21.2383, Confs: Bioling, Anthro Ling/UK

Fri May 28 13:57:32 UTC 2010

LINGUIST List: Vol-21-2383. Fri May 28 2010. ISSN: 1068 - 4875.

Subject: 21.2383, Confs: Bioling, Anthro Ling/UK

Moderators: Anthony Aristar, Eastern Michigan U <aristar at linguistlist.org>
            Helen Aristar-Dry, Eastern Michigan U <hdry at linguistlist.org>

Reviews: Monica Macaulay, U of Wisconsin-Madison  
Eric Raimy, U of Wisconsin-Madison  
Joseph Salmons, U of Wisconsin-Madison  
Anja Wanner, U of Wisconsin-Madison  
       <reviews at linguistlist.org> 

Homepage: http://linguistlist.org/

The LINGUIST List is funded by Eastern Michigan University, 
and donations from subscribers and publishers.

Editor for this issue: Amy Brunett <brunett at linguistlist.org>
================================================================  

LINGUIST is pleased to announce the launch of an exciting new feature:  
Easy Abstracts! Easy Abs is a free abstract submission and review facility 
designed to help conference organizers and reviewers accept and process 
abstracts online.  Just go to: http://www.linguistlist.org/confcustom, and 
begin your conference customization process today! With Easy Abstracts, 
submission and review will be as easy as 1-2-3!

===========================Directory==============================  

1)
Date: 28-May-2010
From: Monica Tamariz < monica at ling.ed.ac.uk >
Subject: Language as an Evolutionary System: A Multidisciplinary Approach

-------------------------Message 1 ---------------------------------- 
Date: Fri, 28 May 2010 09:54:38
From: Monica Tamariz [monica at ling.ed.ac.uk]
Subject: Language as an Evolutionary System: A Multidisciplinary Approach

E-mail this message to a friend:
http://linguistlist.org/issues/emailmessage/verification.cfm?iss=21-2383.html&submissionid=2635917&topicid=4&msgnumber=1

Language as an Evolutionary System: A Multidisciplinary Approach 

Date: 12-Jul-2010 - 13-Jul-2010 
Location: Edinburgh, United Kingdom 
Contact: Monica Tamariz 
Contact Email: monica at ling.ed.ac.uk 
Meeting URL: http://www.ling.ed.ac.uk/~monica/LES 

Linguistic Field(s): Anthropological Linguistics 

Other Specialty: Biolinguistics 

Meeting Description: 

These two days of talks and discussion will bring together scholars from a range
of disciplines to discuss the value of applying evolutionary thinking to the
cultural evolution of language. Linguistics has traditionally been cautious of
analogies between evolution in language an in biology. Common ancestry and
descent were proposed earlier for languages than for biological species, but
while biological evolution has flourished into a science with solid theories
that generate testable hypothesis, the study of the cultural evolution of
language -- evolution that is independent of changes in the human genome - is
only beginning to test theories. 

McMahon (1994) concluded that the way forward is Darwinian thinking. Since then,
a number of independent proposals (e.g. Croft, 2000; Ritt, 2003; Mufwene, 2001,
2008; Nettle, 1999) have convergently applied explicit analogies with the
elements and processes of the evolutionary synthesis (Mayr & Provine, 1998) to
cultural language dynamics. They all assume that language evolution and change
are caused by cultural mechanisms such as social transmission and language usage
in context. Recent convergent theoretical and methodological advances in
evolutionary linguistics, archaeology and anthropology suggest that language is
one aspect of culture that can be studied using theories and methods also
applied to other cultural phenomena. Historical linguistics' phylogenetic
methods (see a modern approach in McMahon & McMahon, 2005), have been adopted in
archaeology and anthropology (Lipo et al., 2006).  Agent-based computer
simulations, mathematical models and evolutionary game theory have been used to
explore the cultural evolution of language and of socio-cognitive requirements
for culture, such as cooperation, imitation or conformity (Boyd & Richerson,
2005). Memetics (Dennett, 1995; Aunger, 2000) proposes that memes (Dawkins,
1975), the cultural analogues to genes, evolve in an environment that includes
humans and other memes. Sperber (1995) has strongly argued against memetics by
claiming that cultural transmission is essentially transformational, and there
is no true replication in culture.                                             

Summing up, this workshop is concerned with how Darwinian thinking can be
applied to the cultural evolution of language. A multidisciplinary collection of
contributions form the fields of linguistics, psychology, biology and philosophy
will help construct a clearer picture of the state of this field.

-----------------------------------------------------------
LINGUIST List: Vol-21-2383	