JAIST-EELC2010 is an international seminar on the Emergence and Evolution of Linguistic Communication. It will be held in Kyoto, sponsored by Japan Advanced Institute of Science and Technology under the joint auspices of the Grants-in-Aid for Scientific Research on Innovative Areas "The study on the neural dynamics for understanding communication in terms of complex hetero systems".
10-12 March 2010 inclusive
Campus Plaza Kyoto
(5th floor, 1st lecture room),
Kyoto, Japan (Map)
Free to participate
Students can be supported for some of their travel expenses.
(Application deadline: 16 Feb., 2010, 24:00 Japan Standard
Time) Closed
Introduction
Language or the faculty of language is one of the unique characteristics of humans. When, why, and how did this faculty biologically evolve? How did the initial language develop into our present complex language? How does such dynamic and creative communication as we now engage in emerge? These are our questions regarding the origin and evolution of language. The origin and evolution of language are complex phenomena in which adaptive changes with different spatiotemporal scales, namely, learning, cultural evolution, and biological evolution, interact with each other. In order to understand these phenomena, we should advance research in diverse disciplines, in addition to evolutionary biology and linguistics, such as ethology about animal communication systems, cognitive and brain sciences regarding language ability and language acquisition, and complex systems and constructive research treating hetero and complex dynamics. Further, we need to develop new experimental paradigms and new theoretical tools for language evolution. With the progress of such modern research into language evolution, the true issues and effective research methodologies have come into our sight. Now, by holding this international seminar to learn about and discuss these issues, basic concepts and effective methodologies with some of the leading scholars in the field, we want to encourage further research activities, and expand the development of this exciting field.
Lecturers (in alphabetical order):
- Cedric Boeckx (Institució Catalana de Recerca i Estudis Avançats (ICREA) / Universitat Autónoma de Barcelona (UAB), Spain)
- Biolinguistics
(Research on the origin of language from the generative grammar and minimalist approaches) - Didier Demolin (Université Libre de Bruxelles, Belgium)
- Phonology
(Experimental research, acoustic, articulatory and aerodynamic systems of phonetic and phonological consonants glottalized) - Tecumseh Fitch (Universität Wien, Austria)
- Comparative cognitive biology
(Experimental investigations about the evolution of human speech, language, music and art) - Koji Fujita (Kyoto University, Japan)
- Generative biolinguistics
(Studies on the design, development and evolution of recursive Merge) - Takashi Hashimoto (JAIST, Japan)
- Evolutionary linguistics
(Constructive approach to the origin and the evolution of language through the modeling of grammaticalization) - Yoshihisa Nakamura (University of Kanazawa, Japan)
- Cognitive linguistics
(Linguistics from the perspectives of cognition and evolution) - Rafael Núñez (UC San Diego, USA)
- Cognitive linguistics
(Research on cognition from the perspective of the embodied mind) - Kazuo Okanoya (RIKEN BSI, Japan)
- Biolinguistics
(Experimental studies about birdsong and rodent communication for understanding the biological origin of human language)
The EELC Symposium Series
This seminar is the fourth in a series of the successful workshops on the Emergence and Evolution of Linguistic Communication. The first one was held in 2004 in Kanazawa (Japan) under the auspices of the Japanese Society for Artificial Intelligence (JSAI), the second one in Hatfield (United Kingdom) under the auspices of the Society for the Study of Artificial Intelligence and Simulation of Behaviour (AISB), and the third one in Rome (Italy) under the auspices of the International Society for Adaptive Behavior (ISAB).
Organizing Committee
- Takashi Hashimoto (JAIST, Japan), Chair
- Koji Fujita (Kyoto University, Japan)
- Yoshihisa Nakamura (University of Kanazawa, Japan)
- Kazuo Okanoya (RIKEN BSI, Japan)
Poster
You can download the A3 size version (1.5MB).
Contact
If you have any queries, please e-mail to JAIST-EELC2010[at]jaist.ac.jp
News
Mar. 04, 2010 : Around map added.
Feb. 17, 2010 : Banquet
fee decided.
Feb. 10, 2010 : Program
decided (A lecturer added).
Jan. 21, 2010 : Program uploaded (but still tentative).
Jan. 12, 2010 : Banquet information added.
Dec. 10, 2009 : This website opened.