Divergence and Reticulation in Cultural Evolution
That’s the title of my latest working paper. You can download it here: https://www.academia.edu/41095277/Divergence_and_Reticulation_in_Cultural_Evolution_Some_draft_text_for_an_article_in_progress. And you can participate in a discussion of it here: https://www.academia.edu/s/9b97738023. Abstract, Contents, and introductory material below. * * * * * Abstract: In a recent review of articles in computational criticism Franco Moretti...
Call for Papers 7th UK Cognitive Linguistics Association Conference
The University of Birmingham and the Department of English Language and Linguisticsare proud to host the 7th UK Cognitive Linguistics Association Conference from 28 – 30 July 2020 at the University of Birmingham. The conference welcomes contributions from all fields of cognitive linguistics, as well as from related fields more broadly concerned with language and cognition. We aim to cover a wide range of research including, but not...
CfP: New directions in language evolution research (Special Issue of “Language Dynamics and Change”)
A couple of months ago, Peeter Tinits, Jonas Nölle and I organized a theme session with the fairly generic title “New directions in language evolution research” at the SLE conference in Tartu. Now we are planning a Special Issue of the journal “Language Dynamics and Change” (LDC) that covers the topics addressed at the workshop (and perhaps a few more). Our goal is to emphasize the “New Directions” aspect, i.e. to gather...
Color term salience and cultural evolution
David G. Hays, Enid Margolis, Raoul Naroll, Dale Revere Perkins, Color Term Salience. American Anthropologist, 74:1107-1121, 1972. DOI: 10.1525/aa.1972.74.5.02a00050 Abstract: Eleven focal colors are named by basic color terms in many languages. The most salient colors (black, white, and perhaps red) are named in all languages; the least salient of the set are named in fewer languages. Salience correlates with earliness of...
The Measurement of Cultural Evolution in the Non-Literate World
At the time he died in 1995 my teacher, David G. Hays, The Measurement of Cultural Evolution in the Non-Literate World, had just completed a review and synthesis of cross-cultural work on cultural complexity. His widow, Janet Hays, undertook to publish the book in CD-ROM form. A couple months before she died last year Janet gave me permission to distribute the book in whatever way that seemed appropriate. I have decided to make the...
Robust, Causal, and Incremental Approaches to Investigating Linguistic Adaptation
We live in an age where we have more data on more languages than ever before, and more data to link it with from other domains. This should make it easier to test hypotheses involving adaptation, and also to spot new...
CfP: Measuring Language Complexity at EvoLang
This is a guest post from Aleksandrs Berdicevskis about the workshop Measuring Language Complexity. A lot of evolutionary talks and papers nowadays touch upon language complexity (at least nine papers did this at the Evolang 2016). One of the reasons is probably that complexity is a very convenient testbed for testing hypotheses that establish causal links between linguistic structure and extra-linguistic factors. Do factors such as...
CfP: Applications in Cultural Evolution, June 6-8, Tartu
Guest post by Peeter Tinits and Oleg Sobchuk As mentioned in this blog before, evolutionary thinking can help the study of various cultural practices, not just language. The perspective of cultural evolution is currently seeing an interesting case of global growth and coordination – the widely featured founding of the Cultural Evolution Society (also on replicatedtypo), the recent inaugural conference and follow-ups are...