Last update: 05/09/2021

During the conference, last-minute changes to the programme will not be published on this page. Instead, please follow this link to see last-minute changes.

All times in Central Europan Summer Time. See e.g. here for a time zone converter.

Day 1

Day 2

Day 3

Day 1: Monday, 06.09.

	Session 1	Session 2	Theme session: Electronic book launch of the Oxford Handbook of Human Symbolic Evolution, edited by Nathalie Gontier, Andy Lock & Chris Sinha
9.00 – 9.10	Opening
9.10 – 10.25	Plenary: Asifa Majid Does language reflect an evolutionary trade-off between olfaction and vision?
10.25 – 11.00	Break
	Chair: Stefan Hartmann	Chair: Karim Baraghith
11.00 – 11.30	Antonio Benítez-Burraco and Ljiljana Progovac Self-domestication might have tied together (taming of) aggression with cross-modality, facilitating the evolution of languages	Aleksandra Poniewierska, Aleksandra Szczepańska, Sławomir Wacewicz, Przemysław Żywiczyński and Michael Pleyer The Representation of Language Evolution Research in Introductory Linguistics Textbooks	Nathalie Gontier, Chris Sinha & Andy Lock Introduction
11.35 – 12.05	Antonio Benítez-Burraco, David Gil, Ljiljana Progovac, Candy Cahuana and Tatiana Tatarinova Correlating declarative/procedural memory with language variation	Marco Gamba, Chiara De Gregorio, Daria Valente, Longondraza Miaretsoa, Teresa Raimondi, Olivier Friard, Valeria Torti and Cristina Giacoma Rhythm and combinations of vocal signals: insights from the ‘singing primates’	Nick J. Enfield and Jack Sidnell  Intersubjectivity is activity plus accountability
12.10 – 12.40	Yannick Becker, Olivier Coulon and Adrien Meguerditchian The Arcuate Fasciculus disentangled: Different conceptions are depicting different evolutionary trajectories	Rie Asano Evolution of cognitive control underlying language syntax and musical rhythm	Camilla Power, Ian Watts, and Chris Knight The symbolic revolution: A sexual conflict model
12.45 – 13.15	Claudio Brozzoli, Simon Thibault, Veronique Boulenger and Alice Roy Tool use and syntactic skills improve each other via shared neural patterns in the basal ganglia neurolinguistics	David Gil Simple and Relational Compositionality	Antonis Iliopoulos and Lambros Malafouris  Symbols and material signs in the debate on human origins
13.15 – 14.30	Break
	Chair: Monika Pleyer	Chair: Marcel Ruland
14.30 – 15.00	Cristina Barés Gómez and Matthieu Fontaine Mirativity and the lack of evidence	Tatiana Bortolato, Roman Wittig, Cédric Girard-Buttoz and Catherine Crockford Vocal sequences emerge slowly in chimpanzee development	Luís Tirapicos, Fabio Silva, Fernando Pimenta  Symbolism and archaeoastronomy in prehistory
15.05 – 15.35	Alejandro M. Andirkó, Juan Moriano and Cedric Boeckx Building a timeline for the evolution of language subcomponents	Catherine Crockford, Cedric Girard-Buttoz, Emiliano Zaccarella, Tatiana Bortolato, Cornelius Eichner, Alfred Anwander, Carsten Jaeger, Tobias Graessle, Pawel Fedurek, Liran Samuni, Kamilla Pleh, Roman Wittig, Nik Weiskopf, Angela Friederici The patterning and ontogeny of chimpanzee vocal sequences and brain pathways	Lana M. Ruck & Natalie T. Uomini Artifact, praxis, tool, and symbol
15.40 – 16.10	Rayn Epremian, Jonas Nölle, Christine Cuskley and Matthew Spike True story: Narrative as an adaptation for the communication of social survival information	Lola Rivoal, Leonard Samain-Aupic, Konstantina Margiotoudi, Maud Champagne-Lavau and Adrien Meguerditchian Are Baboons Able to Consider the Other’s Knowledge State When Pointing? Theory of Mind & Neuroanatomical Correlates within the Superior Temporal Sulcus	April Nowell and Amanda Cooke Culturing the Paleolithic body: Archaeological signatures of adornment and body modification
16.15 – 16.45	Sverker Johansson How many protolanguages were there?	Natalie Uomini, Larry Barham, Michal Paradysz and Georg Meyer Lateralised and bilateral brain networks for speech and stone tool-use: a neuroarchaeology study	Elisabeth V. Culley and Iain Davidson  Art, sign, and representation
16.45 – 17.15	Break
	Chair: Stefan Hartmann	Chair: Marcel Ruland
17.15 – 17.45	Elsa Addessi, Claire Farrow, Charlotte Webber, Francesca Bellagamba, Flavia Chiarotti, Jacqueline Blissett, Amy T. Galloway, Laura Shapiro, Valentina Focaroli, Melania Paoletti, Giulia Pecora, Barbara Caravale, Corinna Gasparini and Serena Gastaldi Is a baby-led weaning style related to motor and language development? Preliminary evidence from two cultures	Tim Sainburg, Anna Mai and Timothy Gentner Long-range sequential dependencies precede complex syntactic production in language acquisition
18.00 – 19.15	Plenary: Michel DeGraff Does Creole formation recapitulate the emergence of human language? Notes on the origins and evolution of linguists’ most dangerous myth
19.15 –	(Gathertown room will be open for anyone who wants to join)

Day 2: Tuesday, 07.09. ↑

	Session 1	Session 2	Theme session in memory of Bernard Bichakjian (Natalie Uomoni & Henny Hettema)
9.00 – 10.15	Plenary: Asli Özyurek Not only the past but also the future of language is likely to be multimodal
10.15 – 10.30	Break
	Chair: Michael Pleyer	Chair: Karim Baraghith
10.30 – 11.00	Austin Howard Sound Symbolism in the Turkish Tongue: Ideophone Identification or the Iconicity of a Myth?	David Leavens Proto-declaratives in the Lab and in Nature	Ad Foolen Bernard Bichakjian’s evolutionary view on language change
11.05 – 11.35	Shiri Lev-Ari, Ivet Kancheva, Louise Marston, Hannah Morris, Teah Swingler and Madina Zaynudinova ‘Big’ sounds bigger in more widely-spoken languages	Bart Geurts Normative evolutionary pragmatics	Tatiana Chernigovskaya Biology, Environment, and Culture: From Animal Communication to Human Language and Cognition
11.40 – 12.10	Konstantina Margiotoudi and Friedemann Pulvermüller Grounding sound symbolism in hand actions	Fredrik Stjernberg The use of questions in the evolution of language	Gábor Győri The evolution of language as a categorizing device
12.15 – 12.45	Greg Woodin and Marcus Perlman The iconic impetus of language: From sensorimotor simulation to the lexicon	Marek Placiński Structural alignment and cooperation	Christer Johansson Is the loss of superior visual processing linked to the emergence of language?
12.45 – 14.00	Break
	Chair: Sverker Johansson	Chair: Marcel Ruland
14.00 – 14.30	Michael Pleyer, Sławomir Wacewicz and Przemysław Żywiczyński Shared Evolutionary and Developmental Foundations of Pretence and Pantomime	Theresa Matzinger, Eva Specker, Nikolaus Ritt and W Tecumseh Fitch Aesthetic perception of prosodic patterns as a potential factor in the cultural evolution of language
14.35 – 15.05	Przemysław Żywiczyński, Marta Sibierska, Sławomir Wacewicz, Joost van de Weijer, Francesco Ferretti, Ines Adornetti, Alessandra Chiera and Valentina Deriu Between universality and conventionality: a cross-cultural study of pantomimic enactments of transitive events	Magdalena Schwarz, Theresa Matzinger and Nikolaus Ritt Linguistic markers of group affiliation increase trust as much as other biological and cultural tags
15.10 – 15.40	Marta Sibierska, Monika Boruta-Żywiczyńska, Przemysław Żywiczyński and Sławomir Wacewicz Predictors of communicative success in pantomimic re-enactments of transitive events	Madeleine McGrath, Gregory Mills and Gareth Roberts Turn-taking and the identification of humanness in a highly restricted interactive task
15.45 – 16.15	Monika Pleyer, Michael Pleyer and Sławomir Wacewicz Towards an Evolutionary and Naturalistic Approach to the Pragmatic Concept of Face	Andrew Feeney Can pragmatics account for unleashed expression?
16.15 – 16.45	Break
	Chair: Nathalie Gontier	Chair: Michael Pleyer
16.45 – 17.15	Filipe Martone How philosophy of language can contribute to understanding protolanguage	Jonas Nölle, Oliver G. B. Garrod, Chaona Chen, Meng Liu, Robin A. A. Ince, Philippe G. Schyns and Rachael E. Jack Understanding the semiotic affordances of human facial expressions using data-driven methods
17.20 – 17.50	Corina Strößner Natural concepts in conceptual spaces	Viktor Martinovic Loanpy – A Framework for Computer-aided Borrowing Detection
18.00 – 19.15	Plenary: Cailin O’Connor Evolution and Vagueness
19.15 –	Social gathering (Gathertown)

Day 3: Wednesday, 08.09. ↑

	Session 1	Session 2
9.00 – 10.15	Plenary: Albert Newen Central roots of concepts in situated social interaction and their informational organization
10.15 – 10.30	Break
	Chair: Stefan Hartmann	Chair: Marcel Ruland
10.30 – 11.00	Gregory Mills The emergence of conventions in a turn-taking task	Rabia Ergin, Limor Raviv and Simon Kirby How word order conventions emerge in the manual modality
11.05 – 11.35	Yasamin Motamedi, Lucie Wolters, Danielle Naegeli, Marieke Schouwstra and Simon Kirby Regularisation, harmony and naturalness in a silent gesture learning task	Wim Pouw & Susanne Fuchs Biomechanics as the primordial basis for the emergence of co-speech gesture
11.40 – 12.10	Julia Trzeciakowska and Elizabeth Qing Zhang The emergence of words from iterated sound imitations	Olga Vasileva, Senay Cebioglu and Tanya Broesch Co-evolution of handedness and gesture: Evidence from a non-industrial society
12.15 – 12.45	Giorgio Papitto, Angela D. Friederici and Emiliano Zaccarella A behavioral pilot study on the retrieval of hierarchical information in mental representations of action and its segregation from language	Michael Pleyer Processes of Entrenchment and Conventionalisation in the Evolution of Language
12.45 – 14.00	Break
	Chair: Corina Strößner	Chair: Jonas Nölle
14.00 – 14.30	Andres Karjus, Richard Blythe, Simon Kirby, Tianyu Wang and Kenny Smith Colexification and communicative need in lexical evolution	J. Benjamin Falandays and Paul Smaldino The Emergence of Cultural Attractors: How Informational Bottlenecks at Multiple Scales Support Collective Cognitive Alignment
14.35 – 15.05	Roland Mühlenbernd, Slawomir Wacewicz and Przemyslaw Zywiczynski The Evolution of Ambiguity in Communication Systems	Kristian Tylén, Riccardo Fusaroli, Sergio Rojo, Katrin Heimann, Nicolas Fay, Niels N. Johannsen, Feix Riede and Marlize Lombard Investigating the cultural evolution of the Blombos and Diepkloof engravings
15.10 – 15.40	Rachael Bailes, Christine Cuskley, Anton Ingason and Joel Wallenberg Linguistic planning for information uniformity is an adaptation for noise resistance	Kristian Tylén, Zahra Alinam and Cordula Vesper The cultural route to conceptualization of space
15.45 – 16.15	Aliki Papa, Mioara Cristea, Nicola McGuigan and Monica Tamariz The effect of verbal instruction vs modelling on transmission fidelity of causally (ir)relevant actions	Limor Raviv and Cedric Boeckx Complexity and Simplicity in the evolution of languages across species
16.15 – 16.45	Break
16.45 – 18.00	Plenary: Katja Liebal What primate gestures can (and cannot) tell us about language evolution
18.00	Closing of the conference, announcement of Protolang 8