EMERGENCE AND EVOLUTION OF LINGUISTIC COMMUNICATION Start: Wednesday 10 March, 2010 18:20:00 CET End: Friday 12 March, 2010 19:20:00 CET THE INTERNATIONAL SEMINAR ON THE EMERGENCE AND EVOLUTION OF LINGUISTIC COMMUNICATION (JAIST-EELC2010) http://www.jaist.ac.jp/JAIST-EELC2010/ 10-12 March, 2010 Campus Plaza Kyoto, Kyoto, Japan Students can be supported for some of their travel expenses. * Introduction Language or the faculty of language is one of the unique characteristics of humans. When, why, and how did this faculty biologically evolve? How did the initial language develop into our present complex language? How does such dynamic and creative communication as we now engage in emerge? These are our questions regarding the origin and evolution of language. The origin and evolution of language are complex phenomena in which adaptive changes with different spatiotemporal scales, namely, learning, cultural evolution, and biological evolution, interact with each other. In order to understand these phenomena, we should advance research in diverse disciplines, in addition to evolutionary biology and linguistics, such as ethology about animal communication systems, cognitive and brain sciences regarding language ability and language acquisition, and complex systems and constructive research treating hetero and complex dynamics. Further, we need to develop new experimental paradigms and new theoretical tools for language evolution. With the progress of such modern research into language evolution, the true issues and effective research methodologies have come into our sight. Now, by holding this international seminar to learn about and discuss these issues, basic concepts and effective methodologies with some of the leading scholars in the field, we want to encourage further research activities, and expand the development of this exciting field. * Lecturers (in alphabetical order): - Cedric Boeckx (Universitat Autonoma de Barcelona, Spain) - Tecumseh Fitch (Universitat Wien, Austria) - Kouji Fujita (University of Kyoto, Japan) - Takashi Hashimoto (JAIST, Japan) - Yoshihisa Nakamura (University of Kanazawa, Japan) - Rafael Nunez (University of California, USA) - Kazuo Okanoya (RIKEN BSI, Japan) * Organizing Committee - Takashi Hashimoto (JAIST, Japan), Chair - Koji Fujita (University of Kyoto, Japan) - Yoshihisa Nakamura (University of Kanazawa, Japan) - Kazuo Okanoya (RIKEN BSI, Japan) * Contact If you have any queries, please e-mail to JAIST-EELC2010@jaist.ac.jp * Sponsor Sponsored by Japan Advanced Institute of Science and Technology Under the joint auspices of the Grants-in-Aid for Scientific Research on Innovative Areas "The study on the neural dynamics for understanding communication in terms of complex hetero systems" * The EELC Symposium Series This seminar is the fourth of a series of the successful workshops on the Emergence and Evolution of Linguistic Communication. The first one was held in 2004 in Kanazawa (Japan) under the auspices of the Japanese Society for Artificial Intelligence (JSAI), the second one in Hatfield (United Kingdom) under the auspices of the Society for the Study of Artificial Intelligence and Simulation of Behaviour (AISB), and the third one in Rome (Italy) under the auspices of the International Society for Adaptive Behavior (ISAB).