Author: Hannah

Next year at EvoLang, I’m doing a short session on public engagement in Language Evolution. As part of this, I have been given a small part of the poster session to have a little exhibition/discussion corner about public engagement initiatives. As such, I am now recruiting contributions that outline existing initiatives. Contributions will use the 2-page EvoLang template (available here: https://www.evolang.org/submissions). Contributions should outline the initiative and make clear:

• The objective(s) for the public engagement initiative
• Reflections on success and areas for improvement
• Good practice to be learnt from these reflections

Contributions will be reviewed in relation to space constraints, but I hope to have a good diversity of examples. Please email contributions to hannah.little@uwe.ac.uk before January 3rd 2020. Questions to the same address.

More context of the session is below:

Public engagement has always been an important aspect of academia. Breaking the barrier between research and the public can foster knowledge, equality, trust and accountability. On a more pragmatic level, funders increasingly require impact statements and plans for public dissemination. However, language evolution as a field has unique difficulties meeting these demands but with the help of professional translation services from Espresso Translations, every needs are meet at ease and efficiently.

Evolutionary linguistics is difficult to explain to those outside the field. Much research presented at EvoLang has implications for our knowledge of human origins, but the implications for current and future humans often remain unclear, creating a “relevance gap”. Further, the abstractness of research based on models (computational or experimental) and not referring to concrete artefacts, fossils or living examples, creates another barrier for explanation. Since EvoLang started, many researchers have undertaken public engagement initiatives that address this relevance gap in different ways. 

In this session, we will explore existing and future objectives for public engagement with language evolution research. We will discuss ways to frame language evolution to make it accessible to the public, and present examples of good practice, as well as lessons to be learnt, from previous and ongoing public engagement initiatives.

Initiatives will be split into 2 sections, mirroring two (non comprehensive) models for public engagement: deficit and participation (Trench, 2008).

The deficit model sees the public as having a knowledge deficit and seeks to fix that through one-way communication. Typical examples are documentaries (e.g. Through the Wormhole episode “How do Aliens Think”, Sayenga, 2013) and science journalism (e.g. Babel Magazine, Little, 2018). Discussion within the session will focus on good practice around creating relevant and intuitive explanations for concepts within language evolution.

The participation model works on the principle that all participants in a public engagement initiative can contribute, and that all have a stake in the outcome. Many public engagement initiatives in language evolution have recruited members of the public as participants in data-collection exercises at public events including festivals (e.g. Verhoef et al., 2015), science centres and museums (e.g. Cluskley, 2018; Raviv & Arnon, 2018), or as games (e.g. The Color Game, Morin et al., 2018). While involvement as an experimental participant is a contribution, it does not necessarily create a sense of having a stake in the outcome, or even understanding the outcome. Therefore one of the key aspects of the session will be discussing good practice for increasing public understanding around these initiatives.

As a result of the submissions, a collaborative review paper of initiatives and best practice for public engagement in language evolution may be produced for submission to the Journal of Language Evolution. If you’d like to contribute to this, but cannot contribute to the session, please email me on hannah.little@uwe.ac.uk

References

Cuskley, C. (2018). Alien symbols for alien language: iterated learning in a unique, novel signal space. In The Evolution of Language: Proceedings of the 12th International Conference (EVOLANGXII). Ed. by C. Cuskley et al. NCU Press. doi (Vol. 10, No. 12775, pp. 3991-1).

Kirby, S., Perman, T. & St John, R. (2017) Sing the Gloaming. Galloway Dark Sky Park, Scotland.

Little, H. (2018) “Babel on 5”. Babel: The Language Magazine, Issue 23. Page 42-44.

Morin, O., Winters, J., Müller, T. F., Morisseau, T., Etter, C., & Greenhill, S. J. (2018). What smartphone apps may contribute to language evolution research. Journal of Language Evolution, 3(2), 91-93.

Raviv, L., & Arnon, I. (2018). Systematicity, but not compositionality: Examining the emergence of linguistic structure in children and adults using iterated learning. Cognition, 181, 160-173.

Sayenga, K. (Producer). (2013). Through the Wormhole [Television series]. Revelations Entertainment.

Trench, B. (2008). Towards an analytical framework of science communication models. In Communicating science in social contexts (pp. 119-135). Springer, Dordrecht.

Verhoef, T., Roberts, S. G., & Dingemanse, M. (2015). Emergence of systematic iconicity: transmission, interaction and analogy.

The University of Birmingham and the Department of English Language and Linguisticsare proud to host the 7th UK Cognitive Linguistics Association Conference from 28 – 30 July 2020 at the University of Birmingham.

The conference welcomes contributions from all fields of cognitive linguistics, as well as from related fields more broadly concerned with language and cognition. We aim to cover a wide range of research including, but not limited to, the following topics:

• Functional and usage-based approaches to language
• Cognitive grammar and construction grammar
• Cognitive/constructionist approaches to linguistic diversity and typology
• Metaphor, metonymy, blends and other forms of figurative language
• Cognitive semantics and frame semantics
• Prototypes and categorization
• Cognitive discourse analysis
• Cognitive pragmatics
• Cognitive semiotics
• Cognitive approaches to historical linguistics
• Language evolution
• Language acquisition
• Experimental semantics and pragmatics
• Sign language research
• Linguistic relativity
• Language and space
• Language and perception
• Gesture and multimodality
• Iconicity
• Embodied cognition and situated cognition

Cognitive linguistics is by definition highly interdisciplinary, and so in addition to primarily linguistic research, we also invite language related submissions that are based on disciplines such as (cognitive and social) psychology, cognitive science, neuroscience, anthropology, biology, artificial intelligence, and discourse and communication studies.

Talks will be 20 minutes plus 10 minutes for questions and discussion. There will also be a poster session.

The language of the conference is English.

Participants will be allowed to present at most one talk (as a single or first author) and one poster. However, there is no restriction on the number of co-authored papers. Upon submission, you will be asked to indicate if you intend the submission for a talk or a poster

Abstracts of no more than 500 words (excluding references) should be submitted using EasyChair. The link will be communicated in due course. 

The Call for Papers will be open from September 2019 until December 30, 2019​

If you require a BSL interpreter, please get in contact with the organisers. 

All abstracts will be subject to double-blind peer review by an international scientific committee (and should therefore not contain author names).

More info on the website here: https://www.ukclc2020.com/

Bart de Boer at the VUB A.I. Lab is looking for a new PhD student to work on agent based models:

The PhD work will consist of building an agent-based simulation in which we can investigate emergence of behavior in a cognitively realistic setting. This means that the agents are not fully rational and that they show behavior similar to that of humans, and that interests of agents are not necessarily always aligned. The modeling will primarily focus on emergence of speech, but the simulation should be general enough that it can be easily adapted to other areas, such as traffic or economic interactions.

More details and how to apply here: https://ai.vub.ac.be/node/1688

He’s also recruiting a visiting post-doc:

The work should consist of agent-based simulation, or of experiments to investigate emergence of behavior in a cognitively realistic setting. This means that in a computer simulation, the agents are not fully rational and that they show behavior similar to that of humans, and that interests of agents are not necessarily always aligned. Experiments should focus on factors that are typical for human settings, but that are generally idealized away, such as altruism, conflicts of interests and other “non-rational” behaviors. We are most interested in modeling emergence of speech, but we welcome applications proposing other areas, such as traffic or economic interactions.

More details here: https://ai.vub.ac.be/node/1689

Submissions are being sought for a special issue of Language and Cognition on Experimental approaches to iconicity in language. We welcome submissions related to any aspect of the many forms and functions of iconicity in natural language (see below). Papers may feature new experimental findings, or may present novel theoretical syntheses of experimental work on iconicity in language. Manuscripts should be a maximum of 8,000 words, with shorter submissions preferred.

Many researchers in language and cognition now recognize that iconicity – resemblance between form and meaning – is a fundamental feature of human languages, spoken and signed alike (Nuckolls 1999; Taub 2001; Perniss, Thompson, & Vigliocco, 2010; Dingemanse et al., 2015; Perry, Perlman & Lupyan, 2015; Ortega, 2017). Iconicity is found across all levels
of linguistic structure, spanning discourse, grammar, morphology, lexicon, phonology and phonetics, and even orthography. It is found in the prosody of speech and sign and in the gestures that accompany linguistic behaviour.

While experimental research on iconicity in speech has long favoured the study of pseudowords like bouba and kiki, a growing body of experimental research shows that iconicity plays an active role in a number of basic language processes, cutting across cognition, development, cultural and biological evolution. The special issue aims to feature some of the most exciting new experimental research on the many forms, functions, and
timescales of iconicity in human language.

Special issue editors
Marcus Perlman, University of Birmingham
Pamela Perniss, University of Brighton
Mark Dingemanse, Max Planck Institute for Psycholinguistics

References
Dingemanse, M., Blasi, D.E., Lupyan, G., Christiansen, M.H., & Monaghan, P. (2015). Arbitrariness, iconicity, and systematicity in language. Trends in Cognitive Sciences, 19, 603-615.
Nuckolls, J.B. (1999). The case for sound symbolism. Annual Review of Anthropology, 28, 255-282.
Ortega, Gerardo. “Iconicity and Sign Lexical Acquisition: A Review.” Frontiers in Psychology 8 (2017). https://doi.org/10.3389/fpsyg.2017.01280.
Perniss, P., Thompson, R.L., & Vigliocco, G. (2010). Iconicity as a general property of language: Evidence from spoken and signed languages. Frontiers in Psychology, 1, 227.
Perry, L.K., Perlman, M. & Lupyan, G. (2015). Iconicity in English and Spanish and its relation to lexical category and age of acquisition. PLoS ONE, 10, e0137147.
Taub, S. (2001). Language from the body: Iconicity and metaphor in American Sign Language. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

How to submit. If you would like to contribute, please email us an 800-1000-word abstract by 1st April, 2018. Abstracts should be sent to Marcus Perlman (m.perlman@bham.ac.uk). We will return a decision on your abstract by 15th April, and first submissions will be due on 15th August. Manuscripts will be submitted through the Language and Cognition submission interface. We aim to put out the complete issue by the beginning of 2019. Notably, submissions that proceed faster can appear online first.

Call for papers of IACS3 in Toronto is below, including research topics of experimental semiotics, speech and gesture and the evolution of language. And lots more, of course. Full call can be seen here: http://www.perceptualartifacts.org/iacs-2018/cfp.html

The International Association for Cognitive Semiotics in cooperation with OCAD University and Ryerson University is pleased to announce The Third Conference of the International Association for Cognitive Semiotics (IACS3 – 2018) July 13–15, 2018 Toronto, Ontario, Canada: iacs-2018.org

Plenary speakers confirmed (as of August 15, 2017)

• John M. Kennedy • University of Toronto
• Kalevi Kull • University of Tartu
• Maxine Sheets-Johnstone • University of Oregon

Conference Theme: MULTIMODALITIES

This non-restrictive theme is intended to encourage the exploration of pre-linguistic and extra-linguistic modes of semiotic systems and meaning construal, as well as their intersection with linguistic processes.

Cognitive Semiotics investigates the nature of meaning, the role of consciousness, the unique cognitive features of human beings, the interaction of nature and nurture in development, and the interplay of biological and cultural evolution in phylogeny. To better answer such questions, cognitive semiotics integrates methods and theories developed in the human, social, and cognitive sciences.

The International Association for Cognitive Semiotics (IACS, founded 2013) aims at establishing cognitive semiotics as a trans-disciplinary study of meaning. More information on the International Association for Cognitive Semiotics can be found at http://iacs.dk

The IACS conference series seeks to gather together scholars and scientists in semiotics, linguistics, philosophy, cognitive science, psychology and related fields, who wish to share their research on meaning and contribute the interdisciplinary dialogue.

Topics of the conference include (but are not limited to):

• Biological and cultural evolution of human cognitive specificity
• Cognitive linguistics and phenomenology
• Communication across cultural barriers
• Cross-species comparative semiotics
• Evolutionary perspectives on altruism
• Experimental semiotics
• Iconicity in language and other semiotic resources
• Intersubjectivity and mimesis in evolution and development
• Multimodality
• Narrativity across different media
• Semantic typology and linguistic relativity
• Semiosis (sense-making) in social interaction
• Semiotic and cognitive development in children
• Sign use and cognition
• Signs, affordances, and other meanings
• Speech and gesture
• The comparative semiotics of iconicity and indexicality
• The evolution of language

We invite abstract submissions for theme sessions, oral presentations and posters. Please select your chosen format along with your submission. Format types and guidelines are here:  http://www.perceptualartifacts.org/iacs-2018/cfp.html

Important Dates

Deadline for submission of theme sessions:	15 Nov 2017
Deadline for abstract submission (oral presentations, posters):	05 Dec 2017
Notification of acceptance (oral presentations, posters):	15 Feb 2018
Last date for early registration:	05 May 2018

September Tutorial in Empiricism: Practical Help for Experimental Novices

In September, the Language Evolution and Interaction Scholars of Nijmegen (LEvInSoN group), based in the Language and Cognition Department at the Max Planck Institute for Psycholinguistics will be hosting a workshop about research in Language Evolution and Interaction (September 21-22) – call for posters here: http://www.mpi.nl/events/MMIEL

The workshop “Minds, Mechanisms and Interaction in the Evolution of Language” will be hosted at the Max Planck Institute for Psycholinguistics in Nijmegen, the Netherlands on 21st-22nd September 2017. The workshop will include a poster session on topics related to the themes of the meeting. We are interested in contributions investigating the emergence and evolution of language, specifically in relation to interaction.

We are looking for work in the following areas:

• biases and pre-adaptations for language and interaction
• cognitive and cultural mechanisms for linguistic emergence
• interaction as a driver for language evolution

We invite submissions of abstracts for posters, particularly from PhD students and junior researchers.

Please submit an abstract of no more than 300 words (word count not including references) by email to hannah.little@mpi.nl.  Please include a title, authors, affiliations and contact email addresses.  

Deadline: July 9th 2017

Outcome of decision process by: 24th July

Abstracts will be reviewed by the workshop committee.

The poster session will take place on the evening of Thursday September 21st 2017.

Registration is free (details to follow).

Plenary speakers:

• David Leavens, University of Sussex
• Jennie Pyers, Wellesley College
• Monica Tamariz, Heriot Watt University

The workshop also includes presentations from the Levinson group (Language Evolution and Interaction Scholars of Nijmegen)  and an introduction by Stephen Levinson himself!

Summer school:

The workshop will also be bookended with a summer school on 20th and 23rd September specifically aimed at PhD students. The school will consist of a short tutorial series covering experimental and statistical methods that should be of broad interest to a general audience, though focussed around the theme of the workshop. In this tutorial series, we will cover all aspects of creating, hosting, and analysing the data from a set of experiments that will be run live (online) during the workshop! More details for the summer school and registration will follow.

Two PhD positions are available in the AI lab at the Vrije Universiteit Brussel with Bart de Boer.

One position is on modelling an emerging sign language:

We are looking for a PhD student to work on modeling the emergence of sign languages, with a focus on modeling the social dynamics underlying existing signing communities.  The project relies on specialist expertise of the Kata Kolok signing community that has emerged in a Balinese village over the course of several generations. The emergence of Kata Kolok, and the demographics of the village have been closely studied by geneticists, anthropologists, and linguists. A preliminary model has been built in Python, simulating this emergence. The aim of the project is to investigate, using a combination of linguistic field research and computational modeling which factors – cultural, genetic, linguistic and others –  determine the way language emerges. There will be one PhD student in Nijmegen conducting primary field research on Kata Kolok and one based in Brussels (as advertised here) to be involved in the computational aspect of the project. Both positions are part of a FWO-NWO funded collaboration of the Artificial Intelligence lab of the Vrije Universiteit Brussel and the Center for Language Studies at Radboud University Nijmegen and the advertised position is supervised by profs. Bart de Boer and Connie de Vos.

Advertisement here: https://ai.vub.ac.be/PhDKataKolok

The other is on modelling acquisition of speech:

We are looking for someone who has (or who is about to complete) a master’s degree in artificial intelligence, speech technology, computer science or equivalent. You will work on a project that investigates advanced techniques for learning the building blocks of speech, with a focus on spectro-temporal features and dynamic Bayesian networks. It is part of the Artificial Intelligence lab of the Vrije Universiteit Brussel and is supervised by prof. Bart de Boer.

Advertisement here: https://ai.vub.ac.be/PhD_Spectrotemporal_DBN

The deadline for application is 1st July 2017. Other details available at the links above.

Questions about details of the positions themselves should be directed to Bart de Boer (bart@arti.vub.ac.be). However, I myself did my PhD with Bart at the VUB, so I’d also be happy to answer more informal questions about working in the lab/living in Belgium/other things (hannah@ai.vub.ac.be).