The 9th International Conference on the Evolution of Language (Evolang IX) will be held in the historical city of Kyoto, Japan, from the 13th to 16th of March 2012.
Conference News
Evolang Student Volume Published
Following the Kyoto conference, student presenters were asked to submit papers on the 'Past, Present and Future of Language Evolution Research' for compilation as part of a peer-reviewed student volume for distribution at the next conference. The volume has finally been published, as is now available for download here:
Plenary Videos
Videos of (most of) the plenary lectures from the conference are now available to view online at the following address:
Videos were also recorded at the Kyoto Conference on Biolinguistics, and are available at the following link:
Evolang Coverage in Science
An article on work presented at Evolang9 was published in the latest issue of science. The story is available here.
Evolang9 Participants List
What is the single most important recent advance in Evolutionary Linguistics?
The Interaction Studies Award
Research excellence was again reflected by the breadth and depth of oral and poster research presentations at this year’s conference. The Interaction Studies Award is awarded to the presenter of the best poster research presentation at the conference. This year’s winners were Dr. Rishiraj Saha Roy, Dr. Monojit Choudhury, and Dr. Kalika Bali. Dr. Roy for their highly innovative study "Are Web Search Queries an Evolving Protolanguage?".
Congratulations Dr. Roy, Dr. Choudhury, and Dr Bali!
The prize is gratefully supported by the publisher John Benjamins.
The Hurford Prize
The Hurford Prize is awarded to the presenter of the best student oral presentation at EVOLANG IX. The winner is Ms. Tessa Verhoef. She won the prize for her excellent and stimulating presentation of "Holistic or Synthetic Protolanguage: Evidence from Iterated Learning of Whistled Signals", co-authored with Dr. Bart de Boer and Dr. Simon Kirby.
Kudos to Tessa!
This prize is kindly supported by Oxford University Press.
After Evolang
The conference has finally come to an end, and on behalf of the Local Organizing Committee, I would like to express our gratitude to all those who were able to join us in Kyoto this last week. The conference was not without its problems, but the general opinion seems to be that it was a success. The credit for this is shared between all of those involved, but in large part goes to the diverse range of participants who attended.
Conference Booklet
The conference booklet containing timetables and assorted local information is now available for download here.
Kyoto Weather
For our international participants we thought it best to give an update on the weather here in Japan. We have been having a colder March than is usual and this is predicted to continue during the conference. There is also a reasonably high likelihood of showers throughout the conference period. A long range Kyoto weather forecast is available here.