Author Archives: Simon Kirby
For our last meeting of the year, Kenny Smith will be giving a talk on his work on regularisation entitled: “Regularization of unpredictable variation”. 1.17 DSB, 11:00-12:30 See you all there, if you’re still around! Simon P.S. For bonus points, see if you can spot the unpredictable variation within this message.
Our next LEC talk will be from George Athanasopoulos, a PhD student in the Department of Music. George is particularly keen to see if there are points of contact between his work and ours in the LEC. It’ll be in room 1.17, DSB, from 11:00-12:30 as usual. His title is: “Does literacy makes a difference? [...]
For tomorrow’s LEC talk, Justin Quillinan will be talking about: “Modelling the Evolution of Gossip”. For this talk (and the next two) we’ll be back in 1.17 Dugald Stewart Building. Usual time: 11.00-12.30 See you there! Simon
***NOTE (EVEN MORE) UNUSUAL ROOM*** For next week’s talk, in his last week at the LEC, Nic will lead a presentation of the work he has been doing in collaboration with Monica and me while he’s been here on his sabbatical. The title is: “Evidence for selection in the evolution of human communication systems”. B21, [...]
After a couple of weeks’ break, we’re back with a talk from Hannah Rohde, our new pragmatics lecturer. ***NOTE UNUSUAL VENUE!*** Nov 22nd, 11:00-12:30, 8.16 David Hume Tower Conventionalizing ambiguity: Testing predictions of a game-theoretic model of pragmatic inference Hannah Rohde (joint work with Brady Clark, Gerhard Jaeger, Stefan Kaufmann, & Scott Seyfarth) Abstract: In order [...]
Hi Everyone, Tomorrow, our visiting PhD student Maria Grazia Rossi will be giving the LEC talk. Tuesday 1st November, 11.00-12.30 DHT Conference Room Against Identification of Language Change and Language Evolution The idea that learnability, cultural stability and transmissibility of languages are basic constraints to understanding the issues of the evolution and origins of the [...]
*** NOTE: UNUSUAL VENUE *** This week’s LEC talk will be from our brand-new PhD student, Alan Nielsen. He’ll be talking about his previous work on evaluating sound-symbolism (particularly the takete-maluma or bouba-kiki phenomenon, where certain non-words are said to universally match to particular novel shapes). Time: Tuesday 25th October, 11.00 – 12.30 Place: DHT [...]
We’ve got a real treat for you tomorrow. In our usual slot, we have our academic visitor Andy Wedel, and then another talk in the afternoon from the MSc external examiner, Bart de Boer! 11:00 – 12:30, 1.17 Dugald Stewart Building: Andy Wedel 14:00 – 15:00, S37 7 George Square: Bart de Boer. Andy’s talk [...]
We have a visiting speaker who, at the last minute, is able to give us a talk which is likely to be interesting to LEC people. It will be tomorrow (Friday) from 2.00-3.00 in Appleton Tower room 2.05. Language viewed from Mars:A statistical universal of human languages and their psychological implications Fermin Moscoso del Prado [...]
Kenny Smith has been chosen amongst the first members of the Royal Society of Edinburgh Young Academy of Scotland. The RSE said: “A rigorous selection procedure resulted in 68 young academics, entrepreneurs and professionals being chosen to be the first members in Scotland. The Young Academy will be launched at a ceremony in Edinburgh in [...]