33.2555, Confs: Pragmatics/Japan

[The LINGUIST List]

LINGUIST List: Vol-33-2555. Fri Aug 19 2022. ISSN: 1069 - 4875.

Subject: 33.2555, Confs: Pragmatics/Japan

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Date: Fri, 19 Aug 2022 03:37:15
From: Andrew Feeney [andrew.feeney at northumbria.ac.uk]
Subject: Pragmatics in the Evolution of Language: Workshop at the Joint Conference on Language Evolution, Japan 2022

 
Pragmatics in the Evolution of Language: Workshop at the Joint Conference on Language Evolution, Japan 2022 
Short Title: Prag at JCoLE2022 

Date: 04-Sep-2022 - 05-Sep-2022 
Location: Kanazawa, Japan 
Contact: Andrew Feeney 
Contact Email: andrew.feeney at northumbria.ac.uk 
Meeting URL: https://northumbriaenglish.org/pragmatics-and-language-evolution/ 

Linguistic Field(s): Pragmatics 

Meeting Description: 

This hybrid workshop aims to bring together researchers working with an
explicit focus on the role of pragmatics in the evolutionary emergence of
language. We argue that a spotlight on pragmatic competence is not only to be
welcomed, but is indispensable in understanding the emergence and evolution of
language as a tool of communication in the hominin clade. For the purposes of
this workshop we take it as axiomatic that pragmatic competence is fundamental
to language in which ‘communication depends upon the ability of human beings
to attribute mental states to others’ (Origgi and Sperber, 2004). However a
number of questions arise before the nature of the pragmatic role in language
evolution can be fully established, and it is these that we seek to address in
this Workshop:

- to what extent was pragmatic competence foundational to the emergence of
language? 
- were the earliest forms of language (protolanguage in the literature) more
akin to the vocal or gestural communication systems seen in other species,
before human-type pragmatic aspects of cognition were in place? 
- what is the balance between biological and socio-cultural factors in the
nature and evolutionary development of these cognitive processes? 
- can the answer to these questions shed light on the fundamental question of
when language first appeared in humans or one of our ancestral species? 
- what constitutes evidence and what methodological forms of inquiry are most
appropriate in the exploration of evolutionary cognitive and linguistic
pragmatics?

Confirmed Speakers: 
Thom Scott-Phillips, Central European University, Vienna; 
Nikolaus Ritt, Vienna University; 
Christophe Heintz, Central European University, Vienna; 
Andrew Feeney, Northumbria University, United Kingdom
 

Program:

Confirmed speakers: 
Thom Scott-Phillips, Central European University, Vienna; 
Nikolaus Ritt, Vienna University; 
Christophe Heintz, Central European University, Vienna; 
Andrew Feeney, Northumbria University, United Kingdom

Full program now available at:
https://northumbriaenglish.org/pragmatics-and-language-evolution/

Registration now open at:
https://www.eventbrite.co.uk/e/the-place-of-pragmatics-in-the-evolution-of-lan
guage-online-and-hybrid-tickets-399489763637

Interest in language has a recorded history stretching back to the ancient
Greeks. Yet for many years the study of ‘grammar’ subsumed inquiry into
linguistic sounds and their patterns (phonetics and phonology), the internal
structure of meaningful units (morphology), the relationships between these
units (syntax) and the encoding of meanings (semantics). A lamentably late
addition to these fields of investigation has been the study of how speakers
communicate in context, a domain only afforded a name in the last century:
pragmatics (Morrison, 1938). 

A similar pattern of initial neglect can be seen in the recent history of the
study of linguistics within language evolution. The publication of early
seminal works by Bickerton (1990) and Pinker and Bloom (1990) established an
emphasis on structural aspects of language, a disposition that has since
increased with a reductionist focus on primary, underlying computations
(Hauser, Chomsky and Fitch, 2002; Pinker and Jackendoff, 2005). 

Only recently has this imbalance begun to be corrected and papers are now
appearing with an explicit focus on the role of pragmatics in the evolutionary
emergence of language. We argue that a spotlight on pragmatic competence is
not only to be welcomed, but is indispensable in understanding the emergence
and evolution of language as a tool of communication in the hominin clade. For
the purposes of this workshop we take it as axiomatic that pragmatic
competence is fundamental to language in which ‘communication depends upon the
ability of human beings to attribute mental states to others’ (Origgi and
Sperber, 2004). However a number of questions arise before the nature of the
pragmatic role in language evolution can be fully established and it is these
which the workshop intends to address.





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LINGUIST List: Vol-33-2555	
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