From Freek.VanDeVelde at arts.kuleuven.be Fri Oct 4 20:32:31 2013 From: Freek.VanDeVelde at arts.kuleuven.be (Freek Van de Velde) Date: Fri, 4 Oct 2013 20:32:31 +0000 Subject: Workshop at Evolang X: Extended deadline In-Reply-To: <5B16B08BAD5E9F4A8A8B12FD94B994C1108CFB6A@ICTS-S-MBX5.luna.kuleuven.be> Message-ID: Correction: extended deadline 1 March *2014*, of course Op 4 Oct 2013 om 21:59 heeft "Freek Van de Velde" > het volgende geschreven: Evolang X Workshop: How Grammaticalization Processes Create Grammar: From Historical Corpus Data to Agent-Based Models CALL FOR SUBMISSIONS NOW OPEN (see further below) EXTENDED DEADLINE: *1 March 2013* Convenors: Luc Steels, Freek Van de Velde and Remi van Trijp Date and Location: 14 April 2013, Vienna, as part of the Evolang-X Conference in Vienna Theme of the workshop: Recently the scientific study of language origins and evolution has seen three important breakthroughs. First, a growing number of corpora of historical language data has become available. Although initially these corpora have been used to examine surface features only (for example the frequency and distribution of word occurrences), advances in statistical language processing now allow for the thorough examination of aspects of grammar, for example, how syntactic structure has progressively arisen in the history of Indo-European languages or how constructional choices have undergone change (e.g. Krug 2000; Bybee 2010; Sommerer 2010; Van de Velde 2010; Traugott & Trousdale, forthc.; Hilpert & Gries, ms.). Second, agent-based models of the cognitive and cultural processes underlying the emergence and evolution of language have made a significant leap forward by using sophisticated, and therefore more realistic, representations of grammar and language processing (e.g. Van Trijp 2012; Beuls & Steels 2013), so that we can now go way beyond the lexicon-oriented experiments characteristic for the field a decade ago. Finally, selectionist theorizing, which has given such tremendous power to evolutionary biology, is being applied increasingly to understand language evolution at the cultural level (Croft 2000; Ritt 2004; Mufwene 2008; Rosenbach et al. 2008; Landsbergen et al. 2010; Steels 2011). Researchers are beginning to look more closely at what selectionist criteria could drive the origins and change in grammatical paradigms and how new language strategies could arise through exaptation, recombination or mutation of existing strategies. The selectionist criteria are primarily based on achieving enough expressive power, maximizing communicative success, and minimizing cognitive effort (Van Trijp 2013). The confluence of these three trends is beginning to give us sophisticated agent-based models which are empirically grounded in real corpus data and framed in a well-established theory of cultural evolution, thus leading to comprehensive scientific models of the grammaticalization processes underlying language emergence and evolution. All this is tremendously exciting. The goal of this workshop is to alert the community of researchers in language evolution to this important development and to show concrete research achievements demonstrating the current state of the art. It will act as a forum for exchanging tools and it will inquire what kind of open problems might be amenable to this approach, given the currently available data and the state of the art in computational linguistics tools for agent-based modeling. The workshop is intended to enable a deeper dialog between two communities (historical linguistics and computational linguistics) so that we can productively combine the very long tradition of empirical research from historical linguistics with the rigorous formalization and validation through simulation as practiced in agent-based modeling. The workshop will as much as possible be based on real case studies. For example, how can we explain the current messy state of the German article system, given that old High German had a much clearer system? (van Trijp 2013) Is this development based on random drift or are there selectionist forces at work? How can we explain that Indo-European languages progressively developed a rich constituent structure with an increasing number of syntactic categories, a gradual incorporation of ‘floating’ words into phrases, and a loss of grammatical agreement? (Van de Velde 2009)? How can we explain the emergence of quantifiers out of adjectives? How can we explain the rise of a case system (Beuls & Steels 2013). General research questions that are to be addressed: 1. What are the processes that cause variation in populations of speakers? 2. What are the processes that select variants to become dominant in a speech community? 3. How do language strategies give rise to language systems? 4. Which cognitive functions must the brain support in order to implement language strategies? 5. What are good tools for doing empirically driven agent-based modeling? Call for Submissions We invite contributions (10′ talk + 5′ discussion) to one of the following three sessions in the workshop: 1. Case Studies: historical data of emergence and evolution of grammatical phenomena and concrete agent-based models, or steps towards them. 2. Tools: What is the state-of-the-art for historical linguistics corpora and tools extracting trends in grammatical evolution? What tools are available for building realistic agent-based models of grammaticalization? 3. Cultural evolution theory: Which results from theoretical research in evolutionary biology can be exapted to advance cultural evolutionary linguistics? Format of the submission. An extended abstract of *max. 4 pages (including references)* adhering to the Evolang stylesheet. Submissions should be e-mailed to info at fcg-net.org with the subject “Evolang workshop submission”. Important Dates * Deadline for submission: 1 March 2014, 23:59 CE * Notification of acceptance: 15 March 2014 * Final submission: 1 April 2014 References · Beuls, Katrien & Luc Steels. 2013. ‘Agent-based models of strategies for the emergence and evolution of grammatical agreement’. PLoS ONE 8(3), e58960. doi:10.1371/journal.pone.0058960. · Bybee, Joan L. 2010. Language, Usage and Cognition. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. · Croft, William. 2000. Explaining language change. An evolutionary approach. Harlow: Longman. · Hilpert, Martin & Stefan Th, Gries. Manuscript. ‘Quantitative approaches to diachronic corpus linguistics’. In: Merja Kytö & Päivi Pahta (eds.), The Cambridge handbook of English historical linguistics. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. · Krug, Manfred. 2000. Emerging English modals: a corpus-based study of grammaticalization. Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter. · Frank Landsbergen, Robert Lachlan, Carel ten Cate & Arie Verhagen. ‘A cultural evolutionary model of patterns in semantic change’. Linguistics 48: 363-390. · Ritt, Nikolaus. 2004. Selfish Sounds. A Darwinian Approach to Language Change. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. · Rosenbach, Anette. 2008. ‘Language Change as Cultural Evolution: Evolutionary Approaches to Language Change’. In: Regine Eckardt, Gerhard Jäger and Tonjes Veenstra (eds.), Variation, Selection, Development. Probing the Evolutionary Model of Language Chang. Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter, 23-72. · Sommerer, L. 2011. ‘Old English se: from demonstrative to article. A usage-based study of nominal determination and category emergence’. PhD thesis, University of Vienna. · Steels, Luc. 2011. ‘Modeling the cultural evolution of language’. Physics of Life Review 8: 339-356. · Traugott, Elizabeth & Graeme Trousdale. Forthcoming. Constructionalization and constructional change. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. · Van de Velde, Freek. 2009. De nominale constituent. Structuur en geschiedenis. Leuven: Leuven University Press. · Van de Velde, Freek. 2010. ‘The emergence of the determiner in the Dutch NP’. Linguistics 48: 263-299. · van Trijp, Remi. 2012. ‘Not as awful as it seems: explaining German case through computational experiments in Fluid Construction grammar. In: Proceedings of the 13th Conference of the European Chapter of the Association for Computational Linguistics, 829-839. · van Trijp, Remi. 2013. ‘Linguistic assessment criteria for explaining language change: a case study on syncretism in German definite articles’. Language Dynamics and Change 3(1): 105-132. Freek Van de Velde http://wwwling.arts.kuleuven.be/qlvl/freek.htm -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: -------------- next part -------------- _______________________________________________ Histling-l mailing list Histling-l at mailman.rice.edu https://mailman.rice.edu/mailman/listinfo/histling-l From Freek.VanDeVelde at arts.kuleuven.be Fri Oct 4 19:59:58 2013 From: Freek.VanDeVelde at arts.kuleuven.be (Freek Van de Velde) Date: Fri, 4 Oct 2013 19:59:58 +0000 Subject: Workshop at Evolang X: Extended deadline Message-ID: Evolang X Workshop: How Grammaticalization Processes Create Grammar: From Historical Corpus Data to Agent-Based Models CALL FOR SUBMISSIONS NOW OPEN (see further below) EXTENDED DEADLINE: *1 March 2013* Convenors: Luc Steels, Freek Van de Velde and Remi van Trijp Date and Location: 14 April 2013, Vienna, as part of the Evolang-X Conference in Vienna Theme of the workshop: Recently the scientific study of language origins and evolution has seen three important breakthroughs. First, a growing number of corpora of historical language data has become available. Although initially these corpora have been used to examine surface features only (for example the frequency and distribution of word occurrences), advances in statistical language processing now allow for the thorough examination of aspects of grammar, for example, how syntactic structure has progressively arisen in the history of Indo-European languages or how constructional choices have undergone change (e.g. Krug 2000; Bybee 2010; Sommerer 2010; Van de Velde 2010; Traugott & Trousdale, forthc.; Hilpert & Gries, ms.). Second, agent-based models of the cognitive and cultural processes underlying the emergence and evolution of language have made a significant leap forward by using sophisticated, and therefore more realistic, representations of grammar and language processing (e.g. Van Trijp 2012; Beuls & Steels 2013), so that we can now go way beyond the lexicon-oriented experiments characteristic for the field a decade ago. Finally, selectionist theorizing, which has given such tremendous power to evolutionary biology, is being applied increasingly to understand language evolution at the cultural level (Croft 2000; Ritt 2004; Mufwene 2008; Rosenbach et al. 2008; Landsbergen et al. 2010; Steels 2011). Researchers are beginning to look more closely at what selectionist criteria could drive the origins and change in grammatical paradigms and how new language strategies could arise through exaptation, recombination or mutation of existing strategies. The selectionist criteria are primarily based on achieving enough expressive power, maximizing communicative success, and minimizing cognitive effort (Van Trijp 2013). The confluence of these three trends is beginning to give us sophisticated agent-based models which are empirically grounded in real corpus data and framed in a well-established theory of cultural evolution, thus leading to comprehensive scientific models of the grammaticalization processes underlying language emergence and evolution. All this is tremendously exciting. The goal of this workshop is to alert the community of researchers in language evolution to this important development and to show concrete research achievements demonstrating the current state of the art. It will act as a forum for exchanging tools and it will inquire what kind of open problems might be amenable to this approach, given the currently available data and the state of the art in computational linguistics tools for agent-based modeling. The workshop is intended to enable a deeper dialog between two communities (historical linguistics and computational linguistics) so that we can productively combine the very long tradition of empirical research from historical linguistics with the rigorous formalization and validation through simulation as practiced in agent-based modeling. The workshop will as much as possible be based on real case studies. For example, how can we explain the current messy state of the German article system, given that old High German had a much clearer system? (van Trijp 2013) Is this development based on random drift or are there selectionist forces at work? How can we explain that Indo-European languages progressively developed a rich constituent structure with an increasing number of syntactic categories, a gradual incorporation of ‘floating’ words into phrases, and a loss of grammatical agreement? (Van de Velde 2009)? How can we explain the emergence of quantifiers out of adjectives? How can we explain the rise of a case system (Beuls & Steels 2013). General research questions that are to be addressed: 1. What are the processes that cause variation in populations of speakers? 2. What are the processes that select variants to become dominant in a speech community? 3. How do language strategies give rise to language systems? 4. Which cognitive functions must the brain support in order to implement language strategies? 5. What are good tools for doing empirically driven agent-based modeling? Call for Submissions We invite contributions (10′ talk + 5′ discussion) to one of the following three sessions in the workshop: 1. Case Studies: historical data of emergence and evolution of grammatical phenomena and concrete agent-based models, or steps towards them. 2. Tools: What is the state-of-the-art for historical linguistics corpora and tools extracting trends in grammatical evolution? What tools are available for building realistic agent-based models of grammaticalization? 3. Cultural evolution theory: Which results from theoretical research in evolutionary biology can be exapted to advance cultural evolutionary linguistics? Format of the submission. An extended abstract of *max. 4 pages (including references)* adhering to the Evolang stylesheet. Submissions should be e-mailed to info at fcg-net.org with the subject “Evolang workshop submission”. Important Dates * Deadline for submission: 1 March 2014, 23:59 CE * Notification of acceptance: 15 March 2014 * Final submission: 1 April 2014 References · Beuls, Katrien & Luc Steels. 2013. ‘Agent-based models of strategies for the emergence and evolution of grammatical agreement’. PLoS ONE 8(3), e58960. doi:10.1371/journal.pone.0058960. · Bybee, Joan L. 2010. Language, Usage and Cognition. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. · Croft, William. 2000. Explaining language change. An evolutionary approach. Harlow: Longman. · Hilpert, Martin & Stefan Th, Gries. Manuscript. ‘Quantitative approaches to diachronic corpus linguistics’. In: Merja Kytö & Päivi Pahta (eds.), The Cambridge handbook of English historical linguistics. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. · Krug, Manfred. 2000. Emerging English modals: a corpus-based study of grammaticalization. Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter. · Frank Landsbergen, Robert Lachlan, Carel ten Cate & Arie Verhagen. ‘A cultural evolutionary model of patterns in semantic change’. Linguistics 48: 363-390. · Ritt, Nikolaus. 2004. Selfish Sounds. A Darwinian Approach to Language Change. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. · Rosenbach, Anette. 2008. ‘Language Change as Cultural Evolution: Evolutionary Approaches to Language Change’. In: Regine Eckardt, Gerhard Jäger and Tonjes Veenstra (eds.), Variation, Selection, Development. Probing the Evolutionary Model of Language Chang. Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter, 23-72. · Sommerer, L. 2011. ‘Old English se: from demonstrative to article. A usage-based study of nominal determination and category emergence’. PhD thesis, University of Vienna. · Steels, Luc. 2011. ‘Modeling the cultural evolution of language’. Physics of Life Review 8: 339-356. · Traugott, Elizabeth & Graeme Trousdale. Forthcoming. Constructionalization and constructional change. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. · Van de Velde, Freek. 2009. De nominale constituent. Structuur en geschiedenis. Leuven: Leuven University Press. · Van de Velde, Freek. 2010. ‘The emergence of the determiner in the Dutch NP’. Linguistics 48: 263-299. · van Trijp, Remi. 2012. ‘Not as awful as it seems: explaining German case through computational experiments in Fluid Construction grammar. In: Proceedings of the 13th Conference of the European Chapter of the Association for Computational Linguistics, 829-839. · van Trijp, Remi. 2013. ‘Linguistic assessment criteria for explaining language change: a case study on syncretism in German definite articles’. Language Dynamics and Change 3(1): 105-132. Freek Van de Velde http://wwwling.arts.kuleuven.be/qlvl/freek.htm -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: -------------- next part -------------- _______________________________________________ Histling-l mailing list Histling-l at mailman.rice.edu https://mailman.rice.edu/mailman/listinfo/histling-l From a.verkerk at reading.ac.uk Wed Oct 23 19:42:54 2013 From: a.verkerk at reading.ac.uk (Annemarie Verkerk) Date: Wed, 23 Oct 2013 19:42:54 +0000 Subject: Call for papers: Language Diversity and History: New Interdisciplinary Perspectives Message-ID: An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: -------------- next part -------------- _______________________________________________ Histling-l mailing list Histling-l at mailman.rice.edu https://mailman.rice.edu/mailman/listinfo/histling-l From Hubert.Cuyckens at arts.kuleuven.be Tue Oct 29 08:15:42 2013 From: Hubert.Cuyckens at arts.kuleuven.be (Hubert Cuyckens) Date: Tue, 29 Oct 2013 08:15:42 +0000 Subject: CFP: 18th International Conference on English Historical Linguistics (ICEHL-18) -- 2nd call for papers Message-ID: [WITH APOLOGIES FOR CROSS­-POSTINGS] 2nd CALL FOR PAPERS 18th International Conference on English Historical Linguistics ICEHL18 takes place in Leuven, Belgium, 14-18 July 2014 (academic programme 14-17 July, social programme 18 July). Conference website: http://www.arts.kuleuven.be/ling/ICEHL18/ Conference email: icehl18 at arts.kuleuven.be Plenary Speakers Charles Boberg, McGill University http://www.mcgill.ca/linguistics/sites/mcgill.ca.linguistics/files/boberg_webpage.pdf Robert Fulk, Indiana University, Bloomington http://www.iub.edu/~engweb/faculty/profile_rFulk.shtml Peter Grund, University of Kansas http://www.english.ku.edu/people/grund-peter-j/index.shtml María José López-Couso, University of Santiago de Compostela http://www.usc-vlcg.es/MXLC.htm Marit Westergaard, University of Tromso http://ansatte.uit.no/marit.westergaard/ Presentation Formats Full papers will be allowed 30 minutes, including 10 minutes for discussion. Posters will be presented in a special session and remain on display during the conference. Submission of Abstracts Papers on any aspect of the history of the English language are welcome, including phonetics, phonology, morphology, syntax, semantics, pragmatics, sociolinguistics, language acquisition, language contact, language change, stylistics, metrics, English language and culture, and English language in society. Papers on any period are welcome: Old English, Middle English, Early Modern English, Late Modern English, and present-day English. Abstracts for papers and posters can be submitted from 1 May to 30 November 2013 through the EasyAbs abstract submission facility at http://linguistlist.org/confservices/ICEHL18. Notifications of acceptance of all abstracts will be sent out by 15 February 2014. Abstracts should not exceed 400 words (exclusive of references) and should clearly state research questions, approach, method, data and (expected) results. Abstracts should also list up to five keywords. Abstracts will not be edited for typing, spelling, or grammatical errors after submission. Therefore, abstracts should comply with the following layout requirements: - Abstracts must be single-spaced and fully justified. The standard font will be Calibri, size 11. The margins will be 2,54 top/bottom and 1,91 left/right (Moderate in MS Word). - References will have a hanging indent of 1,27 cm. - Submit the abstract as a .doc, .docx or .odt document. If it contains special characters, please send a PDF version to icehl18 at arts.kuleuven.be. Multiple Papers: One person may submit a single-authored abstract, a single-authored abstract and a co-authored one (not as first author) or two co-authored abstracts (only one as first author). Note that keynote papers within workshops count as ordinary papers. Presentations will be 20 minutes plus 10 minutes question time. Evaluation: Abstracts submitted to the general session and to the poster session will be evaluated by two members of the Scientific Committee. Workshop papers receive two evaluations by Scientific Committee members and one by the workshop convenors. Travel and Accommodation Information to follow. Please check the conference website for updates. Registration Registration for the conference opens on 15 February 2014. Organizing committee Hubert Cuyckens Hendrik De Smet Liesbet Heyvaert Peter Petré Frauke D'hoedt Lauren Fonteyn Charlotte Maekelberghe Nikki van de Pol -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: -------------- next part -------------- _______________________________________________ Histling-l mailing list Histling-l at mailman.rice.edu https://mailman.rice.edu/mailman/listinfo/histling-l From Freek.VanDeVelde at arts.kuleuven.be Fri Oct 4 20:32:31 2013 From: Freek.VanDeVelde at arts.kuleuven.be (Freek Van de Velde) Date: Fri, 4 Oct 2013 20:32:31 +0000 Subject: Workshop at Evolang X: Extended deadline In-Reply-To: <5B16B08BAD5E9F4A8A8B12FD94B994C1108CFB6A@ICTS-S-MBX5.luna.kuleuven.be> Message-ID: Correction: extended deadline 1 March *2014*, of course Op 4 Oct 2013 om 21:59 heeft "Freek Van de Velde" > het volgende geschreven: Evolang X Workshop: How Grammaticalization Processes Create Grammar: From Historical Corpus Data to Agent-Based Models CALL FOR SUBMISSIONS NOW OPEN (see further below) EXTENDED DEADLINE: *1 March 2013* Convenors: Luc Steels, Freek Van de Velde and Remi van Trijp Date and Location: 14 April 2013, Vienna, as part of the Evolang-X Conference in Vienna Theme of the workshop: Recently the scientific study of language origins and evolution has seen three important breakthroughs. First, a growing number of corpora of historical language data has become available. Although initially these corpora have been used to examine surface features only (for example the frequency and distribution of word occurrences), advances in statistical language processing now allow for the thorough examination of aspects of grammar, for example, how syntactic structure has progressively arisen in the history of Indo-European languages or how constructional choices have undergone change (e.g. Krug 2000; Bybee 2010; Sommerer 2010; Van de Velde 2010; Traugott & Trousdale, forthc.; Hilpert & Gries, ms.). Second, agent-based models of the cognitive and cultural processes underlying the emergence and evolution of language have made a significant leap forward by using sophisticated, and therefore more realistic, representations of grammar and language processing (e.g. Van Trijp 2012; Beuls & Steels 2013), so that we can now go way beyond the lexicon-oriented experiments characteristic for the field a decade ago. Finally, selectionist theorizing, which has given such tremendous power to evolutionary biology, is being applied increasingly to understand language evolution at the cultural level (Croft 2000; Ritt 2004; Mufwene 2008; Rosenbach et al. 2008; Landsbergen et al. 2010; Steels 2011). Researchers are beginning to look more closely at what selectionist criteria could drive the origins and change in grammatical paradigms and how new language strategies could arise through exaptation, recombination or mutation of existing strategies. The selectionist criteria are primarily based on achieving enough expressive power, maximizing communicative success, and minimizing cognitive effort (Van Trijp 2013). The confluence of these three trends is beginning to give us sophisticated agent-based models which are empirically grounded in real corpus data and framed in a well-established theory of cultural evolution, thus leading to comprehensive scientific models of the grammaticalization processes underlying language emergence and evolution. All this is tremendously exciting. The goal of this workshop is to alert the community of researchers in language evolution to this important development and to show concrete research achievements demonstrating the current state of the art. It will act as a forum for exchanging tools and it will inquire what kind of open problems might be amenable to this approach, given the currently available data and the state of the art in computational linguistics tools for agent-based modeling. The workshop is intended to enable a deeper dialog between two communities (historical linguistics and computational linguistics) so that we can productively combine the very long tradition of empirical research from historical linguistics with the rigorous formalization and validation through simulation as practiced in agent-based modeling. The workshop will as much as possible be based on real case studies. For example, how can we explain the current messy state of the German article system, given that old High German had a much clearer system? (van Trijp 2013) Is this development based on random drift or are there selectionist forces at work? How can we explain that Indo-European languages progressively developed a rich constituent structure with an increasing number of syntactic categories, a gradual incorporation of ?floating? words into phrases, and a loss of grammatical agreement? (Van de Velde 2009)? How can we explain the emergence of quantifiers out of adjectives? How can we explain the rise of a case system (Beuls & Steels 2013). General research questions that are to be addressed: 1. What are the processes that cause variation in populations of speakers? 2. What are the processes that select variants to become dominant in a speech community? 3. How do language strategies give rise to language systems? 4. Which cognitive functions must the brain support in order to implement language strategies? 5. What are good tools for doing empirically driven agent-based modeling? Call for Submissions We invite contributions (10? talk + 5? discussion) to one of the following three sessions in the workshop: 1. Case Studies: historical data of emergence and evolution of grammatical phenomena and concrete agent-based models, or steps towards them. 2. Tools: What is the state-of-the-art for historical linguistics corpora and tools extracting trends in grammatical evolution? What tools are available for building realistic agent-based models of grammaticalization? 3. Cultural evolution theory: Which results from theoretical research in evolutionary biology can be exapted to advance cultural evolutionary linguistics? Format of the submission. An extended abstract of *max. 4 pages (including references)* adhering to the Evolang stylesheet. Submissions should be e-mailed to info at fcg-net.org with the subject ?Evolang workshop submission?. Important Dates * Deadline for submission: 1 March 2014, 23:59 CE * Notification of acceptance: 15 March 2014 * Final submission: 1 April 2014 References ? Beuls, Katrien & Luc Steels. 2013. ?Agent-based models of strategies for the emergence and evolution of grammatical agreement?. PLoS ONE 8(3), e58960. doi:10.1371/journal.pone.0058960. ? Bybee, Joan L. 2010. Language, Usage and Cognition. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. ? Croft, William. 2000. Explaining language change. An evolutionary approach. Harlow: Longman. ? Hilpert, Martin & Stefan Th, Gries. Manuscript. ?Quantitative approaches to diachronic corpus linguistics?. In: Merja Kyt? & P?ivi Pahta (eds.), The Cambridge handbook of English historical linguistics. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. ? Krug, Manfred. 2000. Emerging English modals: a corpus-based study of grammaticalization. Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter. ? Frank Landsbergen, Robert Lachlan, Carel ten Cate & Arie Verhagen. ?A cultural evolutionary model of patterns in semantic change?. Linguistics 48: 363-390. ? Ritt, Nikolaus. 2004. Selfish Sounds. A Darwinian Approach to Language Change. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. ? Rosenbach, Anette. 2008. ?Language Change as Cultural Evolution: Evolutionary Approaches to Language Change?. In: Regine Eckardt, Gerhard J?ger and Tonjes Veenstra (eds.), Variation, Selection, Development. Probing the Evolutionary Model of Language Chang. Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter, 23-72. ? Sommerer, L. 2011. ?Old English se: from demonstrative to article. A usage-based study of nominal determination and category emergence?. PhD thesis, University of Vienna. ? Steels, Luc. 2011. ?Modeling the cultural evolution of language?. Physics of Life Review 8: 339-356. ? Traugott, Elizabeth & Graeme Trousdale. Forthcoming. Constructionalization and constructional change. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. ? Van de Velde, Freek. 2009. De nominale constituent. Structuur en geschiedenis. Leuven: Leuven University Press. ? Van de Velde, Freek. 2010. ?The emergence of the determiner in the Dutch NP?. Linguistics 48: 263-299. ? van Trijp, Remi. 2012. ?Not as awful as it seems: explaining German case through computational experiments in Fluid Construction grammar. In: Proceedings of the 13th Conference of the European Chapter of the Association for Computational Linguistics, 829-839. ? van Trijp, Remi. 2013. ?Linguistic assessment criteria for explaining language change: a case study on syncretism in German definite articles?. Language Dynamics and Change 3(1): 105-132. Freek Van de Velde http://wwwling.arts.kuleuven.be/qlvl/freek.htm -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: -------------- next part -------------- _______________________________________________ Histling-l mailing list Histling-l at mailman.rice.edu https://mailman.rice.edu/mailman/listinfo/histling-l From Freek.VanDeVelde at arts.kuleuven.be Fri Oct 4 19:59:58 2013 From: Freek.VanDeVelde at arts.kuleuven.be (Freek Van de Velde) Date: Fri, 4 Oct 2013 19:59:58 +0000 Subject: Workshop at Evolang X: Extended deadline Message-ID: Evolang X Workshop: How Grammaticalization Processes Create Grammar: From Historical Corpus Data to Agent-Based Models CALL FOR SUBMISSIONS NOW OPEN (see further below) EXTENDED DEADLINE: *1 March 2013* Convenors: Luc Steels, Freek Van de Velde and Remi van Trijp Date and Location: 14 April 2013, Vienna, as part of the Evolang-X Conference in Vienna Theme of the workshop: Recently the scientific study of language origins and evolution has seen three important breakthroughs. First, a growing number of corpora of historical language data has become available. Although initially these corpora have been used to examine surface features only (for example the frequency and distribution of word occurrences), advances in statistical language processing now allow for the thorough examination of aspects of grammar, for example, how syntactic structure has progressively arisen in the history of Indo-European languages or how constructional choices have undergone change (e.g. Krug 2000; Bybee 2010; Sommerer 2010; Van de Velde 2010; Traugott & Trousdale, forthc.; Hilpert & Gries, ms.). Second, agent-based models of the cognitive and cultural processes underlying the emergence and evolution of language have made a significant leap forward by using sophisticated, and therefore more realistic, representations of grammar and language processing (e.g. Van Trijp 2012; Beuls & Steels 2013), so that we can now go way beyond the lexicon-oriented experiments characteristic for the field a decade ago. Finally, selectionist theorizing, which has given such tremendous power to evolutionary biology, is being applied increasingly to understand language evolution at the cultural level (Croft 2000; Ritt 2004; Mufwene 2008; Rosenbach et al. 2008; Landsbergen et al. 2010; Steels 2011). Researchers are beginning to look more closely at what selectionist criteria could drive the origins and change in grammatical paradigms and how new language strategies could arise through exaptation, recombination or mutation of existing strategies. The selectionist criteria are primarily based on achieving enough expressive power, maximizing communicative success, and minimizing cognitive effort (Van Trijp 2013). The confluence of these three trends is beginning to give us sophisticated agent-based models which are empirically grounded in real corpus data and framed in a well-established theory of cultural evolution, thus leading to comprehensive scientific models of the grammaticalization processes underlying language emergence and evolution. All this is tremendously exciting. The goal of this workshop is to alert the community of researchers in language evolution to this important development and to show concrete research achievements demonstrating the current state of the art. It will act as a forum for exchanging tools and it will inquire what kind of open problems might be amenable to this approach, given the currently available data and the state of the art in computational linguistics tools for agent-based modeling. The workshop is intended to enable a deeper dialog between two communities (historical linguistics and computational linguistics) so that we can productively combine the very long tradition of empirical research from historical linguistics with the rigorous formalization and validation through simulation as practiced in agent-based modeling. The workshop will as much as possible be based on real case studies. For example, how can we explain the current messy state of the German article system, given that old High German had a much clearer system? (van Trijp 2013) Is this development based on random drift or are there selectionist forces at work? How can we explain that Indo-European languages progressively developed a rich constituent structure with an increasing number of syntactic categories, a gradual incorporation of ?floating? words into phrases, and a loss of grammatical agreement? (Van de Velde 2009)? How can we explain the emergence of quantifiers out of adjectives? How can we explain the rise of a case system (Beuls & Steels 2013). General research questions that are to be addressed: 1. What are the processes that cause variation in populations of speakers? 2. What are the processes that select variants to become dominant in a speech community? 3. How do language strategies give rise to language systems? 4. Which cognitive functions must the brain support in order to implement language strategies? 5. What are good tools for doing empirically driven agent-based modeling? Call for Submissions We invite contributions (10? talk + 5? discussion) to one of the following three sessions in the workshop: 1. Case Studies: historical data of emergence and evolution of grammatical phenomena and concrete agent-based models, or steps towards them. 2. Tools: What is the state-of-the-art for historical linguistics corpora and tools extracting trends in grammatical evolution? What tools are available for building realistic agent-based models of grammaticalization? 3. Cultural evolution theory: Which results from theoretical research in evolutionary biology can be exapted to advance cultural evolutionary linguistics? Format of the submission. An extended abstract of *max. 4 pages (including references)* adhering to the Evolang stylesheet. Submissions should be e-mailed to info at fcg-net.org with the subject ?Evolang workshop submission?. Important Dates * Deadline for submission: 1 March 2014, 23:59 CE * Notification of acceptance: 15 March 2014 * Final submission: 1 April 2014 References ? Beuls, Katrien & Luc Steels. 2013. ?Agent-based models of strategies for the emergence and evolution of grammatical agreement?. PLoS ONE 8(3), e58960. doi:10.1371/journal.pone.0058960. ? Bybee, Joan L. 2010. Language, Usage and Cognition. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. ? Croft, William. 2000. Explaining language change. An evolutionary approach. Harlow: Longman. ? Hilpert, Martin & Stefan Th, Gries. Manuscript. ?Quantitative approaches to diachronic corpus linguistics?. In: Merja Kyt? & P?ivi Pahta (eds.), The Cambridge handbook of English historical linguistics. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. ? Krug, Manfred. 2000. Emerging English modals: a corpus-based study of grammaticalization. Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter. ? Frank Landsbergen, Robert Lachlan, Carel ten Cate & Arie Verhagen. ?A cultural evolutionary model of patterns in semantic change?. Linguistics 48: 363-390. ? Ritt, Nikolaus. 2004. Selfish Sounds. A Darwinian Approach to Language Change. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. ? Rosenbach, Anette. 2008. ?Language Change as Cultural Evolution: Evolutionary Approaches to Language Change?. In: Regine Eckardt, Gerhard J?ger and Tonjes Veenstra (eds.), Variation, Selection, Development. Probing the Evolutionary Model of Language Chang. Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter, 23-72. ? Sommerer, L. 2011. ?Old English se: from demonstrative to article. A usage-based study of nominal determination and category emergence?. PhD thesis, University of Vienna. ? Steels, Luc. 2011. ?Modeling the cultural evolution of language?. Physics of Life Review 8: 339-356. ? Traugott, Elizabeth & Graeme Trousdale. Forthcoming. Constructionalization and constructional change. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. ? Van de Velde, Freek. 2009. De nominale constituent. Structuur en geschiedenis. Leuven: Leuven University Press. ? Van de Velde, Freek. 2010. ?The emergence of the determiner in the Dutch NP?. Linguistics 48: 263-299. ? van Trijp, Remi. 2012. ?Not as awful as it seems: explaining German case through computational experiments in Fluid Construction grammar. In: Proceedings of the 13th Conference of the European Chapter of the Association for Computational Linguistics, 829-839. ? van Trijp, Remi. 2013. ?Linguistic assessment criteria for explaining language change: a case study on syncretism in German definite articles?. Language Dynamics and Change 3(1): 105-132. Freek Van de Velde http://wwwling.arts.kuleuven.be/qlvl/freek.htm -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: -------------- next part -------------- _______________________________________________ Histling-l mailing list Histling-l at mailman.rice.edu https://mailman.rice.edu/mailman/listinfo/histling-l From a.verkerk at reading.ac.uk Wed Oct 23 19:42:54 2013 From: a.verkerk at reading.ac.uk (Annemarie Verkerk) Date: Wed, 23 Oct 2013 19:42:54 +0000 Subject: Call for papers: Language Diversity and History: New Interdisciplinary Perspectives Message-ID: An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: -------------- next part -------------- _______________________________________________ Histling-l mailing list Histling-l at mailman.rice.edu https://mailman.rice.edu/mailman/listinfo/histling-l From Hubert.Cuyckens at arts.kuleuven.be Tue Oct 29 08:15:42 2013 From: Hubert.Cuyckens at arts.kuleuven.be (Hubert Cuyckens) Date: Tue, 29 Oct 2013 08:15:42 +0000 Subject: CFP: 18th International Conference on English Historical Linguistics (ICEHL-18) -- 2nd call for papers Message-ID: [WITH APOLOGIES FOR CROSS?-POSTINGS] 2nd CALL FOR PAPERS 18th International Conference on English Historical Linguistics ICEHL18 takes place in Leuven, Belgium, 14-18 July 2014 (academic programme 14-17 July, social programme 18 July). Conference website: http://www.arts.kuleuven.be/ling/ICEHL18/ Conference email: icehl18 at arts.kuleuven.be Plenary Speakers Charles Boberg, McGill University http://www.mcgill.ca/linguistics/sites/mcgill.ca.linguistics/files/boberg_webpage.pdf Robert Fulk, Indiana University, Bloomington http://www.iub.edu/~engweb/faculty/profile_rFulk.shtml Peter Grund, University of Kansas http://www.english.ku.edu/people/grund-peter-j/index.shtml Mar?a Jos? L?pez-Couso, University of Santiago de Compostela http://www.usc-vlcg.es/MXLC.htm Marit Westergaard, University of Tromso http://ansatte.uit.no/marit.westergaard/ Presentation Formats Full papers will be allowed 30 minutes, including 10 minutes for discussion. Posters will be presented in a special session and remain on display during the conference. Submission of Abstracts Papers on any aspect of the history of the English language are welcome, including phonetics, phonology, morphology, syntax, semantics, pragmatics, sociolinguistics, language acquisition, language contact, language change, stylistics, metrics, English language and culture, and English language in society. Papers on any period are welcome: Old English, Middle English, Early Modern English, Late Modern English, and present-day English. Abstracts for papers and posters can be submitted from 1 May to 30 November 2013 through the EasyAbs abstract submission facility at http://linguistlist.org/confservices/ICEHL18. Notifications of acceptance of all abstracts will be sent out by 15 February 2014. Abstracts should not exceed 400 words (exclusive of references) and should clearly state research questions, approach, method, data and (expected) results. Abstracts should also list up to five keywords. Abstracts will not be edited for typing, spelling, or grammatical errors after submission. Therefore, abstracts should comply with the following layout requirements: - Abstracts must be single-spaced and fully justified. The standard font will be Calibri, size 11. The margins will be 2,54 top/bottom and 1,91 left/right (Moderate in MS Word). - References will have a hanging indent of 1,27 cm. - Submit the abstract as a .doc, .docx or .odt document. If it contains special characters, please send a PDF version to icehl18 at arts.kuleuven.be. Multiple Papers: One person may submit a single-authored abstract, a single-authored abstract and a co-authored one (not as first author) or two co-authored abstracts (only one as first author). Note that keynote papers within workshops count as ordinary papers. Presentations will be 20 minutes plus 10 minutes question time. Evaluation: Abstracts submitted to the general session and to the poster session will be evaluated by two members of the Scientific Committee. Workshop papers receive two evaluations by Scientific Committee members and one by the workshop convenors. Travel and Accommodation Information to follow. Please check the conference website for updates. Registration Registration for the conference opens on 15 February 2014. Organizing committee Hubert Cuyckens Hendrik De Smet Liesbet Heyvaert Peter Petr? Frauke D'hoedt Lauren Fonteyn Charlotte Maekelberghe Nikki van de Pol -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: -------------- next part -------------- _______________________________________________ Histling-l mailing list Histling-l at mailman.rice.edu https://mailman.rice.edu/mailman/listinfo/histling-l