Conferencia | Balthasar Bickel: Biological constraints on language evolution
| Nombre | Conferencia | Balthasar Bickel: Biological constraints on language evolution |
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| Categoría | Eventos |
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| Fecha | 25 de noviembre del 2019, de 1:30 pm a 3:00 pm |
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| Descripción | While much progress has been made in linking universal biases in linguistic structure to internal mechanisms of language use (for example in the form of frequency effects), the time is ripe for extending the explanatory scope beyond language itself. In this lecture, I will present some of our recent work that derives specific distributional biases in language from specific properties of the biological mechanisms in the human brain and speech apparatus, and ultimately from the evolutionary roots of these mechanisms.
I will focus on three case studies on biologically or neuro-biologically grounded asymmetries in the processing mechanisms of specific sound types (labiodental vs other), words classes (nouns vs verbs) and semantic roles (agents vs patients). I will discuss the implications of this work for probing the phylogeny and ontogeny of language as part of a wider interdisciplinary undertaking. |
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| Contacto | Miguel Rodríguez Mondoñedo |
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| Ubicación | Sala de grados – Facultad de Letras y Ciencias Humanas |
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