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
Conference Dinner and Excursion Details
12 years 47 weeks ago
Details of the conference excursion and conference dinner have been added to the Practical Information page.
Plenary Speaker Program Changes
12 years 49 weeks ago
We regret to announce that Prof. Noam Chomsky has sadly been forced to cancel his scheduled plenary talk as a result of unforeseen circumstances. We have therefore followed his suggestion and invited his colleague and friend Prof. Robert Berwick to take his place. Prof. Berwick has kindly accepted this invitation, and it is therefore our great pleasure to announce that he will be joining us to give a plenary lecture at Evolang 9.
Workshop Call For Papers Released
13 years 2 days ago
The official workshop call for papers has been released and is available here. In addition to the previously announced submission dates, the call for papers includes details on the submission format and which workshops will be holding open call for papers.
Accomodation Options
13 years 4 days ago
Following a number of requests, we have added a map showing some of the accommodations options near the conference venue to the Practical Information page. Please be aware that Kyoto is a tourist destination, so there are many options accomodation options available, but mid-March is in the tourist season so we advise participants to book accommodation in well in advance of the conference.
Deadline Extensions
13 years 1 week ago
We are pleased to announce that the deadline for workshops submissions has been extended until the 13th of January, and that the deadline for early-bird registration rates has also been extended until the end of January.
Visa Applications for participants from China, Russia, NIS countries or the Philippines
13 years 1 week ago
The majority of international participants attending the conference will not need to arrange a visa before entering Japan, but to confirm please check that your country is included in this list of visa exempt countries. For those participants who do require a visa and who are nationals of China, Russia, NIS countries or the Philippines please see this page detailing the special procedures required to apply for a Japanese visa.
Registration Page Open
13 years 1 week ago
We are pleased to announce that the Evolang9 registration site is now open at the address below:
Registration fees are as follows. Please note, discounted early rates only apply until the end of December January, so please register soon to receive these rates.
Full Conference
Regular: 40,000JPY (30,000JPY Early Rate)
Student: 20,000JPY (15,000JPY Early Rate)
Single Day
Regular: 20,000JPY (15,000JPY Early Rate)
Student: 10,000JPY (7,000JPY Early Rate)
In addition to the conference, participants have the option to register for the conference dinner (Regular 8,000JPY, Student 5,000JPY) held at a traditional Japanese restaurant and for the conference excursion (6,000JPY) which will be held on the afternoon of the 3rd day of the conference.
Re: Student Support Applications
13 years 3 weeks ago
In our previous notice the contact address for student support applications was mistakenly listed as studentsupport@evolang.com rather than studentsupport@evolang.org. If you sent an application to the originally listed address we therefore must ask you to resend it. We apologize for any inconvenience this may have caused.
Procedure followed by the program committee for reviewing submissions
13 years 4 weeks ago
Members of the program committee:
Thomas C. Scott-Phillips
Mónica Tamariz
Erica A. Cartmill
James R. Hurford
We are putting this information here so that the procedure for determining which papers were accepted to the conference is transparent.
As per the Call for Papers, all submissions stated whether they wished to be considered first for a talk or a poster. We received 156 ‘talk first’ and 42 ‘poster first’ submissions.
Submissions were first assessed for relevance to the conference aims. If there was unanimous agreement among the program committee that a submission was not relevant to the conference, then it was not sent to review.
All other submissions were sent to 3 or 4 reviewers. These reviewers graded each submission on a scale of 1?7 (1 = strong reject; 2 = reject; 3 = weak reject; 4 = neutral; 5 = weak accept; 6 = accept; 7 = strong accept). Reviewers were also asked about the relevance of the submission to the conference aims ((a) = relevant; (b) = relevance loose or not made clear; (c) = not relevant).
A maximum of 128 slots are available at the conference: 68 for talks and 60 for posters. Submissions were ordered according to the average rating given by the reviewers, and this created default cut?off points for acceptance to the conference, and for acceptance as talks. This created three groups of submissions: talk; poster; and those that could not be accepted.
Because we received more ‘talk first’ than ‘poster first’ submissions, then some talks were assigned as posters, but no posters were assigned as talks. Submissions of both types were marked as not accepted if they fell outside the highest 128 submissions.
Having established these initial groups, we then considered, for all submissions, whether they should be moved between groups either because there were outlying reviews that distorted the average (e.g. two very positive but one negative and unfair review), or because the reviewers considered the submission not relevant to the conference aims. In making these decisions, we took into account both the reviewers’ detailed comments and the reviewers’ own tendencies (some reviewers were more generous than others). A significant minority of submissions were moved between groups as a result of these discussions
Student Support Applications
13 years 4 weeks ago
As was previously announced, we are happy to be able to offer financial assistance to students attending the conference to present their own work. Any student who has (a) had a paper accepted to either the main conference or one of the workshops (both poster and oral presentations qualify), and (b) does not already have full funding to attend the conference from some other source, is eligible to apply.
The exact amount of assistance we will be able to provide per student will be determined by the overall number of applications we receive, but we anticipate it will be several hundred euros for international students, and slightly less for domestic students.
To apply for this assistance please send an email including both your full name and the title of your accepted paper to studentsupport@evolang.org (Updated) by 10 February 2012. Please note, recipients will be asked to write a short review of the conference for publication on the evolang website.
