Author Archives: Kenny
Alan will be talking about his PhD research on “Arbitrariness of the sign revisited: An examination of the role of phonological similarity in an artificial language learning paradigm”. Tuesday 23rd April, 11am, back in our usual venue of DSB 1.17. Abstract below. “Arbitrariness of the sign revisited: An examination of the role of phonological similarity [...]
Tuesday’s talk will be given by Hannah Cornish, “Systems from Sequences”, Tuesday 16th April, 11am, DSB G06. Abstract below. Hannah Cornish “Systems from Sequences” Systematicity is a basic property of language, and many other culturally transmitted behaviours. In this talk, which is an extension to the one I gave at EHBEA, I will first present [...]
In the second talk of the week, Gregory Mills (http://homepages.inf.ed.ac.uk/gmills/) will talk about “Clarifying intentions in dialogue – how miscommunication drives alignment”. Friday 12th April, 4pm, DSB 3.10, abstract below. Gregory Mills Clarifying intentions in dialogue – how miscommunication drives alignment One of the most contentious debates in studies of dialogue concerns the explanatory role [...]
Mark Atkinson will give a talk on the work he’s carried out in the first 6 months of his PhD: ”Social complexity effects on linguistic complexity: an experimental investigation into how population structure influences the structural properties of an artificial language”. Tuesday 9th April, 11am, DSB 1.17, abstract below. —– Mark Atkinson Social complexity effects on [...]
Simon will be presenting some new work on “Cumulative Cultural Evolution of Systematically Structured Behaviour in a Non-human Primate”. Tuesday 19th March, 11am, DSB 1.17.
Fiona Jordan (University of Bristol) is giving two guest lectures next week, on “Phylogenetics for language and culture” (3pm-5pm Monday 11th March, 2pm-4m Tuesday 12th March). These lectures are primarily intended for students on the Masters in the Evolution of Language and Cognition, but all are welcome to attend – however, places are limited, so [...]
Andrea Ravignani (PhD student in the Department of Cognitive Biology at Vienna) is visiting the LEC for a few months and will do two talks while he’s here: the first one is next Tuesday, 5th March, 11am, DSB 1.17, on “The Evolution of Complex Patterning Abilities Across Language and Music”. The Evolution of Complex Patterning [...]
I will be talking about some recent modelling work I’ve been doing that suggests that “Linguistic structure is an evolutionary trade-off between simplicity and expressivity”. Tuesday 26th, 11am, DSB 1.17. “Linguistic structure is an evolutionary trade-off between simplicity and expressivity” Language exhibits structure: a species-unique system for expressing complex meanings using complex forms. We present [...]
Nic Fay is in town and will give us a bonus LEC talk on “Evidence for the cumulative cultural evolution of human communication systems”. Friday 22nd February, 4pm-5.30pm, DSB 1.17. Abstract below. Evidence for the cumulative cultural evolution of human communication systems Biological evolution has endowed humans with a second inheritance system that allows people to socially [...]
[This was originally scheduled for 12th Feb, but was rescheduled] Olga Feher will be giving a talk on ”The development and evolution of song culture”. Tuesday 19th, 11am, DSB 1.17. Abstract below. The development and evolution of song culture Similarly to humans, songbirds learn their songs by imitating adult individuals and achieve complex vocal behaviour gradually [...]