Babel's Dawn

The Utrecht Paradigm

A canal in Utrecht, home to the largest university in The Netherlands.

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There is something wrong here. If you began stopping people on the street and asked them if they thought it likely that language depends on a mixture of biological adaptations and cultural innovations, wouldn’t the first 999 out of 1000 answer yes? So what kind of knot can language scholars have tied themselves into for the news out of Utrecht to be that they too would answer yes? But that’s the case, although it looks temporary and unsustainable.

Evolang Retrospective

I;ll have more to say about the Evolang conference that has just ended, but right now I'm going to relax. I welcome your comments about the conference, the wine served at Tecumseh Fitch's book party, Utrecht, or even my coverage of the events. More next week.

Grand CRU d'Utrecht

Evolang ended with a presentation by Terrence Deacon that gave everybody plenty to contemplate while they wait for volcanic ash to clear from the Atlantic and northern European skies. Deacon is a neurologist and anthropologist along with teaching a course on evolution at the University of California at Berkeley. His presentation covered all these areas and covered them in original, creative ways that forced everybody to pay close, persistent attention. I’m not sure how much the tired, ready-to-go-home audience was able to take out of the presentation, but I’m hoping they came away with at least an appreciation that they need to learn more. In the opinon of this blog, Deacon gave the most important presentation of the conference, and that’s saying something after Christiansen’s great contribution     yesterday morning.

Meeting of the Minds

Semantics and a “theory of minds” cover the same ground, Peter Gärdenfors told the Evolang conference as it started its last day in Utrecht, the Netherlands. He gave the audience an interesting angle on the cooperative theory, much favored on this blog, and argued that meanings constitute a “meeting of the minds.”

No Language Universals in this Theory

This morning in Utrecht got off to a heavy start as Morten Christiansen presented a fulsome talk about “Brains, Genes, and Language Evolution.” It was the strongest counter yet to the language faculty arguments presented at the Evolang conference; however, Christiansen did not present a hard-core, old-fashioned blank slate argument. Genes have their contribution to make, although it is not at all like contribution expected by the hard-core, old-fashioned innate-ideas defenders.

Thanks, Evolang

Activity on this blog soared during the last Evolang in Barcelona. Now the numbers are shooting up again with the Utrecht meeting.  Thanks, Evolang.

Neural Replicators: What Are They?

There has been a bit of confusion at Evolang this afternoon. Originally the first plenary session was to be addressed by Eőrs Szathmáry from the Collegium Budapst but a family emergency forced a change in plans. His presentation was given by his colleague Chrisantha Fernando, but was delayed until this afternoon and he spoke before a workshop rather than a plenary session. Nevertheless the presentation made a contribution to the continuing theme of how did we evolve a brain that can understand language. The first two presentations favored a genetically-based language faculty. The Szathmáry/Fernando claim looks in another direction.

Language and Its Core Properties

Following up on Maggie Tallerman’s presentation yesterday in support of a language faculty, Evolang this morning began with a further defense of the same concept by Robert Berwick, a colleague and collaborator with Noam Chomsky. Berwick has even drawn back from the famous Hauser-Chomsky-Fitch paper of 2002 which suggested that the humans-only part of the language faculty might be narrowed to recursion, i.e., the embedding of syntactical structures to form every larger structures; e.g., the + apple --> Newton saw + the apple --> Newton saw the apple + fall --> I don’t believe + Newton saw the apple fall.

Evolang 2010 Opens

Evolang, the major biannual conference about the origins of language, has gotten underway in Utrecht, the Netherlands. Most of the day has been given to registration, and handing name tags and orientation material. This evening the first plenary session  talk has just ended and people are making their way to the buffet. The opening presentation was given by Maggie Tallerman from Newcastle University. She defended the concept of a "language faculty." Although a conference like this one is sure to have surprises, the biggest contest is expected to be about whether the brain includes a module dedicated to processing language.