Date: 28-May-2013 - 29-May-2013 
Location: Paris, France 
Meeting URL: https://sites.google.com/site/lccmodels/home 

Linguistic Field(s): Cognitive Science; Computational Linguistics; Language Acquisition 

Other Specialty: Evolutionary Linguistics 

Meeting Description:

We are pleased to invite you to the Workshop on Language, Cognition and Computational Models, which will be held in Paris at the Ecole Normale Supérieure (ENS) and at the Institut des Systèmes Complexes de Paris, on May 28 and 29, 2013.

The goal of this event is to provide a venue for the multidisciplinary discussion of theoretical and practical research for computational models of language and cognition. The event centers around recent advances on computational models for language acquisition, processing and evolution.

The first day will mainly address language evolution and some of the computational models that have been proposed to investigate possible avenues for this phenomenon. The second day will address more varied issues, ranging from the origins of language to recent trends in machine translation. All the talks will address key questions dealing with cognitive, formal and/or computational issues related to language evolution and/or language processing.

The event is open to students, researchers and anyone interested in related topics. Attendance is free but people who plan to attend are kindly requested to register preferably before May 10th to help with the planning of the event. The registration form is available at:

https://sites.google.com/site/lccmodels/registration

The workshop is funded by the cluster of labs (labex) Transfers. It is organized thanks to the support of Lattice, Ecole Normale Supérieure, Paris Sciences et Lettres, the Institut des Systèmes Complexes de Paris-Ile de France, the Institute of Informatics of the Federal University of Rio Grande do Sul (Brazil).

Organization:

Thierry Poibeau, Laboratoire Lattice (‘Langues, Textes, Traitements informatiques et Cognition’, UMR8094, CNRS, École Normale Supérieure & Université Paris 3 Sorbonne Nouvelle, France)

Aline Villavicencio, Institute of Informatics, Federal University of Rio Grande do Sul (Brazil)

Locations:

Ecole Normale Supérieure (ENS): Salle Dussane, 45 rue d’Ulm 75005 Paris

Institut des Systèmes Complexes de Paris-Ile de France (ISC-PIF): 57-59 rue Lhomond F-75005, Paris

Contact Information:

For any inquiries regarding the workshop please send an email to:

lccmodels2013gmail.com

More information on:

http://sites.google.com/site/lccmodels/home 

Program: 

Tuesday May 28

09:00 - 09:15
Opening - ENS - salle Dussane

09:15 - 12:45
Multidisciplinary Aspects of Language Evolution

09:15 - 10:15
Dan Dediu (Max Planck Institute for Psycholinguistics, The Netherlands)
The Interplay between Linguistic and Biological Evolution

10:15 - 11:15
Ted Briscoe (University of Cambridge, UK)
A Model of L1/L2 Language Acquisition and Its Implications for Language Change

11:15 - 11:45 - Break

11:45 - 12:45
Anne Reboul (L2C2-CNRS, France)
Social Evolution of Public Languages: Between Rousseau's Eden and Hobbes' Leviathan

12:45 - 14:30
Lunch Break

14:30 - 17:00
Modeling Language Evolution: Two case studies - ISC-PIF

14:30 - 15:30
Benjamin Fagard (Lattice-CNRS, France)
Case, Prepositions and In-Betweens: Sketching a model of grammatical evolution

15:30 - 16:30
Remi van Trijp (Sony Computer Science Laboratory Paris, France)
Linguistic Assessment Criteria for Explaining Language Change: A case study on syncretism in German definite articles

16:30 - 17:00
Discussions

Wednesday May 29

09:00 - 11:00
Cognitive and Computational Approaches to Language Processing - ENS - salle Dussane

09:00 - 10:00
Robert Berwick (MIT, USA)
The Dead Tell No Tales: Known unknowns about the origin of human language

10:00 - 11:00
Massimo Poesio (University of Trento, Italy and University of Essex, UK)
Using Data about Conceptual Representations in the Brain for Computational Linguistics

11:00 - 11:30
Break

11:30 - 12:30
Philippe Blache (LPL, CNRS, France)
Measuring Difficulty as well as Facilitation: A new perspective for human language processing

12:30 - 14:30
Lunch Break

14:30 - 15:30
From Language Variety to Machine Tanslation - ENS - salle Dussane

14:30 - 15:30
Shuly Wintner (University of Haifa, Israel)
The Features of Translationese

15:30 - 16:30
Martin Kay (Stanford University, USA)
Putting Linguistics back into Computational Linguistics

16:30 - 17:00
Discussions and Closing

We thought this would be of particular interest to Language Evolution people. The University of Edinburgh has announced 100 new posts across all areas, including those that relate to work carried out in the School of Philosophy, Psychology & Language Sciences, which obviously includes topics relating to Language Evolution. These prestigious new positions will initially be mainly research-focussed initially, giving an unprecedented opportunity for candidates to pursue an active research agenda. It's expected that successful candidates will have a strong research record in the form of publications already.

The deadline is very tight, unfortunately - 18th April - so interested candidates should apply immediately.

More information is available at the following links:

http://www.ppls.ed.ac.uk/documents/LEL%20Chancellor%20Fellowship%202013.pdf

http://www.ed.ac.uk/schools-departments/human-resources/jobs/chancellors-fellowships

Please pass this on to any likely candidates!

Best wishes,
Simon Kirby & Kenny Smith

Call for Participation "Music and the Origins of Language. International Summer School on Agent-based Computational Models of Creativity".

15 - 20 September 2013, Cortona, Italy
http://ai.vub.ac.be/events/cortona-2013

The Evolutionary Linguistics Association (ELA) is proud to announce its second summer school in Cortona on Music and the Origins of Language. The school is intended for postdocs, lecturers and predocs with a background in computer science and a strong interest in music and the origins of language. 

The summer school will be held in Cortona, Italy from Sunday 15 September to Friday 20 September 2013. Lectures, activities and meals are all collocated in Hotel Oasi and the Palazzone di Cortona. Participants will all stay at Hotel Oasi.

The summer school has a wide-ranging program of background lectures introducing concepts from biology, anthropology, psychology, music theory and linguistics that are helpful to understand the nature of creativity, the role and intimate relations between language and music, and the mechanisms underlying cultural evolution. It further contains technical lectures on the fundamental computational components required for language processing as well as technical ateliers to learn how to set up evolutionary linguistics experiments. Participants have the opportunity to present their latest research in a poster session. Embedded in the school is an ERC workshop of the Flow Machines project on musical style and composition. The school also features artistic ateliers in which participants create new creative works and engage in performance.

Interested researchers can apply by following the registration information that is available on the website. There are a limited number of scholarships available that cover participation and accommodation fees.

It receives support from FP7 PRAISE and INSIGHT projects, the euCognition Network of Excellence and the ESF project DRUST.

For information and queries, please visit the website http://ai.vub.ac.be/events/cortona-2013/ or email cortona2013@ai.vub.ac.be.

Event Dates: 3-4 October 2013
Event Location: Cambridge, UK
Event URL: http://www.languagesciences.cam.ac.uk/events/language-sciences-in-the-21st-century-the-interdisciplinary-challenge

Just a heads up on an upcoming event. They aren't holding an open call for papers, but are asking for "expressions of interest" from researchers AT Cambridge.


Cambridge Language Sciences is hosting a major conference, Language Sciences in the 21st century: The interdisciplinary challenge, at West Road on 3-4 October 2013. The aim is to bring together an international group of researchers, whose work crosses traditional disciplinary boundaries, in order to explore key issues in language sciences. We hope the conference will be both a venue for the presentation of important new work and also a platform for Cambridge's growing profile in this area.

The conference will include invited speakers, symposia, presented papers and posters. The four thematic strands will be:

Philosophy of language meets computational linguistics

Diversity and universals

Beyond our primate inheritance: Neurobiological and evolutionary approaches to language

Interdisciplinary perspectives on multilingualism

The first step in putting together the programme will be to gain an idea of the range of contributions which could come from Cambridge, how they may fit within the conference strands, and how they represent the emergence of broader approaches and themes. We are not, at present, inviting submitted papers. Expressions of interest based on cooperative or collaborative research are particularly welcome.

If you are a Cambridge researcher interested in the possibility of presenting your work at the conference, please contact Jane Walsh in the first instance by the end of January 2013 (jaw75@cam.ac.uk) indicating which theme or themes you feel your research might relate to, providing a brief description of your work and also an indication of how it meets the "interdisciplinary challenge".

Call deadline: 31 March 2013 (Updated)
Event Dates: 25-26 May 2013
Event Location: Wrocław, Poland 
Event URL:  http://protolanguage2013.wsf.edu.pl/

Dear Colleagues,

we invite submissions to the third edition of Ways to Protolanguage, a conference series on language origins. Please see the website for more details:

http://protolanguage2013.wsf.edu.pl/

Plenary speakers

Prof. Robin Dunbar is an anthropologist and evolutionary psychologist specialising in the study of primate behaviour. Particular interest has been generated by his hypothesis that language evolved as a substitute grooming mechanism (Grooming, Gossip and the Evolution of Language) and Dunbar’s number hypothesis, whereby 150 constitutes the approximate cognitive limit on the number of individuals with whom a person can maintain stable relationships. He is currently the chair of the Institute of Cognitive and Evolutionary Anthropology at the University of Oxford.

Prof. Sue Savage-Rumbaugh is a psychologist and primatologist, best known for her work with the bonobos Kazni and Panbanisha, investigating their linguistic and cognitive abilities through the use of lexigrams and computer-based keyboards. Originally based at Georgia State University’s Language Research Center), she now acts as the Executive Director and Head Scientist at Great Ape Trust in Des Moines, Iowa.  

Prof. Tomasz P. Krzeszowski is a cognitive linguist and a full professor at the University of Warsaw. A scholarship-holder of universities in Albany, New York and Oxford, he is also a member of Neophilological Committee and Linguistic Committee of the Polish Academy of Sciences. Currently based in the School of English at the University of Social Sciences, Warsaw. He authored over seventy original publications home and abroad, including continuously reissued English teaching handbooks. 

Prof. Peter Gärdenfors represents cognitive science; his research interests include problems related to the evolution of thinking and language (Conceptual Spaces, How Homo Became Sapiens, The Dynamics of Knowledge). His proposals regarding intentionality and imitation have received considerable attention among language evolution researchers. He is Professor of cognitive science at the University of Lund, Sweden, and member of the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences.

Prof. Josep Call is a comparative psychologist specializing in the study of cognitive as well linguistic abilities of non-human great apes. He has authored more than a hundred research papers, mostly experimental studies on primate cognition. Since 1999 he has been based at Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology, Leipzig, where he is director of Wolfgang Köhler Primate Research Center.

Thematic scope

Ways to Protolanguage is a biennial conference organised by the Department of English, Nicolaus Copernicus University, Toruń, Committee for Philology of the Polish Academy of Sciences, Wroclaw Branch and Philological School of Higher Education in Wroclaw. 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, including:

- anthropological linguistics,
- general evolutionary theory,
- evolutionary psychology,
- comparative psychology,
- pleistocene archaeology,
- palaeoanthropology,
- genetics of language disorders,
- cultural anthropology,
- speech physiology,
- contact linguistics,
- history of writing,
- gesture studies,
- neuroscience of language,
- computational modelling,
- primatology,
- animal cognition,
- animal communication.

We invite presentations in English. However, papers in other languages are also welcome. 

Event Dates: 11-15 March 2013
Event Location: Lisbon, Portugal
Event URL: http://evolutionschool.fc.ul.pt

We are happy to inform you that registration is now open for the 1st International Winter School on Evolution.  Courses are open to international Master, PhD and Post-doctoral students in the exact, life, human and sociocultural evolutionary sciences.
 
ABOUT THE COURSES
 
From Monday to Friday, parallel sessions are organized whereby visiting staff provide a 10-hour course (2 hours a day) on critical aspects of biological and sociocultural evolution. The courses are centered around the following modules.
 
MODULE 1: MACROEVOLUTON AND THE MAJOR EVOLUTIONARY TRANSITIONS
Courses are taught by: Bruce Lieberman, Folmer Bokma, Eörs Szathmáry.
 
MODULE 2: LANGUAGE EVOLUTION
Courses are taught by William Croft, Mónica Tamariz, Daniel Dor.
 
MODULE 3: SYMBIOGENESIS, LATERAL GENE TRANSFER AND VIROLUTION
Courses are taught by Douglas Zook, William Martin, Michael Arnold.
 
All courses are taught at a level accessible to Master, PhD and post-doctoral students in the exact, life, human and sociocultural evolutionary sciences. Students of evolutionary biology, microbiology, paleontology, evolutionary linguistics, evolutionary anthropology, and philosophy of biology will especially benefit from these courses.
 
Students will be provided a mandatory reading list which will form the basis of lectures and discussions. There are neither examinations nor paper assignments.
 
REGISTRATION FEE
 
350 euro for the whole week, regardless the number of courses you choose.
 
HOW TO ENROLL
 
You can enroll for a specific module (therefore following a 30-hour course on the subject) or you may choose three courses of your specific interest.
Places are limited, we therefore advise you to enroll as quickly as possible.
 
ABOUT THE WINTER SCHOOL
 
The School is organized by the Applied Evolutionary Epistemology Lab of the Centre for Philosophy of Science of the Faculty of Science of the University of Lisbon, in collaboration with Ciência Viva and with the support of the John Templeton Foundation.
 
DOWNLOAD OUR POSTER
 
http://evolutionschool.fc.ul.pt/winter/docs/winter.pdf  
 
SUBSCRIBE TO THE WINTER SCHOOL MAILINGLIST
 
http://eepurl.com/n2ELH  
 
FURTHER INFORMATION
 
http://evolutionschool.fc.ul.pt, http://appeel.fc.ul.pt   

Call deadline: 30 December 2012
Event Dates: 28-30 May 2013
Event Location: Leuven, Belgium
Event URL: http://permalink.gmane.org/gmane.science.philosophy.region.europe/846

The Institute of Philosophy of the University of Leuven is pleased to announce a call for abstracts for its conference on: 

Cultural evolution, philosophy and the emotions



About the conference:
The past decades have witnessed a proliferation of evolutionary theories on culture and cultural capacities. In general, evolutionary theories of culture have been rather well received in the philosophical literature. However, a number of important philosophical issues concerning this theory remain largely unsettled. This focused conference aims to address some of these issues by examining how gene-culture co-evolutionary theories can explain human emotions – a topic that has been of special importance for more narrow evolutionary approaches, such as evolutionary psychology. 

Below are some of the kinds of questions that we hope will be discussed in the course of the conference. The list is not exhaustive, but should be read as a list of suggestions: 

1. What role do emotions play in cultural evolution? 
2. Which human emotions are socially transmitted? 
3. Which aspects of emotions are socially transmitted? 
4. Can gene-culture co-evolutionary theory offer a plausible account of culture-bound syndromes? 
5. How can cultural evolutionary theories contribute to a more profound evolutionary understanding of basic emotions? 
6. Why have emotions been neglected by cultural evolutionists? 
7. Do some cultural variants spread because they solve emotional problems? 
8. Is emotional contagion a key factor for human cooperation? 
9. Has shame/disgust/fear been culturally exapted to solve modern adaptive problems? 
10. Can gene-culture co-evolutionary theories bring us any closer to a unified theory of the emotions? 

Invited speakers:
Peter J. Richerson (UC Davis), Daniel Kelly (Purdue University), Grant Ramsey (University of Notre Dame), Lesley Newson (UC Davis), Tim Lewens (Cambridge University), Stefan Linquist (University of Guelph), Stefano Ghirlanda (CUNY), and Murray Smith (University of Kent). 

Information for submissions:
Send an abstract of c. 500 words to andreas.deblock@... before December 31, 2012. You will be notified of acceptance before January 22, 2013. Please note that this will be a pre-read conference, so there is also a final paper submission deadline on April 25, 2013. The final paper should not be longer than 7000 words. We are able, on certain conditions, to offset the costs of travel for a limited number of graduate students. Please check with the organizers if you are interested. 

Publication:
We intend to publish most of the papers presented at the conference in an edited volume or a special issue. We will aim high when looking for a publisher. Please note, however, that all papers will have to go through the usual process of peer review, and that the publication of your paper cannot be guaranteed. 

Organization:
Organizers are Andreas De Block, Pieter R. Adriaens and Helen De Cruz. The meeting is part of a research project about the historical and evolutionary roots of homophobia (‘Homophobia and cultural evolution: A Philosophical approach’), and is sponsored by the Research Foundation Flanders (FWO-Vlaanderen), the Human Evolution and Behavior Network (HEBEN), and the Institute of Philosophy (HIW, University of Leuven).

Call deadline: 1 February 2013
Event Dates: 17-19 May 2013
Event Location: Lisbon, Portugal
Event URL: http://evolutionarypatterns.fc.ul.pt/sub/cfa/cfa.html

We call for bioinformaticians, evolutionary biologists, microbiologists, paleontologists, geologists, physicists, mathematicians, anthropologists, archeologists, linguists, sociologists, economists, and philosophers and historians of science to provide talks on the following topics:

1. Conceptualization, quantification and modeling of horizontal and vertical transmission in biological and sociocultural sciences
   • Bioinformatic approaches in biology, paleontology, anthropology, archeology, linguistics, sociology, and economics. These approaches can include: phylogenetics, phylogenomics, complex network based models, mathematical and statistical (computer) simulations, imaging techniques, (multi-)agent models, Complex Adaptive Systems approaches, …
   • Tree versus network diagrams
   • Mechanisms of horizontal and/or vertical transmission
   • Parallels and differences between biological and sociocultural trait transmission and inter-individual interactions
2. Conceptualization, quantification and modeling of micro- and macroevolution in biological and sociocultural sciences
   • Mechanisms of biological and/or sociocultural micro- and macroevolution
   •  Modes of biological and/or sociocultural micro- and macroevolution
   • Tempos of biological and/or sociocultural micro- and macroevolution
   •  (Meta-)Patterns of evolution
   • Parallels and differences between biological and sociocultural micro- and macroevolution
3. Hierarchy theory and the units, levels and mechanisms of evolution
   • Units of biological and/or sociocultural evolution
   • Levels of biological and/or sociocultural evolution, multilevel selection theories
   • Mechanisms of biological and sociocultural evolution
   • (Nested) Hierarchy theory
   • Emergence
   • Upward and downward causation
4. How the universal application of evolutionary theories enables new possibilities for inter- and transdisciplinary research and the unification of the sciences
   • The need for an Extended Synthesis
   • Universal Darwinism, Universal Selectionism
   • The universality of symbiogenesis, reticulate evolution, hybridization, drift, patterns of punctuated equilibria, the ratchet effect, the Baldwin effect, …
   • (Applied) Evolutionary Epistemology
   • Unification of the sciences through shared research frameworks, methodologies, modeling techniques
   • Philosophical analyses and historical accounts on attempts to unify the biological and the sociocultural sciences based upon evolutionary theory

We encourage submissions of (1) concrete models and simulations, (2) theoretical, reflexive talks, and (3) historical accounts on any of the above mentioned topics.

Please see the conference website for submission details.

Call deadline: 13 September 2012 (Very Soon!)
Event Dates: 3-7 April 2013
Event Location: Honolulu, Hawaii, USA
Event URL: http://saa.org/Default.aspx?TabId=1419


Admittedly very short notice, but I was just notified of a language evolution workshop at this years Society for American Archaeology conference. Submission is by 200word abstract, so despite the deadline interested parties should be able to put something together.

"Language may be unique to humans, yet its origins and evolution remain unclear. Many language-origin theories and hypotheses have been proposed by linguists, computer scientists, primatologists, and anthropologists, but archaeologists have rarely been consulted. Exactly how language may be manifest in material culture continues to be a matter of debate. Archaeological clues that may be relevant to language evolution occur in various time periods and places. However, meaningful interpretation of this evidence requires the careful consideration of linguistic, primatological, anthropological, and computational data.  This session will bring together researchers from several of these disciplines to explore how the varied evidence can be, and has been, combined from different perspectives to better understand one of humanity's strangest features."


If you  would like to join the session, please login to the online system at https://ecommerce.saa.org/SAA_AbstractSubmission/Account/LogOn

and submit your abstract for session ID # 160.

The system requires payment for the conference registration of $119, but you can get a refund if your abstract is not accepted.


Questions should be directed to the organizer at n.uomini (at) liverpool.ac.uk

Call deadline: 20 September 2012
Event Dates: 22-24 November 2012
Event Location: Bern, Switzerland
Event URL: http://www.germanistik.unibe.ch/personen/gabriel_viehhauser/bernphylogeny.html

The analysis of large sets of genetic data with phylogenetic algorithms has a long tradition in biology. In the recent past, these methods have also been gaining increasing importance in the humanities, e.g. linguistics (e.g. Warnow and Nichols 2008; McMahon and McMahon 2005), literary studies (e.g. Windram, Shaw, Robinson and Howe 2008) or anthropology (e.g. Tehrani, Collard and Shennan 2010) where they have been used for the visualisation and analysis of different kinds of data such as comparative word lists, manuscript traditions or other types of cultural artefacts. 

The tutorial ‘Phylometric and Phylogenetic Approaches in the Humanities’ is designed for doctoral students, post-doc researchers and others who would like to get acquainted with these innovative approaches. The tutorial offers a hands-on introduction to application possibilities of these methods based on data sets from different disciplines. While the focus is on data from linguistics and literary studies, participants from other subject areas are especially welcome since we believe that interdisciplinary exchange on the use of such methods in non-genetic application domains is beneficial for all parties involved. 

The tutorial will provide: 

- an overview on phylometric approaches in the humanities. 
- an introduction to the use of relevant computer programs (Paup, SplitsTree). 
- the opportunity to practice the application of the methods by means of prepared data sets. 

There might be the possibility for the participants to work on their own data during the tutorial. This will, however, depend on the number of participants and other factors. More information considering this option will follow in a later circular. The tutorial will be taught by Heather F. Windram (Department of Biochemistry, University of Cambridge) and Christoph Wolk (FRIAS, Albert-Ludwig-Universität Freiburg). 

The tutorial will be followed by a one-day workshop on the same topic on November 24, 2012. Participants in the tutorial are encouraged to attend the workshop as well. The participation is free of charge and made possible by a grant by Bern University’s Mittelbauvereinigung and funding by the Center for the Study of Language and Society (CSLS). 

Please send your application by October 1, 2012 to bernphylogenygmail.com. Please include your name and affiliation and a short statement concerning your background and your interest in the tutorial. Specifically, it is important to us to understand how well you are acquainted with phylogenetic and/or other quantitative or computational methods, and what data you are interested in working with. 

Feel free to contact us if there should be any remaining questions.