Author: Ozercan, Aliyar

Super Linguistics Colloquium: Yosef Prat

Next Super Linguistics colloquium speaker is Yosef Prat (Institut de Biologie, Université de Neuchâtel):

 
Title: Animals have no language, and humans are animals too
Date: Friday June 5th

Time: 16:15-18:00 Oslo time

Online meeting information (please do not post the meeting information on social media or other public forums):

Zoom Meeting ID: 641-6549-2283
Password: animals

Abstract: Do nonhuman animals have language? In humans, language is prominently manifested by vocal communication (i.e., speech). However, while vocal communication is ubiquitous across the animal kingdom, studies to date have found only elementary parallels to speech in nonhuman animals. These modest linguistic capacities of other species have fortified our belief that language is uniquely human. But have we really tested this uniqueness claim? By adopting methods that are commonly used in bioacoustics, I demonstrate that, surprisingly, a true impartial comparison between human speech and other animal vocalizations has not been conducted yet. Oddly, studying human speech using the same methods used to study other species vocalizations is actually expected to provide us with no evidence for human uniqueness.

All are very welcome!

Ryo Tanaka Received Ruth Garrett Millikan Graduate Fellowship!

Ryo Tanaka is the 2020 recipient of the Ruth Garrett Millikan Graduate Research Fellowship. The Fellowship will enable Ryo to devote the summer to completing two chapters of his dissertation, which is entitled, ‘Semantic Knowledge as Expressive Know-How’. His major advisor is Dorit Bar-On. For more information about the Ruth Garrett Millikan Fellowship, please visit here.

Drew is Going to Give a Presentation (at UNC)!

One of the most active members of ECOM, Drew Johnson, will be giving a talk with the title, “The Proper Function of Ethical Judgment: Towards a Biosemantic Theory of Ethical Thought and Discourse” at the North Carolina Philosophical Society meeting on March 27-28 at UNC Asheville. Go Drew!