LINGUIST List 21.2903 Tue Jul 13 2010 Calls: Comp Ling, Philosophy of Ling, Semantics/USA Editor for this issue: Di Wdzenczny <dilinguistlist.org> LINGUIST is pleased to announce the launch of an exciting new feature: Easy Abstracts! Easy Abs is a free abstract submission and review facility designed to help conference organizers and reviewers accept and process abstracts online. Just go to: http://www.linguistlist.org/confcustom, and begin your conference customization process today! With Easy Abstracts, submission and review will be as easy as 1-2-3! Directory         1.    Adrian Pablé, Semantics for Robots: Utopian and Dystopian Visions in the Age of the 'Language Machine' Message 1: Semantics for Robots: Utopian and Dystopian Visions in the Age of the 'Language Machine' Date: 12-Jul-2010 From: Adrian Pablé <apablehku.hk> Subject: Semantics for Robots: Utopian and Dystopian Visions in the Age of the 'Language Machine' E-mail this message to a friend Full Title: Semantics for Robots: Utopian and Dystopian Visions in the Age of the 'Language Machine' Date: 02-Dec-2010 - 04-Dec-2010 Location: Chicago, Illinois, USA Contact Person: Adrian Pablé Meeting Email: apablehku.hk Linguistic Field(s): Computational Linguistics; Philosophy of Language; Semantics Call Deadline: 01-Oct-2010 Meeting Description: Roy Harris in his 1987 work The Language Machine (Duckworth) identified the idea of language as an autonomous, mechanical and self-defining system as a key component of the language myth. Harris characterized the fantasy of a language system underlying and enabling both human communicational activity and human cognition as 'a semantics for robots, not for human beings'. This myth of the language machine has been promoted by a modern, profoundly dehumanized linguistics, but has deep roots in the Western tradition of language theorizing. The question that Harris raises is precisely what makes meaning? What makes communication possible? What makes language, including the products of the language machine, work? Contemporary sciences—including philosophy, linguistics, psychology, computer science and allied fields—assume that communication presupposes language, while Harris argues that language presupposes communication. For Harris, what makes the language machine work is the human language maker who is trying to make something happen. The conference organizers invite papers on the following themes: -Linguistics and language as a system, the mind-brain as computer, the speaker-hearer as information processor, the cognitive turn in linguistics; -Futurology: predicting the evolution of language, writing, sign-systems and communication; -Futuristic perspectives on language and communication, as found in utopian/dystopian popular culture, science fiction; Orwell's 'Newspeak' and language engineering; -Envisioning language in the information age: data-storage, global systems and markets, individuality and identity, law and intellectual property, language and cyberspace, the semantics of 'spam'; -Machine translation, artificial intelligence, Google as corpus, electronic lexicography; -Integrationism: signs, meaning and knowledge in the information age; -The Language Machine as a prophetic text. Call For Papers A conference sponsored by The International Association for the Integrational Study of Language and Communication and The School of English, The University of Hong Kong Date: December 2-4, 2010 Location: Ellen and Melvin Gordon Center for Integrative Science, University of Chicago Conference organisers: David Bade (Joseph Regenstein Library, University of Chicago), Christopher Hutton (School of English, The University of Hong Kong), Adrian Pablé (School of English, The University of Hong Kong). Please send an abstract (300-500 words) to the following email addresses: dbadeuchicago.edu; chuttonhku.hk; apablehku.hk Deadline for abstract submission: October 1, 2010 Participants are to submit a written version of their paper by November 26, 2010. Conference fee: 40 USD (to be paid on registration) Read more issues|LINGUIST home page|Top of issue Page Updated: 13-Jul-2010       About LINGUIST    |   Contact Us       While the LINGUIST List makes every effort to ensure the linguistic relevance of sites listed on its pages, it cannot vouch for their contents.