Call deadline: 15 April 2012
Event Dates: 8 September 2012
Event Location: Poznan, Poland
Event URL: http://ifa.amu.edu.pl/plm/2012/Language_evolution

We invite submissions to a special thematic session of the Poznan ́ Linguistics Meeting addressing Theory and evidence in language evolution research. The aims of the session may be summarised as:

• to assess available evidence and to discuss the status of the new sources of evidence applicable to questions of language emergence and evolution
 • to assess the role of theoretical syntheses and holistic scenarios of language emergence and evolution
 • to identify ways in which linguistic methodologies can be made relevant to answering ‘origins’ type questions
 • to identify limitations of linguistic methodologies when applied in isolation and to discover directions for interdisciplinary collaboration
 • to bridge the gap between biological and linguistic conceptions of evidence Invited Speaker

A plenary talk will be given by Prof. James Hurford (University of Edinburgh).

Call deadline: 30 April 2010
Event Dates: 16-18 September 2010
Event Location: Warsaw, Poland
Event URL: http://www.psych.uw.edu.pl/lasc/

The conference emphasizes the biological nature of language, underscoring its coordinative function. The aim of the conference is to 1) show continuity of natural language with other informational systems in biology; 2) show that language arises from and is crucial for human co-action.

Taking an evolutionary and comparative perspective, will draw attention to the kinds of social coordination that arise without (human-like) language, and that contribute to the background used by (and present in) linguistic communication. By so doing, it will be easier to appreciate the qualitatively different types of co-ordination that are specific to humans and language-dependent. The evolutionary perspective will help with coming to view language as a natural phenomenon, continuous with other 'informational' systems at various levels of biological organization, that serve not only vertical (inter-generational) transmission of structure but also horizontal coordination both within and between organisms.

Invited Speakers:
- John Collier, University of KwaZulu-Natal, Durban
- Terrence Deacon, University of California at Berkeley
- Merlin Donald, Queen's University, Kingston, Ontario, Canada
- Don Favareau, National University of Singapore
- Carol Fowler, Haskins Laboratories, Yale University and University of Connecticut
- Bruno Galantucci, Yeshiva University
- Don Ross, University of Alabama at Birmingham and University of Cape Town
- Colwyn Trevarthen, University of Edinburgh

Call for Papers

We welcome papers from biology, linguistics, psychology, communication science, philosophy, anthropology in a joint effort to provide a theoretical ground for such a view of language, and - even more importantly - to provide empirical data clarifying the mechanisms of language functioning and emergence.