Author Archives: Simon Kirby
Professor Simon Kirby delivered his inaugural lecture entitled “The Language Organism: evolution, culture, and what it means to be human” on 22 March 2011. It is now available to watch online. Abstract: Our species can do something utterly unique in the natural world – a behaviour so transformative that it has reshaped the mechanisms of [...]
Another accolade has come Thom’s way. He’s been named as one of two joint winners of the British Psychological Society’s Award for Outstanding Doctoral Research Contributions to Psychology. More details: here. Well done Thom!
Nic Fay is visiting us from UWA for 6 months, and will be giving a couple of LEC talks to introduce his work. The first of these is next week on Tuesday 14th from 11-12.30 in DSB 1.17. Details below: Title: Evolution of human communication systems In this talk I will present evidence (mostly experimental) [...]
We’re delighted to be welcoming Nic Fay as a 6 month visitor to the LEC from Monday 6th June! Nic is Associate Professor of Psychology at the University of Western Australia, and an expert in experimental approaches to the evolution of communication, and has a great influence on the work of the LEC. This is [...]
Elizabeth Wonnacott (BA postdoc in Experimental Psychology at Oxford) is in town next week, she is giving a talk on “Constraining generalisation in artificial language learning“, Thursday 9th June, 11am, DSB 1.17. She’ll also be around Friday, let Kenny know if you’d like to meet with her while she’s here.
On Tuesday 7th June from 11-12.30 in room 1.17 DSB, Erin Brown will give a talk on her thesis work: Where do symbols come from? A central issue in language origins is the emergence of symbolic communication. Recognizing the problems associated with establishing symbolic reference, many authors have proposed that nonarbitrary communication must have preceded [...]
Dan Yurovsky (PhD student in the Cognitive Development Lab in Indiana, working with Chen Yu & Linda Smith) is visiting next week and will be giving the LEC talk: “Learning words in the lab and in the world: the role of statistical information”, Tuesday 31st May, 11am, DSB 1.17. He’s here Monday to Thursday, so [...]
Tommorow’s LEC talk will be given by Anna Martowicz, “The last step in the evolution of modern language – some findings and thoughts”, abstract below. Tuesday 24th, 11am, DSB 1.17 The last step in the evolution of modern language – some findings and thoughts In this talk I summarize the findings of my cross-linguistic PhD [...]
Sean will be giving a talk this week about a paper he’s working on with James Winters on the relationship between social structure and language structure. As he puts it: “Expect to hear about: – The effect of second language learners on morphological complexity – Degeneracy and variation – Why the only other Evolutionary theory [...]
Our next LEC talk, on Tuesday 12th April in 1.17 DSB from 11:00-12:30, will be from Jim Hurford. He will be talking about: Reconciling linguistic jerks and biological creeps. We will be going to Nile Valley for lunch afterwards (their proper lunch menu is great, varied and cheap!). Hope to see you all there, Simon