29.993, Calls: Cog Sci, Gen Ling, Historical Ling, Ling Theories/Poland

[The LINGUIST List]

LINGUIST List: Vol-29-993. Mon Mar 05 2018. ISSN: 1069 - 4875.

Subject: 29.993, Calls: Cog Sci, Gen Ling, Historical Ling, Ling Theories/Poland

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Date: Mon, 05 Mar 2018 14:43:11
From: Nikolaus Ritt [nikolaus.ritt at univie.ac.at]
Subject: The Cultural Evolution of Language: Models and Methods

 
Full Title: The Cultural Evolution of Language: Models and Methods 

Date: 13-Sep-2018 - 14-Sep-2018
Location: Poznan, Poland 
Contact Person: Piotr Gąsiorowski
Meeting Email: gpiotr at wa.uam.edu.pl
Web Site: http://ifa.amu.edu.pl/plm/2018/PLM2018_Thematic_sessions 

Linguistic Field(s): Cognitive Science; General Linguistics; Historical Linguistics; Linguistic Theories 

Call Deadline: 01-Apr-2018 

Meeting Description:

The workshop brings together scholars interested in modelling evolutionary
scenarios in the domain of language and human culture. During the last decades
much work on language, language variation, and language change has been based
on evolutionary thinking: languages are viewed as systems of constituents that
owe their existence to successful transmission through communication and
acquisition (see e.g. Lass 1992, Croft 2000, Ritt 2004, Bickerton 2007,
Hurford 2007, 2012, smith & Kirby 2008, Fitch 2010, MacMahon & MacMahon 2012).
The approach has produced impressive methodological innovations in the study
of language, such as quantitative phylogenetic modelling, computer simulation,
or experiments in the iterated learning paradigm (cf. the attached list of
references). – At the same time, some theoretical issues have remained
unresolved, or their discussion seems at least to have been put on hold. For
instance, a number of concepts that appear to be crucial in evolutionary
theorizing have remained undefined. Among them are such concepts as
‘inheritance’, ‘information storage’, the ‘replication cycle’,
‘recombination’, ‘innovation’ (and its sources), ‘horizontal vs. vertical
transmission’, ‘selection’, ‘drift’, ‘adaptation’, etc.. Thus, ideas and
insights from evolutionary biology have sometimes been applied rather loosely,
and no commonly shared and sufficiently detailed theoretical framework for
studying language in terms of evolution seems yet to have emerged. Very much
the same applies to cultural evolution in general (see Mesoudi, Whiten &
Laland 2006, and the open peer commentary that accompanies the article).

The general aim of the workshop is to address such issues, to discuss how much
they matter for empirical research, and to assess the current status of
evolutionary linguistics as a theoretical paradigm in the light of empirical
advances that have been made during the past decades.


Call for Papers:

The workshop welcomes both papers that demonstrate the viability of
evolutionary models in empirical research, as well as papers that discuss
theoretical issues in the conceptualization of language and culture as
evolutionary systems.

Abstracts of up to 500 words (excluding title and references) are to be
submitted in PDF format. For detailed instructions see
http://wa.amu.edu.pl/plm/2018/Abstract_submission . Submission is to be made
via EasyChair under https://easychair.org/conferences/?conf=plm2018 . The
deadline is April 1, 2018.




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