Templeton Foundation Grant 01/22/2012
Field: Evolutionary Dynamics Value: up to $200,000USD per annum for 2 yearsDetails: http://www.templeton.org/node/1521 Deadline: 31 Jan 2012 The deadline is rather soon, but the initial application requirements are not that taxing, so someone might be interested in putting an application in. The reason I list it here is due to two of the suggested research questions which have relevance to current work in evolutionary linguistics:
Add Comment Tokyo Evolutionary Linguistics Forum 01/17/2012
Event Dates: 19 March 2012 Event Location: Tokyo, Japan Event URL: http://tokyoforum.evolutionarylinguistics.org/ The Tokyo Evolutionary Linguistics Forum is being organized as a venue to extend discussions on any interesting issues raised at this years 9th International Conference on the Evolution of Language (Evolang9) which is being held form the 13th to 16th of March in Kyoto. It is hoped that the event will stimulate interest in this burgeoning field of study in the Tokyo academic community, and lead to ongoing collaborations between local and international researchers. Invited Speakers: -Bart de Boer (University of Amsterdam) -Erica Cartmill (University of Chicago) -Rafael Núñez (University of california, San Diego) -Thom Scott-Phillips (University of Edinburgh) -Monica Tamariz (University of Edinburgh) -Jordan Zlatev (Lund University) +More to come Important Details Date: 19th March 2012 Venue: Komaba Campus, The University of Tokyo Cost: Free Registration: On site Language: English Website: http://tokyoforum.evolutionarylinguistics.org/ Evolang Workshop CFP 12/07/2011
Call deadline: 13 January 2012 Event Dates: 13 March 2012 Event Location: Kyoto, Japan Event URL: http://kyoto.evolang.org/content/call-papers EVOLANG WORKSHOP CALL FOR PAPERS http://kyoto.evolang.org/content/workshops We invite submissions of abstracts to the following four workshops scheduled for the first day of 9th International Conference on the Evolution of Language (EVOLANG9) to be held 13-16 March, 2012, in Kyoto, Japan: -Language and Brain -Emotion and Language -Animal Communication and Language Evolution -Constructive Approaches to Language Evolution Further details and descriptions of these workshops are available here. In preparing abstracts for submission, please follow the standard EVOLANG stylesheets for 2-page Abstract type submissions. The relevant stylesheets are available here. Please note that the Constructive Approaches to Language Evolution workshop is somewhat flexible and allows submissions of papers between 2-10 pages (These too should be formatted according to the standard EVOLANG stylesheets). Abstracts should be submitted directly to the contact address of the relevant workshop listed on the workshop descriptions page. Please note that the Theoretical Linguistics/Biolinguistics workshop is by invitation only and will not be accepting abstracts. The other four workshops will select 4-8 submitted papers for oral presentation. The abstracts of selected talks will not be included in the main conference proceedings, but will be included in a separate workshop booklet distributed to conference participants and made available for download on the conference website. The conference will be offering limited financial support to help student authors attend the conference to present their own work. This applies equally to students accepted to give presentations as part of the main conference or workshops. Please see the conference website for further details. For further details please see the workshop page of the conference website or contact the organizer of the relevant workshop directly. Important Dates: Submission deadline: 13 Jan 2012 Notification: Early February 2012 Workshops: 13 March 2012 Chomsky on Language Evolution 11/23/2011
In a recent talk on language evolution at UCL Chomsky made some comments on studies of language evolution which seem to indicate his upcoming talk at Evolang might be quite interesting. The comments start at approximately 27:00 and the video is available here. Partial transcript: "There is a field called Evolution of language, which has a burgeoning literature, most of which in my view is total nonsense. But anyway, its growing. In fact, it isn't even about evolution of language, its almost entirely speculations about evolution of communication which is a different topic. And its kind of natural topic to look at if your caught up in another myth, a misinterpretation of evolutionary theory, which holds that changes take place only incrementally. Small change, then another small change, and finally you get complex organisms. That was believed at one time, and you can find sentences in darwin... you can quote, thats the bible. But for a long time evolutionary biologists have understood it doesn't work like that. You can have quite sudden changes that, small changes, that lead to huge phenomenal difference. In the area of communication you can mislead yourself into believing that since every organism you can think of, from bacteria to humans, has some kind of communication system, so maybe our communication system us just a slight modification of primates' or whatever you like. But its undoubtedly not true, but at least you can delude yourself into believing it. On the other hand language seems totally separate. These nothing even remotely analogous or nothing at all homologous as far as anyone knows. Theres a few things that look similar, like say songbirds are at such a distance from an evolutionary point of view that its just got to be convergent evolution to the extent that there is a similarity. And there is interesting questions you can study, but only if you take biology in the last 50 years seriously. If you are back to the pop darwinism that you learned in 8th grade thats no good. Anyhow, the fact that theres been no evolution in 5000 years is interesting if anyone really wants to study evolution of language. It raises a lot of questions, but I don't want to get to far from the Poverty of the Stimulus... Evolang Workshops 11/09/2011
Call deadline: 30 December 2011 Event Dates: 13 March 2012 Event Location: Kyoto, Japan Event URL: http://kyoto.evolang.org/content/workshops The following five workshops have been announced at next year's Evolang9 in Kyoto.
Language Evolution Session at EHBEA 2012 11/08/2011
Call deadline: 25 November 2011 Event Dates: 15-28 March 2012 Event Location: Durham, UK Event URL: http://www.dur.ac.uk/jeremy.kendal/EHBEA2012/Welcome.html Dear colleagues, We are organising a special themed session on language evolution at the 2012 Annual Meeting of the European Human Behaviour and Evolution Association, which is held in Durham, UK, 25th-28th March 2012 (http://www.dur.ac.uk/jeremy.kendal/EHBEA2012/Welcome.html). EHBEA is an excellent venue for interdisciplinary work on the cultural and biological evolution of human behaviour, including language. Given that EHBEA is running shortly after EVOLANG next year, we are happy for research that is targeted at EVOLANG to also be submitted here, although note that the audience for each is likely to be different. If you would like to submit an abstract for consideration as part of this themed session, please follow the submission instructions on the EHBEA website, marking your abstract as for consideration in the language evolution special session, organised by Simon Kirby and Kenny Smith. Abstracts will be independently reviewed by the usual EHBEA reviewers, so bear that in mind when preparing your submission. The themed session will only run if sufficient abstracts are accepted - of course, papers on language evolution could be presented independently as standard EHBEA talks. The deadline for submissions is November 25th. PLEASE FORWARD THIS MESSAGE TO ANYONE WHO MIGHT BE INTERESTED! Best wishes, Simon & Kenny Protolang2 Videos Online 10/30/2011
A significant portion of the talks given at the recent Protolang2 conference in Torun, Poland were recorded and are now available to watch online. The Protolang website has links to the videos here. Might be of interest to those interested in language evolution: The International Max Planck Research School (IMPRS) on Neuroscience of Communication: Function, Structure, and Plasticity is based at the Max Planck Institute (MPI) for Human Cognitive and Brain Sciences, Leipzig, and the University of Leipzig (Germany). The IMPRS also involves the MPI for Evolutionary Anthropology, Leipzig, and the Institute of Cognitive Neuroscience at University College London, UK. The graduate programme will start with the Summer Semester 2012 at the University of Leipzig (1 April, 2012). The IMPRS on Neuroscience of Communication: Function, Structure, and Plasticity offers a unique interdisciplinary graduate programme to study the functional, structural, and plastic bases of human communication through an integrative and interdisciplinary approach. Its overriding goal is to train PhD students in multidisciplinary aspects involved in communicative action. Besides behavioural work, the programme draws on elaborate modern imaging techniques, including a 7-Tesla MRI scanner and a 306-channel MEG system. The school invites applications for PhD scholarships. More details here. The Past & Future of Universal Grammar 10/01/2011
Call for Commentators: 15 October 2011 Event Date: 15 -18 December 2011 Event Location: Durham, UK Event URL: http://www.dur.ac.uk/conference.booking/details/?id=97 Grammar is universal in human populations, pathologies aside. A theory of grammar should thus be a universal theory in this sense. Yet it is widely contended today that it need not be the theory of Universal Grammar (UG), in the sense of its early generative formulations, which have taken UG to be a linguistically specific and species-specific biological endowment consisting of functionally arbitrary formal rules. Theories of universal grammar have also been formulated in a number of different ways in the past, with far from identical underlying axiomatic assumptions. Furthermore, the modern theory of UG itself is currently undergoing a significant reformulation, following the development of Minimalism. This conference aims to provide a forum for assessing and (re-)directing the course that research on universal grammar and the biological foundations of language should take over the coming years and decades, bringing together linguists, psychologists, philosophers, and biologists. Call for Commentators: We hope to offer a conference fee waiver plus financial help towards accommodation and/or travel costs to all commentators. The call for commentators will be released in August. Kyoto Conference on Biolinguistics 08/19/2011
Event Date: March 12 2012 Event Location: Kyoto, Japan Event URL: http://www.bioling.jp/english/events/ As yet details are limited, but i has been announced that there will be a one day biolinguistics conference the day before the Evolang9 conference in Kyoto, Japan next year. Kyoto Conference on Biolinguistics - The Human Language Faculty: Its Design, Development and Evolution - March 12, 2012, Kyoto Invited Speakers: Noam Chomsky Cedric Boeckx Charles Yang Naoki Fukui For more information to be provided in the near future, please visit http://www.bioling.jp/english/events/ (English) http://www.bioling.jp/events/ (Japanese) | About us:
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