21.2903, Calls: Comp Ling, Philosophy of Ling, Semantics/USA

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LINGUIST List: Vol-21-2903. Tue Jul 13 2010. ISSN: 1068 - 4875.

Subject: 21.2903, Calls: Comp Ling, Philosophy of Ling, Semantics/USA

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1)
Date: 12-Jul-2010
From: Adrian Pablé < apable at hku.hk >
Subject: Semantics for Robots: Utopian and Dystopian Visions in the Age of the 'Language Machine'
 

	
-------------------------Message 1 ---------------------------------- 
Date: Tue, 13 Jul 2010 18:51:55
From: Adrian Pablé [apable at hku.hk]
Subject: Semantics for Robots: Utopian and Dystopian Visions in the Age of the 'Language Machine'

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Full Title: Semantics for Robots: Utopian and Dystopian Visions in the Age 
of the 'Language Machine' 

Date: 02-Dec-2010 - 04-Dec-2010
Location: Chicago, Illinois, USA 
Contact Person: Adrian Pablé
Meeting Email: apable at hku.hk

Linguistic Field(s): Computational Linguistics; Philosophy of Language; 
Semantics 

Call Deadline: 01-Oct-2010 

Meeting Description:

Roy Harris in his 1987 work The Language Machine (Duckworth) identified 
the idea of language as an autonomous, mechanical and self-defining 
system as a key component of the language myth. Harris characterized the 
fantasy of a language system underlying and enabling both human 
communicational activity and human cognition as 'a semantics for robots, 
not for human beings'. This myth of the language machine has been 
promoted by a modern, profoundly dehumanized linguistics, but has deep 
roots in the Western tradition of language theorizing. The question that 
Harris raises is precisely what makes meaning? What makes communication 
possible? What makes language, including the products of the language 
machine, work? Contemporary sciences—including philosophy, linguistics, 
psychology, computer science and allied fields—assume that communication 
presupposes language, while Harris argues that language presupposes 
communication. For Harris, what makes the language machine work is the 
human language maker who is trying to make something happen.

The conference organizers invite papers on the following themes:

-Linguistics and language as a system, the mind-brain as computer, the 
speaker-hearer as information processor, the cognitive turn in linguistics;

-Futurology: predicting the evolution of language, writing, sign-systems and 
communication;

-Futuristic perspectives on language and communication, as found in 
utopian/dystopian popular culture, science fiction; Orwell's 'Newspeak' and 
language engineering;

-Envisioning language in the information age: data-storage, global systems 
and markets, individuality and identity, law and intellectual property, 
language and cyberspace, the semantics of 'spam';

-Machine translation, artificial intelligence, Google as corpus, electronic 
lexicography;

-Integrationism: signs, meaning and knowledge in the information age;

-The Language Machine as a prophetic text. 

Call For Papers

A conference sponsored by The International Association for the 
Integrational Study of Language and Communication and The School of 
English, The University of Hong Kong 

Date: December 2-4, 2010
Location: Ellen and Melvin Gordon Center for Integrative Science, University 
of Chicago Conference organisers: David Bade (Joseph Regenstein 
Library, University of Chicago), Christopher Hutton (School of English, The 
University of Hong Kong), Adrian Pablé (School of English, The University of 
Hong Kong).

Please send an abstract (300-500 words) to the following email addresses: 
dbade at uchicago.edu; 
chutton at hku.hk; apable at hku.hk
Deadline for abstract submission: October 1, 2010
Participants are to submit a written version of their paper by November 26, 
2010.
Conference fee: 40 USD (to be paid on registration)





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