers in directing linguistic evolution”

As competing explanations are the leitmotif of PLM 2010, this session will be devoted to explanatory challenges in theories of language change. The discussion workshop will concentrate on the role of linguistic variation and other factors in competing proposals concerning the mechanisms of language change. The focal event of the session will be the plenary talk by Nikolaus Ritt, followed by six oral presentations. We shall welcome abstracts of presentations dealing with the following topics and questions:

• Why does language change happen at all?
• Does language change have a direction? Are there “historical laws” governing its progress?
• Synchronic variation and diachronic change: how are they interrelated?
• How can we account for the observed tempo of language change and the scale of variation in speech communities?
• Functional explanations of language change, their adequacy and predictive power.
• Evolutionary approaches to language change: replication, competition and selection as explanatory notions.
• Is language a tool designed and controlled by its human users, or does it have a life of its own?
• Should we expect linguistic structures to be rational?

Call for papers (due March 31, 2010): here

New evolutionary ling site

Check out the new blog at evolutionarylinguistics.org, which so far has some information on upcoming conferences related to the evolution of language. (I am about to post the info which we haven't already mentioned here.) There is also a forum and information about a reading group starting up in Tokyo. The site is being maintained by Luke McCrohon and Pontus Stenetorp of the University of Tokyo. The introduction on the blog reads:

This site is being built to help facilitate the collaborative study of all aspects of Linguistic Evolution. We take this to include not only the study of the biological evolution of the Language faculty, but also the cultural evolution of languages, and the bio-cultural co-evolution of Language as a combined system.

Research in this area cuts across traditional disciplinary boundaries and so will require the collaboration of researchers of from many diverse backgrounds. It is this research we hope to support and so we welcome researchers from all disciplines to to join us on this site. Please feel free to contribute to the comments, on the forums, and join us in person at the events we are planning on organizing.

This site is still is still under development, so please either subscribe to the RSS feed or check back later as we hope to make regular updates over the next few months. In addition to details about the site, we will also be posting information about various events of interest to evolutionary linguistics researchers as we receive them.

Recently in the headlines

More bioling-news from around the web:

• SD: Decoding the long calls of the orangutan
• SD: Temporary hearing deprivation can lead to 'lazy ear'
• SD: Vital new clue into how the brain is wired
• BBC: Etched ostrich eggs illustrate human sophistication
  

Call for papers: Workshop on Computational Neurolinguistics

Conference: Workshop on Computational Neurolinguistics (at NAACL)

Los Angeles - June 5-6, 2010

The first Workshop on Computational Neurolinguistics will be held at NAACL next June in Los Angeles. We welcome submissions on the computational treatment of any aspect of language, that either make use of neural recordings or of biologically realistic neuronal models. To encourage submissions from the broadest community, the organisers are releasing two neural activity datasets, fMRI and EEG, described below. Submissions should be made through the NAACL submission system, with a new extended deadline of March 10th, 2010.

Call for papers (due March 10, 2010): here.

Recently in the headlines

Here's a roundup of some recent bioling-related news items from around the web:

• SD: If bonobo Kanzi can point as humans do, what other similarities can rearing reveal?
• SD: Nouns & verbs are learned in different parts of the brain
• SD: Scientists image brain at point when vocal learning begins
• SD: Scientists map brain pathway for vocal learning
• SD: Simple math explains dramatic beak shape variation in Darwin's finches
• BBC: Burrowing US prairie dogs use complex language
• BBC: Monkeys keep chatter 'short' and 'sweet'
• New Scientist: Seeing the songs of whales

MIT Press Journals Podcasts

I recently became aware of the MIT Press Journals Podcasts page, which has four episodes available so far. (Unfortunately, this does not seem to be the type of podcast that can be subscribed to directly via iTunes.) Of particular interest to biolinguists is Episode 3, a discussion between Jay Keyser and Noam Chomsky. The audio (MP3) is here and the transcript (PDF) is here.