More language evolution lecture videos - this time from Stockholm 2011

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Magnus Enquist, evolutionary biologist from the
Centre for the Study of Cultural Evolution at Stockholm Univeristy
Earlier, I blogged about the Nijmegen Lectures by Russell Gray on language evolution. If you want even more lectures on language evolution, then why not watch the lectures from the Symposium on Language Acquisition and Language Evolution at The Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences and Stockholm University form 2011? They're all up and freely available here!

If you're keen on these things, I recommend having a look through these videos and proceedings.

I quote from the preface of the proceedings for the symposium:
The symposium was intended as an opportunity for scientists from different research areas to interact and discuss complex dynamic systems in relation to the general theme of “Language Acquisition and Language Evolution”. Complex dynamic systems are characterised by hierarchical and combinatorial structures that can be found in quite different scientific domains. From a broad perspective, there are general parallels in the way human language, biological organisms and ecological systems are organised and the symposium aimed at discussing those issues from an interdisciplinary point of view.


The symposium includes talks by:

  • Björn Lindblom (prof. Emeritus in Linguistics at Stockholm University), 
  • Stephen Freeland (Astrobiology, NASA, Hawai'i), 
  • Pierre-Yves Oudeyer (Robotics, INRIA Bordeaux), 
  • Peter MacNeilage (prof. Emeritus of Psychology, University of Texas at Austin), 
  • Jan Anward (prof in Department of Culture and Communication, Linköping Univeristy), 
  • Per Linell (prof in Department of Language and Culture, Linköping Univeristy), 
  • Peter Pagin (prof of Philosophy, Stockholm University), 
  • Magnus Enquist (prof in Centre for the Study of Cultural Evolution, Stockholm University), 
  • Patrik Hadenius (chief editor Språktidningen).


There were proceedings published based on the talks and they have been made available for free online, here. They include the following papers:


  • Francisco Lacerda: Preface
  • Björn Lindblom: The units of speech – A bio-cultural perspective
  • Peter F. NacNeilage: Particulate Speech: The Emergence of the Phoneme from Syllable Frame Structures
  • Jan Anward: On the open secret of language
  • Per Linell: Are Natural Languages Codes?
  • Peter Pagin: Compositionality, Complexity, and Evolution
  • Stephen J. Freeland and Melissa Ilardo: Language Evolution in Humans and Ancient Microbes: What can human language acquisition tell us about the origin of genetic information?
  • Pierre-Yves Oudeyer: Self-Organization: Complex Dynamical Systems in the Evolution of Speech 

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