LINGUIST List 13.1771

Fri Jun 21 2002

Calls: Cognitive & Discourse Ling, Cognitive Lang

Editor for this issue: Renee Galvis <reneelinguistlist.org>

Directory

1. Cecilia Castillo Ayometzi, GURT 2003 - CFP - Cognitive & Discourse Perspectives
2. Stevan Harnad, BBS Call for Commentators: Carruthers; The cognitive functions of language

Conference Announcement & Call for Papers

GEORGETOWN UNIVERSITY ROUNDTABLE ON LANGUAGES AND LINGUISTICS

February 15, 16 & 17, 2003 (President Day's Weekend)
Georgetown University, Washington, D.C.

Language in Use:
Cognitive and Discourse Perspectives on Language and Language Learning

GURT 2003 will bring together research from various perspectives that
emphasizes ways in which cognitive factors and discourse factors shape
properties of language and of language learning

In recent years, there has been growing awareness of the importance of
studying language and language learning in its context of
use. Researchers who take a cognitive approach (broadly defined) and
those who take a discourse perspective have argued, often
independently of each other, that linguistic structure cannot be fully
understood if isolated from the study of how language is employed to
create meaning. Moreover, an increasing number of researchers involved
in both first and second language learning research have argued that
language learning is guided in crucial ways by the contexts of
meaningful communication in which language use is
embedded. Overlapping strands of investigation pursued by these
researchers include:

1) the role of psychological plausibility in developing theories of
language and language learning;

2) the connection between linguistic form and function; and

3) the connections between language, language learning and general
properties of cognition.

Contributions that address the conference themes from the following
perspectives are especially welcome: Cognitive linguistics; cognitive,
functional, and discourse approaches to language learning ; discourse
approaches to language; functional and discourse approaches to
language teaching; and usage-based models of language.

Plenary speakers will include: 
Kathleen Bardovi-Harlig
Melissa Bowerman
Nick Ellis
Adele Goldberg
Michael Tomasello

Invited colloquia will include: 
"New Approaches to Discourse Markers" Deborah Schiffrin, organizer 
"The Context of Bilingualism" Kendall King, organizer

ABSTRACT DEADLINE: September 30, 2002

SUBMISSION TYPES: INDIVIDUAL PAPERS, COLLOQUIA, POSTERS

SUBMISSION FORMAT: E-mail text and MS Word file, 350 words maximum

FOR MORE INFORMATION CONTACT: gurtgeorgetown.edu

WEBSITE: http://www.georgetown.edu/events/gurt/

(submission information to be posted soon)

CONFERENCE ORGANIZER: ANDREA TYLER 

We are pleased to announce that for the first time, this year's GURT
will include an award for the best student abstract.

 Below is a link to the forthcoming BBS target article

 The cognitive functions of language

 by

 Peter Carruthers


http://www.bbsonline.org/Preprints/Carruthers/Referees/

This article has been accepted for publication in Behavioral and Brain
Sciences (BBS), an international, interdisciplinary journal providing
Open Peer Commentary on important and controversial current research
in the biobehavioral and cognitive sciences. If you are interested in
submitting a commentary on this paper, or would like to suggest
someone else as a potential commentator on this paper, please read on.

Commentators must be BBS Associates or nominated by a BBS
Associate. To be considered as a commentator for this article, to
suggest other appropriate commentators, or for information about how
to become a BBS Associate, please reply by EMAIL within within three
(3) weeks to:

 callsbbsonline.org

The Calls are sent to over 10,000 researchers in our database, so
there is no expectation (indeed, it would be calamitous) that each
recipient should comment on every occasion! Hence there is no need to
reply except if you wish to comment, or to suggest someone to comment.

If you are not a BBS Associate, please approach a current BBS
Associate (there are currently over 10,000 worldwide) who is familiar
with your work to nominate you. All past BBS authors, referees and
commentators are eligible to become BBS Associates. An electronic list
of BBS Associates (1978-2000) is available at this location to help
you select a name:

http://www.bbsonline.org/Instructions/assoclist.html

If no current BBS Associate knows your work, please send us your
Curriculum Vitae and BBS will circulate it to appropriate Associates
to ask whether they would be prepared to nominate you. (In the
meantime, your name, address and email address will be entered into
our database as an unaffiliated investigator.)


 IMPORTANT

To help us put together a balanced list of commentators, please
indicate the relevant expertise you would bring to bear on the paper,
and what aspect of the article you would anticipate commenting upon.

To help you decide whether you would be an appropriate commentator for
this article, an electronic draft is retrievable from the online
BBSPrints Archive, at the URL proceeding the abstract below.

_______________________________________________________________________
The cognitive functions of language

Peter Carruthers
Department of Philosophy,
University of Maryland,
College Park, MD 20742

KEYWORDS: cognitive evolution, conceptual module, consciousness,
domain-general, inner speech, logical form (LF), language, thought.

ABSTRACT: This paper explores a variety of different versions of the
thesis that natural language is involved in human thinking. It
distinguishes amongst strong and weak forms of this thesis, dismissing
some as implausibly strong and others as uninterestingly
weak. Strong forms dismissed include the view that language is
conceptually necessary for thought (endorsed by many philosophers) and
the view that language is de facto the medium of all human conceptual
thinking (endorsed by many philosophers and social scientists). Weak
forms include the view that language is necessary for the acquisition
of many human concepts, and the view that language can serve to
scaffold human thought processes. The paper also discusses the thesis
that language may be the medium of conscious propositional thinking,
but argues that this cannot be its most fundamental cognitive
role. The idea is then proposed that natural language is the medium
for non-domain-specific thinking, serving to integrate the outputs of
a variety of domain-specific conceptual faculties (or
central-cognitive "quasi-modules"). Recent experimental evidence
in support of this idea is reviewed, and the implications of the idea
are discussed, especially for our conception of the architecture of
human cognition. Finally, some further kinds of evidence which might
serve to corroborate or refute the hypothesis are mentioned. The
overall goal of the paper is to review a wide variety of accounts of
the cognitive function of natural language, integrating a number of
different kinds of evidence and theoretical consideration in order to
propose and elaborate the most plausible candidate.

http://www.bbsonline.org/Preprints/Carruthers/Referees/


 *** SUPPLEMENTARY ANNOUNCEMENT ***

(1) Call for Book Nominations for BBS Multiple Book Review

 In the past, Behavioral and Brain Sciences (BBS) had only been able
 to do 1-2 BBS multiple book treatments per year, because of our
 limited annual page quota. BBS's new expanded page quota will make
 it possible for us to increase the number of books we treat per
 year, so this is an excellent time for BBS Associates and
 biobehavioral/cognitive scientists in general to nominate books you
 would like to see accorded BBS multiple book review.

 (Authors may self-nominate, but books can only be selected on the
 basis of multiple nominations.) It would be very helpful if you
 indicated in what way a BBS Multiple Book Review of the book(s) you
 nominate would be useful to the field (and of course a rich list of
 potential reviewers would be the best evidence of its potential
 impact!).


Ralph
BBS

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Ralph DeMarco
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Behavioral and Brain Sciences
Journals Department
Cambridge University Press
40 West 20th Street
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UNITED STATES

bbsbbsonline.org
http://bbsonline.org

Tel: +001 212 924 3900 ext.374
Fax: +001 212 645 5960
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