Next week, John Ohala will be visiting Edinburgh and giving a series of talks. As part of this, he will be giving a joint LEC/P-workshop talk on Wednesday 9th March at 1pm in room S1 7 George Square. This is a rare opportunity to hear Ohala’s views on language evolution. Don’t miss it! Title and abstract are below:
Ethological factors shaping human language.
It has long been observed that in agonistic situations (face‐to‐face competitive encounters) size and maturity matters. Animals, including humans, exploit their intrinsic size and maturity in such situations and also utilize plastic signals (i.e., those that can be modified) to enhance their apparent size. Morton (1977) showed convincingly that vocalizations of mammals and birds could also be used to project apparent size: low F0 to convey bigness and high F0, smallness (because F0 of a vibrating mass such as the vocal cords or, in birds, the syringeal membranes, correlate inversely with their mass and these in turn, correlate with overall body mass, ceteris paribus). In a 1984 paper I argue that humans do the same and called this the ‘frequency code’. The frequency code, I argued, helps to explain cross‐language use of F0 for questions vs. statement, the use of certain vowels and consonants in sound symbolic vocabulary of size (e.g., English teeny vs. humongous), the origin of the smile, and the sexual dimorphism of the vocal anatomy. Although I will have to abandon the term ‘frequency code’, I now want to argue that plastic and cosmetic modification the eyes and eyebrows can be explained by similar principles of how apparent size and maturity can be conveyed. If true, it would help to explain (a) some the facial expressions displayed during spoken language and (b) what has been called the “prosody” of the sign language of the deaf. If my speculations are accepted they have implications for current controversies as to how emotions are expressed and, indeed, what counts as an emotion.
Slawomir Wacevicz is visiting the LEC for a few weeks and has kindly agreed to give us a talk to give us a sense of his perspective on the ontological status of concepts. His talk title is:
“What it means to be a <concept>”
The talk will be in the usual place at the usual time: G.16, doorway 4, Teviot, 11-12.30, Tuesday 8th March.
Tomorrow, Monica will be giving an update on the exciting results from our ESRC grant. The title is:
“Social Factors in Language Evolution: Generation turnover and negotiation in usage”
Monica Tamariz, Hannah Cornish, Sean Roberts & Simon Kirby
It will be at 11-12.30 in G.16, Teviot quad doorway 4.
We’ll be going to Vittoria’s on George IV bridge afterwards for lunch. Please do join us, especially if you want to chat to Monica, since she is only here for a week.
Cheers!
Simon
Tomorrow, Rachael will tell us about some of her ideas for a thesis topic with a talk entitled:
“Audience design and common ground in comprehension”
As usual, the talk will be 11-12.30 in G.16, Doorway 4, Teviot. We’ll be going for lunch afterwards. Please join us if you can.
This Tuesday, Justin will be giving a talk on his thesis work:
Inference and Language Evolution, Room G.16, Teviot doorway 4, 11-12.30
Thom Scott-Phillips has been awarded the 2011 New Investigator award from the European Human Behaviour and Evolution Association. This means he will be presenting a plenary talk at the 2011 conference.
Congratulations, Thom!
Next Tuesday, Vanessa will be talking about the work she is planning to do as part of her PhD and summarising some of the preliminary research she has already undertaken. The title of her talk will be: “Towards a general framework for cultural evolution“.
Tuesday, 11-12.30 in Medical School G.16.
We’ll be going for lunch at Bar Kohl afterwards.
We’ve built a new LEC website. For a while some links (e.g. to old dissertations) may not work. If necessary, you can get to the old website here.
