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. 

Call deadline: 1 September 2012
Event Dates: 8-12 November 2012
Event Location: Peking, China 
Event URL: http://ccl.pku.edu.cn/event/ciel/LatestEng.html

The Conference in Evolutionary Linguistics, 2012, will be held by the Center for Chinese linguistics, Peking University, on November 8-12, 2012. Nov. 8 is the registration day.

With its foundation in Darwinian theory, evolutionary linguistics references two evolutionary forces, biological and social, to tackle the job of explaining two fundamental questions, the emergence and development of language. With interdisciplinary cooperation, evolutionary linguistics interacts with anthropology, biology, and archeology. Recently evolutionary linguistics has been making important advancements. The 9th International Conference on the Evolution of Language (Evolang IX) was successfully held in Kyoto, Japan. Diversified languages in China with rich orthographic traditions and long histories of various forms of transcription exist in a complex realm of linguistic contact. Thus, further studies highlighting these phenomena will make new contributions to evolutionary linguistics, both in breadth and depth. Therefore, there is much anticipation of enhancing international interaction and interdisciplinary cooperation via this conference. The earlier ones in Guangzhou, Tianjin, and Shanghai have been held in the same spirit.

Conference topics may include the following: 1. Language as a complex adaptive system; 2. Language and population evolution in China; 3. Language evolution in China and archeological evidence; 4. Vertical and horizontal transmission of language; 5. Language and the brain. A special handling of the evolution and development of Miao-Yao languages will also be organized.

We sincerely welcome all interested scholars to attend! Please send abstracts (800-1,000 words) to elpku2012@163.com in doc or pdf format before September 1, 2012. Formal invitations will be sent out no later than September 10, 2012. The conference will be conducted in Putonghua (Mandarin Chinese) or English. Conference papers will be edited for publishing in a special issue of the Journal of Chinese Linguistics or Essays on Linguistics.

Call deadline: 1 September 2012
Event Dates: 22-27 July 2013
Event Location: Geneva, Switzerland 
Event URL: http://www.cil19.org/en/sessions/session-2/

This parallel session at the International Conference of Linguistics will be structured around five major issues that arise in the domain of the evolution of language. Abstracts are solicited which address one or more of the following issues: 

1. The relevance of the distinction between I-language and E-languages for the question of language evolution. Chomsky introduced a major distinction between I-language (the inner, psychological, knowledge of grammar) and E-languages (the public languages, such as English, French, Italian, Japanese, etc.). E-languages are public by contrast with I-language, which is private. This may mean that there are not one, but two evolutionary stories to be told, one relevant to the evolution of I-language and one relevant to the evolution of E-languages. Additionally, the evolutionary processes involved might be different, e.g., one could be biological while the other one could be cultural. However, the distinction between I-language and E-languages has been largely ignored in the literature on language evolution. 

2. The specificity of language(s) as compared to other animal communication systems. Hockett is famous (and widely quoted in most works on language evolution) for having proposed (see Hockett 1960) a list of thirteen essential features of language that supposedly sets it apart from other animal communication systems. However, it has been claimed (see Fitch 2009) that, though the set as a whole is specific to human language, each feature can be found in some animal communication system or other. A major question, given that the whole set seems specific to human language, is whether it is complete and what implications the fact that each feature could be shared with other species has for the field of language evolution. 

3. Evolution of language: biological or cultural. When Pinker and Bloom revived the field of language evolution in 1990, their approach was firmly biological. However, nowadays, 'social' accounts, emphasizing cultural rather than biological evolution, seem prominent. An important question is whether such social scenarios can entirely do away with biological approaches, given that they seem to rest on notions such as 'cooperation', usually understood as 'altruistic' in the biological sense (i.e., benefiting to the addressee, but detrimental to the agent). How exactly biological and cultural evolutions interact in such social accounts is a major question. 

4. Cognitive vs. social scenarios. While cultural evolution views are squarely social, they nevertheless tend to sneak in some cognition: for instance, Dunbar's defense of his social account, based on the prevalence of gossip in pub conversations, seems to ignore the fact that gossip is contentful and hence necessitates fairly important cognitive (e.g., conceptual) abilities. On the other hand, biological evolution views could be either social (in line with the so-called Machivellian hypothesis on cognition) or cognitive. Disentangling cognitive from social issues, or at least articulating them precisely seems fairly urgent. 

5. Biolinguistics. Biolinguistics is a lively field (as shown by the existence of a dedicated ejournal), concerned with the biological underpinnings of language, from brain circuits to evolution, thus covering all fields of linguistics (phonology, syntax, semantics, pragmatics) and looking further towards psycho- and neurolinguistics. It is also concerned with the development of language and with its neuro-developmental as well as neuropsychological deficits

Call deadline: 15 July 2012
Event Dates: 22-27 July 2013
Event Location: Geneva, Switzerland 
Event URL: http://www.cil19.org/ateliers/advances-in-biolinguistics/


This workshop focuses on advances on the understanding of the biological basis of language (Lenneberg 1967, Jenkins 2000, 2004, Chomsky 2002, 2005, 2011, Piattelli-Palmarini et al. 2009, Larson et al 2010, Di Sciullo et al. 2010, Di Sciullo and Boeckx 2011). The workshop invites contributions where specific biolinguistic hypotheses are substantiated by theoretical linguistics evidence, empirical data and biological/natural world evidence. The workshop includes the following thematic sessions: 

1. Language and biology
2. Language typology and language universals
3. The effects of natural laws

Session 1 Language and biology, addresses the question of how studies in language and genetics, language and the brain contribute to our understanding of the nature of syntax, morphology, the lexicon, and their interfaces with the other cognitive systems.

Session 2 Language typology and language universals, considers how biolinguistic studies on language evolution and variation shed new light on language typology, and the study of language universals. The questions raised in this session are the following: how is variation and change in the natural world related to language variation and change, and how the biolinguistic perspective may lead to new approaches to language typology and universals. 

Session 3 The effects of natural laws, discusses recent proposals on the effect of natural laws, such as prominence, symmetry breaking, reaction-diffusion, preservation of the shape etc. on language derivations and representations, on language variation and evolution, and on language acquisition. How do these laws interact with natural language?

Videos of the plenary lectures from the recent Evolang9 conference in Kyoto are now available online at:
http://ocw.kyoto-u.ac.jp/international-conference-en/31 

The videos of the Kyoto Conference on Biolinguistics are also now available at:
http://ocw.kyoto-u.ac.jp/international-conference-en/30