Protolang 9

Programme

Plenary speakers

 See here for abstracts and details!

Schedule (overview)

Monday, September 15

Tuesday, September 16

  • Morning/afternoon: main conference 

Wednesday, September 17

More details to be announced soon!

 

Workshop

On Monday, Protolang will host the workshop Novel Approaches to Language Evolution Research Using Animal Models, organized by Sasha Newar and Tom Jenks, University of St. Andrews. More information can be found on the workshop website.

  

List of accepted oral presentations

  • Niklas Erben Johansson, Andrey Anikin: "Beautiful and hideous words: The effect of cross-linguistic phonesthetics and iconicity on word formation"
  • Axel G. Ekström, Rui Tu: "Toward physical chimpanzee vocal tract models"
  • Shiri Lev-Ari: "Sorries seem to have the harder words"
  • Shiri Lev-Ari, Rose Stamp, Connie de Vos, Uiko Yano, Victoria Nyst, Karen Emmorey: "The relationship between community size and iconicity in sign languages"
  • Francesco Ferretti, Angelo Damiano Delliponti, Valentina Deriu, Alessandra Chiera, Daniela Altavilla, Serena Nicchiarelli, Slawomir Wacewicz, Ines Adornetti: "Mindreading and language origins: An electroencephalogram study on the comprehension of basic ostensive communication"
  • Vesta Eleuteri, Lucy Bates, Yvonne Nyaradzo Masarira, Joshua M. Plotnik, Catherine Hobaiter, Angela Stoeger: "Investigating intentionality in elephant gestural communication"
  • Axel G. Ekström, Johan Lind, Anna Jon-And: "Sequence representation as limitation on would-be primate speech"
  • Antoine Muller, Larissa Mendoza Straffon, Ceri Shipton, Francesco d’Errico: "Searching for the origins of recursive thinking via the complexity of stone toolmaking"
  • Frederik Hartmann: "Reconstructing linguistic proto-forms using phylogenetically-aware Neural Networks"
  • Sabine Blütgen, Jennifer Culbertson, Simon Kirby: "Mitteilungsbedürfnis: How the human drive to share mental states shaped the evolution of language, collaboration, and culture"
  • Leona Polyanskaya: "Statistical Learning of Language from Evolutionary Perspective"
  • Mikhail Ordin: "The Origin of Typological Suffixing Bias in World Languages"
  • Mikhail Ordin: "Linguistic experience and universal design of the auditory system in speech rhythm perception: implications for speech evolution"
  • Leona Polyanskaya: "Signaling and inferring cooperative urge via speech rhythm"
  • Susanne Fuchs, Mingtong Li, Eric (Jiahao) Yang, Suzanne Aussems: "The effect of posture on the production of multimodal communication"
  • Marek Placiński, Marta Sibierska, Klaudia Karkowska, Bartłomiej Kiljanek, Przemyslaw Zywiczynski: "The effect of posture on the kinematics of gestures"
  • Anthe Sevenants, Dirk Speelman, Freek Van de Velde, Dirk Pijpops: "Least but not lost. Finding the requirements for gradual reduction using an agent-based model of least effort"
  • Anna Petrova, Kathleen Rastle, Matteo Lisi, Shiri Lev-Ari: "How and why does the Zipfian distribution differ between spoken and written language"
  • Svetlana Kuleshova, Stefan Hartmann, Michael Pleyer, Marta Sibierska, Johan Blomberg, Przemyslaw Zywiczynski, Aleksandra Ćwiek, Marek Placiński, Slawomir Wacewicz: "Experiments in language evolution: inferences from closed- vs open-ended semantic space paradigms"
  • Koen de Reus, Antonio Benítez-Burraco, Taylor A. Hersh, Nikita E. Groot, Megan L. Lambert, Katie Slocombe, Sonja Vernes, Limor Raviv: "Behavioral markers of domestication in vocal learning mammals"
  • Piotr Podlipniak: "The proto-musical origin of grammatical mood from a gene-culture coevolutionary perspective"
  • Kinga G. Tóth, Boglárka Morvai, Marianna Boros, Dorottya S. Rácz, Ivaylo Iotchev, Kitti Szabó: "Neural evidence for a linguistic bias during speech segmentation in dogs"
  • Sihan Chen, Antonio Benítez-Burraco: "Linguistic diversity as a barrier to disease spread"
  • Antonio Benítez-Burraco, Ljiljana Progovac: "Autism and human evolution"
  • Antonio Benítez-Burraco, Raffaela Lesch: "The domestication of speech"
  • Carter Smith, Frederik Hartmann: "Using Neural Networks for part-of-speech analysis to investigate syntactic evolution and change"
  • Aleksandra Ćwiek, Susanne Fuchs, Wim Pouw, Šárka Kadavá: "Expressibility ratings as a predictor of communicative success in referential games"
  • Emily Davis, Robert Kluender: "The rise and fall of center embedding: Evidence from non-linguistic sequences in art and iterated learning"
  • Ilia Afanasev: "We do not frequently borrow words that we do not borrow frequently: the search for quantifiable characteristics of swadeshness"
  • Oryan Zacks: "The evolution of imagination: a neural transition from reptiles to mammals"
  • Felix Haiduk, Nicholas Harley, Tudor Popescu: "Using predictive dynamics as a window into the evolution of Language and Music"
  • Eva Zehentner, Dirk Pijpops: "How redundant is language really? Agent-recipient disambiguation across time and space"
  • Maisy Hallam, Simon Kirby, Fiona M. Jordan, Kenny Smith: "Hierarchical structure of kinship semantics derives from efficient communication principles"
  • Klaudia Karkowska, Slawomir Wacewicz, Antoni Żyndul, Marta Sibierska: "What exactly is aligned in the case of alignment in whole-body communication? Case studies of pantomimic enactments of short stories"
  • Dorottya S. Rácz, Marianna Boros, Attila Andics: "Dog brains process the meaning of action instruction words"
  • Limor Raviv, Damian E Blasi, Vera Kempe: "Children Are Not the Main Agents of Language Change"
  • Danielle Naegeli, Oxana Grosseck, Kotryna Motiekatytė, Hans Rutger Bosker, Gerardo Ortega, Marcus Perlman, David Peeters, Limor Raviv: "Iconicity and compositionality can co-develop in communication across modalities"
  • Seyyed Hatam Tamimi Sad, Ronnie Wilbur: "Sadat Tawaher Sign Language: Emergence, development, & typological novelty"
  • Irene Boehm, Nikolaus Ritt: "Balancing similarity and distinctiveness: Competing pressures in the evolution of English monosyllables"
  • Lois Dona, asli ozyurek, Judith Holler, Marieke Woensdregt, Limor Raviv: "Do Facial Signals Support Language Emergence During Communication? An Experimental Approach"
  • Simon Kirby, Ellen Garland, Kazuo Okanoya, Jenny Allen, Claire Garrigue, Emma Carroll, Miki Takahasi, Inbal Arnon: "Cultural evolution creates language structure: from humans to humpback whales & beyond"
  • Elizabeth Qing Zhang, Qi Wang, Antonio Benítez-Burraco: "Navigation as the Evolutionary Origin for Recursive Processing in Human Cognition"
  • Thomas Jenks, Sasha Newar, Alice Crighton, Sixue Li, Sonja C Vernes: "Automated Training Paradigms in Vocal Learning Bats: A Model Species of Vocal Learning Research"
  • Vera Kempe, C. Donnan Gravelle, Stina Perschke, Glenn P. Williams, Sonja Schaeffler: "Has Child-Directed Speech Changed Over the Past Six Decades?"
  • Harald Gropp: "The traveling primate --- pre-Euclidean geometry of men and apes"
  • Yannick Becker: "Evolution of brain connectivity for language: Arcuate fascicle termination in the middle temporal gyrus across great apes"
  • Michael Pleyer, Marcus Perlman, Gary Lupyan, Koen de Reus, Limor Raviv: "Revising Hockett’s ‘Design Features of Language’"
  • Vojtěch Fiala, Juan Olvido Perea-Garcia, Anna Szala, Theresa Matzinger, Karel Kleisner, Jindřich Brejcha, Przemyslaw Zywiczynski, Slawomir Wacewicz: "How precisely does human eye color characterization follow colour naming convention: An experimental study"
  • Ibuki Iwamura, Takashi Hashimoto: "Under What Conditions Does Syntactic Alternation Culturally Emerge?"
  • Marta Sibierska, Monika Boruta, Klaudia Karkowska, Bartłomiej Kiljanek, Marek Placiński, Antoni Żyndul: "Constraints on number of characters in mimed stories and their implications for scenarios of language origins"
  • Andreas Baumann, Frederik Hartmann, Yllka Velaj: "Exploiting epidemiological contact data to examine the role of age structure in linguistic diffusion"
  • Mira Sinha, Maryam Mohebbi, Aidan Murphy, William Hopkins, Chet Sherwood, Dietrich Stout, Erin Hecht: "Exploring the Neural Architecture of Communication in Non-Human Great Apes"
  • Bernd Lenzner, Andreas Baumann, Sietze Norder, Franz Essl, Hannes A. Fellner: "Language endangerment and biodiversity threat both correlate with duration of European colonial occupation"
  • Koji Kawahara: "The Emergence of Lexical Items through Demonstration: Evidence from Iconic Expressions"
  • Sasha Newar, Thomas Jenks, Ines G. Moran, Alice C Crighton, Sonja C Vernes: "Syllable sequence in adult pale spear-nosed bats (<i>Phyllostomus discolor</i>)"
  • Theresa Matzinger, Monika Boruta-Zywiczynska, Marek Placiński, Aoife Jordan, Hannah Marwan-Schlosser: "The aesthetic appeal of sign languages: intrinsic appeal or cultural associations?"
  • Polina Eismont, Anna Zinina, Artemy Kotov, Nikita Arinkin, Polina Podlesnaya, Maria Yurieva: "Seeing is NOT believing: the role of temporal gestures in children’s communication with robot and human"
  • Felix Haiduk, Joshua Zami: "Implicit expectations and iconicity of great apes’ gestures in adult humans"
  • Marianna Boros, Lilla Magyari, Dorottya Szilvia Rácz, Attila Andics: "Word representation in the dog brain"
  • T. Mark Ellison: "Prominence in Protolanguage"

 

Social programme

On Monday evening, after the workshop and opening session, there will be a welcome reception at the Department of English and American Studies, where the conference is going to take place. There will also be the possibility to pick up your conference bag so that you don't need to do so on Tuesday morning.

On Wednesday, after the final talk, we will take you by bus to the Reisenberg, commonly known as 'Am Cobenzl' viewpoint, which belongs to the (small) mountain range in the West of Vienna. There, you can enjoy a magnificent view over the city. After that, we will take a 30 minute walk down to Grinzing, an old  wine village in the outskirts of the city (if you prefer not to walk, you can also take the bus). Here, we will spend the evening and have our conference dinner in a traditional wine tavern (a Heuriger), 'Zum Martin Sepp'.

Both, the welcome reception and the conference dinner (incl. bus trip) are included in the conference fee.