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Call-for-Participation

Third Intl. Workshop on the Emergence and Evolution of Linguistic
Communication (EELC III). http://bdc.brain.riken.go.jp/eelc2006/

Rome, Italy, 30 Sept. - 1 Oct. 2006.

As part of the Simulation of Adaptive Behavior (SAB) conference
http://www.sab06.org/

Invited Speakers:
Peter Gardenfors (Lund University, Sweden),
Naoto Iwahashi (ATR, Japan),
Elena Lieven (Max Planck Institute, Germany),
Luc Steels (Vrije Universiteit Brussel, Belgium),
Deb Roy (MIT Media Lab, USA)

Scope of the Workshop
Language is generally considered as the hallmark of human intelligence.
One important way to study why this is the case, is to investigate how
linguistic communication has evolved. In the past decade, this research
area has received a lot of attention from the scientific community and
could be considered as one of the main areas of Artificial Intelligence
and Cognitive Science. The EELC III workshop will focus on empirical and
modelling research on the emergence of symbol grounding and other
aspects of linguistic communication in language evolution and language
acquisition. The key questions relate to how symbolic communication can
emerge from interactions of individuals with their environment,
including other individuals, and how such communication can become
meaningful to the individual or population. Research methods that are
used to study these issues include experimental and observational
studies on child language acquisition and animal communication;
theoretical and computational modelling; and (robotic) simulations of
adaptive behaviour. The workshop aims to provide leading scientists in
the interdisciplinary area of language evolution and language
acquisition a platform to present their latest results and discuss areas
of further research.

Until about 15 years ago, there was very little productive research in
the study of language evolution. However, with the increased
advancements of computational techniques and other empirical methods,
the field of language evolution has grown to become one of the major
research areas in cognitive science. While the field is largely
interdisciplinary with contributions from linguistics, psychology,
neuroscience, biology, anthropology, philosophy and computer science,
the latter has proven to be among the most influential disciplines. A
reason for this is that empirical evidence on language evolution is
scarce and computer simulations offer a good testbed for investigating
hypotheses. One of the major driving forces for language evolution is
often considered to be language acquisition. Language can be transmitted
over subsequent generations if individuals can learn language.
Moreover, it has been claimed that the stages of children’s language
acquisition mirrors the stages of language evolution. So, the current
EELC will not only look at studies on the evolution of language, but
also at studies on language acquisition.

Although many computer simulations take the emergence of symbol
grounding for granted, recently there has been an increase in studies
that focus on issues relating to the emergence of grounded communication
systems. The EELC III will therefore have 'adaptive approaches to symbol
grounding and beyond' as its central theme, though contributions are not
limited to this theme.


EELC Symposium Series
This workshop is the third edition of the successful workshop 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) and the second one in
Hatfield (United Kingdom) under the auspices of the Society for the
Study of Artificial Intelligence and Simulation of Behaviour (AISB).
Details of the second EELC are found on
http://homepages.feis.herts.ac.uk/˜comqcln/EELC05.html. The
Third International Workshop on the Emergence and Evolution of
Linguistic Communication will be part of the Simulation of Adaptive
Behavior conference. The coincidence with SAB permits a better exchange
with other researchers working in the simulation of adaptive behaviour
field.

Registration
For details on registration, please visit the EELC III web-site:
http://bdc.brain.riken.go.jp/eelc2006/

Program Chairs:
Paul Vogt (Tilburg University, The Netherlands), Chair;
Yuuya Sugita (RIKEN BSI, Japan), Co-Chair;
Elio Tuci (Université Libre de Bruxelles, Belgium), Co-Chair;
Chrystopher Nehaniv (University of Hertfordshire, UK), Co-Chair