Language in Time: Language Evolution and Language ChangeThe UWA Language Science group is running a seminar and symposium program in 2002 with support from the Institute for Advanced Studies. The program will draw together some of the most important strands of current research in evolutionary biology and genetics, cultural change, cognitive science, linguistic ecology and comparative and historical linguistics. We intend that research in each of these areas will benefit from the cross-fertilisation of inter-disciplinary contact and that this will also result in the emergence of a more coherent and comprehensive understanding of language change in general.
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| This symposium is the major event in this year's
program. A range of internationally recognised speakers will give
presentations and participate in the discussions. Click here for details, including the registration form. | | | |
| The Language in Time program co-sponsored Dr Simon Kirby as a keynote speaker at the conference.
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Click here to download the powerpoint presentation (436Kb): The Transition to Language: Where learning, culture & evolution meet. (If you do not have Powerpoint software, you can download a free Powerpoint viewer from microsoft.com)
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| Language : A new kind of evolutionary system
| | | Simon Kirby
Language Evolution and Computation Research Unit
Department of Theoretical and Applied Linguistics
University of Edinburgh
| | | | Monday, April 8 at 5pm in Geography Lecture Theatre 1
| | | | Click here to download the powerpoint presentation (950Kb). (If you do not have Powerpoint software, you can download a free Powerpoint viewer from microsoft.com)
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What determines the structure of human language? The most fundamental goal
of linguistic theory is an answer to this question. There are a number of
approaches to this problem of finding a truly explanatory linguistic theory.
For example, a broadly Chomskyan answer might be that parsimonious accounts
of grammaticality judgments and cross-linguistic variation allow
us to uncover the structure of a genetically-determined domain-specific
module for language acquisition. The particular structure of human language
in this view reduces to arbitrary facts about the structure of the brain.
Other researchers argue that brain structure is not arbitrarily related to
language, but has in fact been shaped by it. In this, the Evolutionary
Psychology position, the brain has evolved to be good at language.
Properties of the language task end up shaping the evolution of the language
module. Language structure is therefore determined by the structure of the
brain, which in turn is determined by the function of language. Notice that
both these approaches assume that language structure arises, in some
transparent way, from the structure of the brain. In this talk Dr Kirby
will argue that this is unlikely because languages themselves are emergent
properties of a complex dynamical system. He will demonstrate that there is
a need for more sophisticated methods for uncovering the mapping from the
hypothesised language learning mechanisms to particular patterns of
cross-linguistic variation. Ultimately, our search for an explanatory
linguistics must take into account not only the evolutionary origins of a
language-ready brain, but also the ways in which languages themselves
evolve |
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