FINAL CONFERENCE PROGRAM

4-Day Overview (detailed schedule here)

	Wednesday, April 12
3:00 pm	Registration
4:10 pm	Alberto Piazza
5:10 pm	Leonard Talmy
6:10 pm	Welcome Buffet
	Thursday, April 13
9:00 am	Luc Steels
10:00 am	Robert Seyfarth & Dorothy Cheney
11:00 am	Coffee Break
11:30 am	SESSION A1	SESSION B1	SESSION C1
1:10 pm	Lunch
2:40 pm	SESSION A2	SESSION B2	SESSION C2
4:40 pm	Coffee Break
5:10 pm	Vittorio Gallese
6:20 pm	SESSION A3	SESSION B3	SESSION C3
	Friday, April 14
9:00 am	Steven Mithen
10:00 am	Michael Tomasello
11:00 am	Coffee Break
11:30 am	SESSION A4	SESSION B4	SESSION C4
1:10 pm	Lunch
2:40 pm	SESSION A5	SESSION B5	SESSION C5
4:40 pm	Coffee Break
5:10 pm	SESSION A6	SESSION B6	SESSION C6
8:30 pm	Conference Dinner at “La Cesarina” Restaurant
	Saturday, April 15
9:00 am	Domenico Parisi
10:00 am	Tecumseh Fitch
11:00 am	Coffee Break
11:30 am	SESSION A7	SESSION B7	SESSION C7
1:30 pm	Lunch
2:30 pm	SESSION A8	SESSION B8	SESSION C8
4:30 pm	General Discussion and Conclusion (ends at 5:30pm)

DETAILED CONFERENCE PROGRAM

Wednesday, April 12

April 12
3:00 pm	Registration
4:00 pm	WELCOME
4:10 pm	Plenary Talk 1	Alberto Piazza “Diffusion of Genes and Languages in Human Evolution”	Chair: Jim Hurford
5:10 pm	Plenary Talk 2	Leonard Talmy “Recombinance in the Evolution of Language”
6:10 pm	WELCOME BUFFET FOYER
8:00 pm	END

Thursday, April 13

April 13
8:30 am	Registration
9:00 am	Plenary Talk 3	Luc Steels “The Recruitment Theory of Language Origins”			Chair: Maggie Tallerman
10:00 am	Plenary Talk 4	Robert Seyfarth & Dorothy Cheney “Primate Social Cognition and the Cognitive Precursors of Language”
11:00 am	Coffee Break
	SESSION A1 (Chair: Elisabetta Visalberghi)		SESSION B1 (Chair: Andrew Smith)	SESSION C1 (Chair: Frederick J. Newmeyer)
11:30 am	Jacques Vauclair & Adrien Meguerditchian Lateralization of intentional gestures in non human primates: baboons communicate with their right hand		Kazutoshi Sasahara, Bjorn Merker & K. Okanoya The roles of segmentation ability in language evolution	Maggie Tallerman A holistic protolanguage cannot be stored, cannot be retrieved
11:55 am	Katie Slocombe & Klaus Zuberbühler Agonistic screams in wild chimpanzees: candidates for functionally referential signals		Didier Demolin & Véronique Delvaux A comparison of the articulatory parameters involved in the production of sound of bonobos and modern humans	Simon Kirby Major transitions in the evolution of language
12:20 pm	Erica Cartmill & Richard Byrne Determining signaler intentions; use of multiple gestures in captive Bornean orangutans (Pongo pygmaeus)		Bart de Boer Articulator constraints and the descended larynx	Jill Bowie The evolution of meaningful combinatoriality
12:45 pm	Kate Arnold & Klaus Zuberbühler Alarm calls and organised imperatives in male putty-nosed monkeys		Pierre-Yves Oudeyer Bootstrapping shared combinatorial speech codes from basic imitation: the role of self-organization	Mark Bartlett & Dimitar Kazakov The evolution of syntactic capacity from navigational ability
1:10 pm	Lunch
	SESSION A2 (Chair: Jean-Louis Dessalles)		SESSION B2 (Chair: Bart De Boer)	SESSION C2 (Chair: Morten Christiansen)
2:40 pm	Mark Jeffreys Natural-language “cheap talk” enables coordination on a social-dilemma game in a culturally homogeneous population		Dan Dediu Mostly out of Africa, but what did the others have to say?	Joachim de Beule & Benjamin K. Bergen On the emergence of compositionality
3:20 pm	Chris Knight Language co-evolved with the rule of law		Sverker Johansson Constraining the time when language evolved	Tao Gong, James W. Minett, William S-Y. Wang Computational simulation on the co-evolution of compositionality and regularity
4:00 pm	Joseph Poulshock The evolution of language as a precursor to the evolution of morality		Susan J. Lanyon A saltationist approach for the evolution of human cognition and language	James W. Minett, Tao Gong, William S-Y. Wang A language emergence model predicts word order bias
4:40 pm	Coffee Break
5:10 pm	Plenary Talk 5	Vittorio Gallese “The Linguistic Body: Embodied Simulation and Its Role in Language Processing”			Chair: Michael Arbib
6:10 pm	walk to parallel sessions
	SESSION A3 (Chair: David Gil)		SESSION B3 (Chair: Paul Vogt)	SESSION C3 (Chair: Kenny Smith)
6:20 pm	Timothy J. Crow Nuclear schizophrenic symptoms as the key to the origins of language		Tony Belpaeme & Joris Bleys The subtle interplay between language and category acquisition and how it explains the universality of colour categories	Ivan Nasidze & Mark Stoneking Mother tongue: concominant replacement of language and MtDNA in South Caspian populations of Iran
6:45 pm	Natalie Uomini Prehistoric handedness: some hard evidence		David J. C. Hawkey The interrelated evolutions of colour vision, colour and colour terms	Willem Zuidema and Timothy O'Donnell Beyond the argument from design
7:10 pm	END

Friday, April 14

April 14
8:30 am	Registration
9:00 am	Plenary Talk 6	Steven Mithen “The Origin of Music and its Linguistic Significance for Modern Humans”			Chair: Chris Knight
10:00 am	Plenary Talk 7	Michael Tomasello “Ape Gestures and Human Language”
11:00 am	Coffee Break
	SESSION A4 (Chair: James W. Minett)		SESSION B4 (Chair: Jordan Zlatev)	SESSION C4 (Chair: Ted Briscoe)
11:30 am	Samson Tikitu de Jager Evolutionary support for a procedural semantics for generalised quantifiers		Frederick J. Newmeyer What can grammaticalization tell us about the origins of language?	Padraic Monaghan & Morten H. Christiansen Iconic versus arbitrary mappings and the cultural transmission of language
11:55 am	Joanna J. Bryson The adaptive advantages of knowledge transmission		Frank Landsbergen Modelling unidirectionality in semantic change	Bruno Galantucci, Theo Rhodes, Christian Kroos Rapidity of fading and the emergence of duality of patterning
12:20 pm	Sara Mitri & Paul Vogt Co-evolution of language and behaviour iin autonomous robots		José F. Fontanari & Leonid I. Perlovksy Allee effect on language evolution	Jinyun Ke, Christophe Coupé & Tao Gong A little bit more, a lot better: language emergence from quantitative to qualitative change
12:45 pm	Daniel W. Smith An individual-based mechanism for adaptive semantic change		Takashi Hashimoto & Masaya Nakatsuka Reconsidering Kirby's compositionality model towards modelling grammaticalization	Ching-Pong Au Perception acquisition as the causes for transition patterns in phonological evolution
1:10 pm	Lunch
	SESSION A5 (Chair: Jose Fernando Fontanari)		SESSION B5 (Chair: Kate Arnold)	SESSION C5 (Chair: Leonid Perlovsky)
2:40 pm	Andrew D. M. Smith Semantic reconstructibility and the complexification of language		Michael A. Arbib, James Bonaiuto & Edina Rosta The mirror system hypothesis: From a macaque-like mirror system to imitation	Marco Mirolli & Domenico Paris Talking to oneself as a selective pressure for the emergence of language
3:20 pm	David Gil Early human language was isolating-monocategorial-associational		Simone Pika & Katja Liebal Differences and similarities between the natural gestural communication of the great apes and human children	Thom Scott-Phillips Why talk? Speaking as selfish behaviour
4:00 pm	Kenny Smith The protolanguage debate: bridging the gap?		Jordan Zlatev & The SEDSU Project Stages in the Evolution and Development of Sign Use	Gary Lupyan Labels facilitate learning of novel categories
4:40 pm	Coffee Break
	SESSION A6 (Chair: Robert van Rooy)		SESSION B6 (Chair: Tony Belpaeme)	SESSION C6 (Chair: Bruno Galantucci)
5:10 pm	Morten H. Christiansen, Florencia Reali & Nick Chater The Baldwin effect works for functional, but not arbitrary, features of language		Paul Vogt Overextensions and the emergence of compositionality	Wolfram Hinzen Minimalist foundations of language evolution: on the question of why language is the way it is
5:50 pm	Mike Dowman, Simon Kirby & Thomas L. Griffiths Innateness and culture in the evolution of language		Ruth Schulz, Paul Stockwell, Mark Wakabayashi & Janet Wiles Towards a spatial language for mobile robots	Nathalie Gontier An epistemological inquiry into the “what is language” question and the “what did language evolve for” question
6:30 pm	Graham Ritchie & Simon Kirby Modelling the transititon to learned communication: an initial investigation into the ecological conditions favouring cultural transmission		Davide Marocco & Stefano Nolfi Emergence of communication in teams of embodied and situated agents	Anna R. Parker Evolving the narrow language faculty: was recursion the pivotal step?
7:10 pm	END – go to restaurant
8:30 pm	CONFERENCE DINNER AT “LA CESARINA” RESTAURANT

Saturday, April 15

April 15
8:30 am	Registration
9:00 am	Plenary Talk 8	Domenico Parisi “Simulating the Evolutionary Emergence of Language: A Research Agenda”			Chair: Angelo Cangelosi
10:00 am	Plenary Talk 9	Tecumseh Fitch “The Evolution of Spoken Language: A Comparative Approach”
11:00 am	Coffee Break
	SESSION A7 (Chair: Sverker Johansson)		SESSION B7 (Chair: Jacques Vauclair)	SESSION C7 (Chair: Stefano Nolfi)
11:30 am	James R. Hurford Proto-propositions		Ted Briscoe Language learning, power laws and sexual selection	Cecilia Di Chio & Paolo Di Chio Simulation model for the evolution of language with spatial topology
12:10 pm	Robert van Rooij Evolutionary games and semantic universals		Shashi Mittal & Harish Karnik Learning models for language acquisition	Guy de Pauw Towards a fixed word-order in a society of agents: a data-driven baseline perspective
12:50 pm	Gerhard Jäger Convex meanings and evolutionary stability		Henk Zeevat Grammaticalisation and evolution	Andrea Baronchelli, Vittorio Loreto, Luca Dall’Asta, Alain Barrat Bootstrapping communication in language games: strategy, topology and all that
1:30 pm	Lunch
	SESSION A8 (Chair: Mark Jeffreys)		SESSION B8 (Chair: Simon Kirby)	SESSION C8 (Chair: Davide Marocco)
2:30 pm	Jean-Louis Dessalles Generalised signalling: a possible solution to the paradox of language		Sverker Johansson Working backwards from modern language to proto-grammar	John L. Locke Interaction of developmental and evolutionary processes in the emergence of spoken language
3:10 pm	Stefan Hoefler Why has ambiguous syntax emerged?		Marco Turchi & Nello Cristianini A statistical analysis of language evolution	Dennis Philps From mouth to hand
3:50 pm	Daniel A. Sternberg & Morten H. Christiansen The implications of bilingualism and multilingualism on potential evolved language mechanisms		Monica Tamariz Selection dynamics in language form and language meaning	Leonid I. Perlovsky & José F. Fontanari How language can guide intelligence
4:30 pm	GENERAL DISCUSSION AND CONCLUSION (Chair: Jim Hurford)
5:30 pm	CONFERENCE ENDS

General information

Lecture rooms: Aula Cinema and Aula Alfa are in the main site of the Centro Congressi and can be accessed directly from the Foyer. Aula Cortile is just outside the Conference Centre.

Computer Lab: In Basement Floor. Opening: April 13 and 14 (10am-6pm), April 14 (10am-2pm).

Coffee breaks: In Foyer

Lunch: Around via Salaria, Piazza Fiume and Porta Pia there is a variety of restaurants and eating places (Pizza al taglio, Self-service restaurants, Bars)

Where?

SESSION A AULA CINEMA

SESSION B AULA ALFA

SESSION C AULA CORTILE

---

FURTHER INFORMATION

Address all queries to evolang6@ling.ed.ac.uk

Last updated March 30, 2006