Language Evolution and Computation Workshop/Course

at the 15th European Summer School on Logic Language and Information, Vienna, August 2003

Background:

The past decade has seen an explosion of interest in the evolution of language. Across a wide range of disciplines, there is an ongoing effort to tackle questions such as: why is language the way it is? how did it come to be that way? and why is it unique to humans?

One of the surprising developments has been the emergence of an interdisciplinary approach that highlights the computational aspects of language evolution. Techniques from theoretical biology, machine learning, robotics, evolutionary computation, artificial life, and computational linguistics promise to give us tools to answer these central questions. This workshop/course was a unique opportunity to survey the state of the art in this rapidly developing field.

Details:

The workshop ran from 25th to 29th August in Vienna as part of ESSLLI 2003. The proceedings are now available online.

Organiser:

The workshop was organised by Simon Kirby [email: simon@ling.ed.ac.uk].