Recently in the headlines

• NPR: Signing, singing, speaking: how language evolved
• NPR: From grunting to gabbing: why humans can talk
• NYT: Words cannot express (Derek Bickerton's review of Guy Deutscher, Through the Language Glass)
• BBC: Coping with foreign accent syndrome (includes video)
• NineMSN: Children develop own language in cave
• NYU: Video of Alec Marantz & Noam Chomsky: "Poverty of stimulus - unfinished business"

Recently in the headlines

• NS: Size isn't everything: the big brain myth
• SD: 'Virtual mates' reveal role of romance in parrot calls
• SD: Humans imitate aspects of speech we see
• AAAS: A birdsong blast from the past
• NS: Play-acting orang-utans signal their desires
• BBC: Orangutans mime to get message across (with video)
• SD: Single neurons can detect sequences
• NS: The genetical evolution of chimp culture
• SD: Language as a window into sociability (Williams vs. autism)
• SD: Sign language speakers' hands, mouths operate separately

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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• Nat Geo: Human brains 'evolve,' become less monkey-like with age
• SD: Autism has unique vocal signature, new technology reveals
• SD: Neurological process for the recognition of letters and numbers explained
• SD: Relatives of individuals with autism tend to display abnormal eye movements

Recently in the headlines

• SD: Songbirds learn their songs during sleep
• BBC: Singing 'rewires' damaged brain
• SD: Growing brain is particularly flexible: how the brain changes during growth
• NS: The ups and downs of speech that we all understand
• SD: Brain stimulation technique boosts language ability in Alzheimer's patients
• Rationally Speaking podcast: When smart people endorse pseudoscience (discussion of Fodor & Piatelli-Palmarini)

Conference: Graduate Workshop on Biolinguistics

Conference: Graduate Workshop on Biolinguistics at ConSOLE XIX

University of Groningen

January 5, 2011

Associated with ConSOLE XIX, a workshop on biolinguistics will be held at the University of Groningen on January 5th, 2011. The biolinguistics research area focuses on the biology and evolution of language and aims to understand the unique ability and origin of human language.

Call For Papers (due September 13) here.
Graduate students not having defended a Ph.D. in Linguistics by September 13th are invited to submit abstracts relating to the topic of biolinguistics. The call is open to any subfield relevant to this matter, from theoretical linguistics to more applied research areas such as language acquisition and neurolinguistics.