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CSLI Calendar, Wednesday, 21 November 2007, vol. 23:12
CSLI CALENDAR OF PUBLIC EVENTS
______________________________________________________________________
21 NOVEMBER 2007 Stanford Vol. 23, No. 12
______________________________________________________________________
A weekly publication of the
Center for the Study of Language and Information (CSLI)
a subdivision of H-STAR, http://hstar.stanford.edu/
Stanford University, Cordura Hall, Stanford, CA 94305-4101
http://www-csli.stanford.edu/
____________
ACTIVITIES FROM 20 NOVEMBER 2007 TO 30 NOVEMBER 2007
TUESDAY, 20 NOVEMBER 2007
6:00pm MIT/Stanford Venture Lab [20-Nov-07]
Bishop Auditorium, Graduate School of Business
"Web 3.0: New Opportunities on the Semantic Web"
panel discussion
http://www.vlab.org
Information below
6:30pm IEEE SCV Communications [20-Nov-07]
505 Van Ness Ave (San Francisco)
"Universal Access to Human Knowledge:
Public Access to Digital Materials"
Brewster Kahle
Director and Founder, Internet Archive
http://www.e-grid.net/calendar.html
(rsvp required)
WEDNESDAY, 21 NOVEMBER 2007
7:30pm IEEE SCV Engineering in Medicine and Biology [21-Nov-07]
Clark Center Auditorium
"Technologies and Applications of Simulation in Healthcare &
Tour of Simulation Center at Stanford"
David M. Gaba
Stanford
http://www.ewh.ieee.org/r6/scv/embs/pages/upcoming.html
Information below
THURSDAY, 22 NOVEMBER 2007 - Thanksgiving Holiday
Andrew Huxley's 90th birthday
FRIDAY, 23 NOVEMBER 2007 - Thanksgiving Holiday
MONDAY, 26 NOVEMBER 2007
12 noon Work, Technology and Organization Colloquium [26-Nov-07]
Terman 453
"Neuroeconomics: From Synapse to Society"
Caitlin Zaloom
Social and Cultural Analysis, New York University
http://www.stanford.edu/group/WTO/cgi-bin/colloquia.php
12 noon UC Berkeley HWNI Talk [26-Nov-07]
5101 Tolman Hall (Berkeley)
"Spatio-temporal Dynamics of Component Operations in Memory:
A multi-methodological approach"
Brian Miller
Thesis Seminar, D'Esposito Lab
http://neuroscience.berkeley.edu/events/
3:15pm Stanford Phonology Workshop [26-Nov-07]
Stanford Humanities Center
"Timing Constraints within Gestures: Toda sibilants and
Tibeto-Burman Voiceless Nasals"
Peri Bhaskararao
ILCAA, Tokyo University of Foreign Studies
http://www-linguistics.stanford.edu/pinterest/
Abstract below
3:30pm Stanford Open Source Lab [26-Nov-07]
Wallenberg Hall Learning theater (Bldg. 160)
"Founding meeting"
http://opensource.stanford.edu/
(restricted to Stanford affiliates)
Information below
3:45pm Social Lab [26-Nov-07]
Bldg. 160:326
"The Future of Psychology"
Claude Steele
Stanford
http://www-psych.stanford.edu/events_social.html
4:00pm UC Berkeley Working Group in the Philosophy of Mind [26-Nov-07]
5101 Tolman Hall (Berkeley)
"I Only Have Eyes for You: Joint Attention and Cooperative Activity"
Mike Martin
Philosophy, UCL
http://www.homepages.ucl.ac.uk/~uctymfm/
Recommended background reading: Chapters by Call and
Tomasello, by Campbell and by Peacocke in: N. Eilan, C. Hoerl,
T. McCormack & J. Roessler (eds.), Joint Attention,
Communication, and Other Minds: issues in philosophy and psychology.
http://neurophilosophy.berkeley.edu
4:00pm UC Berkeley HWNI Talk [26-Nov-07]
5101 Tolman Hall (Berkeley)
"How Music Evokes Sadness"
David Huron
Ohio State University
http://neuroscience.berkeley.edu/events/
TUESDAY, 27 NOVEMBER 2007
12 noon Berkeley Redwood Seminar [27-Nov-07]
508-20 Evans Hall (Berkeley)
"How are error derivatives represented in the brain"
Geoff Hinton
Computer Science, University of Toronto
http://redwood.berkeley.edu/seminars.php
Abstract below
4:15pm Mathematical Logic Seminar [27-Nov-07]
Bldg. 420:048
"Clausal Logic over Scott Domains with an application to
Feature Constraint Systems"
Bill Rounds
Michigan, Stanford
http://www-logic.stanford.edu/
Abstract below
4:30pm Stanford Security Seminar [27-Nov-07]
Gates 4B center area (opposite 490)
"Distributed Knowledge Authorization Language"
Yuri Gurevich
Microsoft Research
http://theory.stanford.edu/seclab/sem.html
Abstract below
WEDNESDAY, 28 NOVEMBER 2007
12 noon UC Berkeley IPSR colloquium [28-Nov-07]
5101 Tolman Hall (Berkeley)
"Wired for Good"
Dacher Keltner
UC Berkeley
http://ls.berkeley.edu/dept/ipsr/colloquia.html
12:15pm Psychology Developmental Brownbags [28-Nov-07]
Jordan Hall 420:102
Title to be announced
Anne Fernald
Stanford University
http://www-psych.stanford.edu/events_developmental.html
3:45pm Psychology Department Colloquium [28-Nov-07]
Jordan Hall 420:041
Title to be announced
Alvaro Pascual-Leone
Harvard University
http://www-psych.stanford.edu/events_colloquium.html
THURSDAY, 29 NOVEMBER 2007
10:00am Academic Freedom and the Ethics of Research [29-Nov-07]
Tresidder, Oak West
"The Structure of Academic Freedom"
Robert Post
Yale Law School
http://ethicsinsociety.stanford.edu/lectures.html
11:00am Academic Freedom and the Ethics of Research [29-Nov-07]
Tresidder, Oak West
"Academic Freedom After 9/11"
John Etchemendy, Provost at Stanford
Stephen Monismith, Stanford, Civil and Environmental Engineering
http://ethicsinsociety.stanford.edu/lectures.html
12 noon CSLI CogLunch [29-Nov-07]
Cordura Hall 100
"Meaningful Talk"
Yossi Feinberg
GSB, Stanford
http://www-csli.stanford.edu/events/Coglunch/
Abstract below
1:30pm Academic Freedom and the Ethics of Research [29-Nov-07]
Tresidder, Oak West
"Academic Freedom and Commerce"
Drummond Rennie, UCSF, Health Policy / JAMA, Deputy Editor
Joseph Bankman, Stanford Law School
http://ethicsinsociety.stanford.edu/lectures.html
4:00pm PARC Forum [29-Nov-07]
George Pake Auditorium at PARC
Title to be announced
Garrett Camp
Stumble Upon
http://www.parc.com/forum/
http://www.parc.com/forum/
4:15pm SSP10: Symbolic Systems Forum [29-Nov-07]
Bldg. 380:380C (Math Corner)
"How Science Thinks:
The Science and Engineering of Science and Engineering"
Jeff Shrager
Symbolic Systems
http://symsys.stanford.edu/ssp_events
Abstract below
4:15pm Fundamental Themes in Neuroscience Seminar [29-Nov-07]
Munzer Auditorium, Beckman
"From synapse to regeneration"
Yishi Jin
Biological Sciences, Howard Hughes Medical Institute
http://www.biology.ucsd.edu/labs/yishijin/
http://nis-seminars.stanford.edu/
FRIDAY, 30 NOVEMBER 2007
12:30pm CS547: Human-Computer Interaction Seminar [30-Nov-07]
Gates B01
"Context Aware Computing:
Understanding and Responding to Human Intention"
Ted Selker
MIT Media Lab
http://web.media.mit.edu/~selker/
http://hci.stanford.edu/cs547/
Abstract below
12:30pm UC Berkeley HWNI Talk [30-Nov-07]
101 LSA (Berkeley)
"Neural mechanisms of action learning: From intent to habit"
Rui Costa
NIH
http://neuroscience.berkeley.edu/events/
3:00pm Berkeley Information Access Seminar [30-Nov-07]
107 South Hall (Berkeley)
"Terminology Mapping for Distributed Search"
Vivien Petras
GESIS-IZ, Bonn, Germany
"Conceptual Schemas for Events: Final Progress Report"
Ryan Shaw
http://courses.ischool.berkeley.edu/i296a-1/f07/schedule.html
Abstract below
3:30pm Psychology/Linguistics/Philosophy Colloquium [30-Nov-07]
Jordan Hall 420:041
"Assessing the relationship between Piraha, language,
cognition, and culture: What is at stake and how to proceed"
Ted Gibson
MIT
http://tedlab.mit.edu/
http://www-psych.stanford.edu/events_cognitive.html
Abstract below
____________
Stanford Blood Center: Shortage of O- and B-. For an appointment:
http://bloodcenter.stanford.edu/ or call 650-723-7831. It only takes
an hour of your time and you get free cookies.
____________
NOTES
Stanford has no official classes this week (November 19-30) though the
university is open Monday through Wednesday. I'm taking Wednesday off
so the calendar is going out Tuesday.
The Stanford provost's annual reminder on copyright can be found at
http://library.stanford.edu/libraries_collections/copyright_reminders
It is important that Stanford people be familiar with the contents;
they do vary from year to year. Learn if and when you can use that
nifty political cartoon in a classroom or on your web page. Also
covers concerns which academics should have about the copyright on
their own works (e.g., do you really want the publisher to own the
full copyright?).
____________
LOST
Statues of Benjamin Franklin and Johannes Gutenberg are missing from
the front of the Stanford main quad. Last seen about 1950 when work
was being done on the quad; the university is looking for them so as
to complete the restoration work being done now. Anyone with
information, please contact Stanford.
See http://www.stanfordalumni.org/news/magazine/2007/novdec/red/wdyka.html
for more information.
____________
MIT/STANFORD VENTURE LAB
on Tuesday, 20 November 2007, 6:00pm
Bishop Auditorium, Graduate School of Business
http://www.vlab.org
"Web 3.0: New Opportunities on the Semantic Web"
panel discussion
We are well into the current era of the Web, commonly referred to as
Web 2.0.
What lies on the horizon? Will Web 3.0 usher in the long awaited
vision of the semantic web, as proposed by "Father of the Web" Tim
Berners-Lee more than ten years ago?
Join us for a lively panel session where some of the best emerging
companies in the semantic web space present their different approaches
to realizing the vision. The panel will address questions such as: How
can we best implement the vision of the semantic web? What will we do
with the web once it is structured with semantic information? What new
applications will appear? Where is the consumer value and how should
it be marketed? What new businesses can be built on top of the
semantic web that are not possible today? Will the semantic web
ultimately bring about a new intelligence that surpasses that of
humanity, sparking a new era of non-biological evolution?
Moderator:
Paul Saffo, Technology Forecaster and Consulting Professor, Stanford
Panelists:
Robert Cook, Co-founder and Executive VP of Product Development, Metaweb
Nova Spivack , CEO and Founder, Radar Networks
Alex Iskold , CEO and Founder, Adaptive Blue
Paul Kedrosky , Venture Partner, Ventures West
Registration and fee.
Regular Stanford Student (but reception costs $15)
early $35 free
after November 19 $40 free
____________
IEEE SCV ENGINEERING IN MEDICINE AND BIOLOGY
on Wednesday, 21 November 2007, 7:30pm
Clark Center Auditorium
http://www.ewh.ieee.org/r6/scv/embs/pages/upcoming.html
"Technologies and Applications of Simulation in Healthcare &
Tour of Simulation Center at Stanford"
David M. Gaba
Stanford
The last decade has seen explosive growth of technologies and
applications of simulation in healthcare. This growth was based on a
number of prior, often independent, developments of device and
curricula. There is now a wide diversity of simulation methodologies
ranging from low tech ones (verbal simulation, role-playing, using
food products -- such as beef hearts -- for practice) to higher tech
ones (part-task trainers, computerized mannequins) to truly high-tech
ones (virtual reality). These have been linked to an equally wide
diversity of applications. In fact the scope of simulation in
healthcare can be described according to (at least) 11 dimensions.
This talk will provide an overview of the modalities and applications
of simulation. There will be a brief review of some of the history,
especially that of my own laboratory's pioneering developments dating
back to 1986. Organizational aspects of the diffusion of these
technologies and applications will be discussed, including why
healthcare is different from the analogous industries that have been
used as models of simulation (aviation, nuclear power, spaceflight,
military).
There will also be a detailed tour of the new Goodman Simulation
Center (GSC) at Stanford. This center is the newest of 3 dedicated
simulation centers at Stanford and its associated hospitals. Stanford
is one of the world leaders of all varieties of simulation in
healthcare, and the GSC has many state-of-the-art (or better)
characteristics. It is also the pathfinder for a 28,000 square foot
Immersive Learning Center that will occupy the entire basement of the
new medical education building -- the Learning and Knowledge Center --
currently in the final stages of design for construction and opening
by spring 2010.
About the Speaker: David M. Gaba, M.D. is Associate Dean for Immersive
and Simulation-based Learning and Professor of Anesthesia (with
tenure) at Stanford University School of Medicine. He is also Director
of the Patient Safety Culture Institute and the Patient Simulation
Center of Innovation at Veterans Affairs Palo Alto Health Care System
where he is a Staff Anesthesiologist. Over the last 22 years
Dr. Gaba's laboratory has worked extensively on human performance and
patient safety issues. This laboratory is a pioneer in applying
organizational safety theory to health care - including both Normal
Accidents theory and High Reliability Organization theory. Dr. Gaba
and his team is the inventor of the modern full-body patient simulator
and is responsible for introducing Crew Resource Management training
from aviation to healthcare, first in anesthesia and then to many
other healthcare domains. He has been the principal investigator on
grants from a wide variety of funders, and is currently the PI on
projects concerning safety culture in hospitals and on applying
simulation to address safety culture in diverse types of hospitals
ranging from rural critical access hospitals to large urban academic
centers. Many of Dr. Gaba's fellows, faculty collaborators, and protgs
have gone on to leadership positions on human performance in
healthcare, organizational safety, and simulation in healthcare
throughout the world.
____________
STANFORD PHONOLOGY WORKSHOP
on Monday, 26 November 2007, 3:15pm
Stanford Humanities Center
http://www-linguistics.stanford.edu/pinterest/
"Timing Constraints within Gestures:
Toda sibilants and Tibeto-Burman Voiceless Nasals"
Peri Bhaskararao
ILCAA, Tokyo University of Foreign Studies
The phonetic structures of a language often involve articulatory
gestures in which the components have tightly constrained timing
relations. For example, aspirated stops require precise timing of the
gesture for voicing in relation to the movements of the articulators
whereas 'pre-aspiration' (as in Icelandic) might not have such a rigid
constraint. Affricates involve timing constraints within the movements
of a single articulator that forms first a stop stricture leading into
a fricative stricture. Timing sequences of opening of velic stricture
vs. oral stricture in Tibeto-Burman languages such as Mizo, Khonoma
Angami, Burmese might differ in minute degrees. This talk will present
constraints of such kinds and also illustrate a type of
'tapped-affricate' of Toda that we believe has not been observed
before.
____________
STANFORD OPEN SOURCE LAB
on Monday, 26 November 2007, 3:30pm
Wallenberg Hall Learning theater (Bldg. 160)
http://opensource.stanford.edu/
(restricted to Stanford affiliates)
"Founding meeting"
We are a group of people who believes that open licenses matter. We
think that whether you use or create software or publish papers you
should have the option to employ open licenses. We think that an open
source lab with participation of students, staff and faculty from as
wide a range of disciplines as possible would be a great idea. These
are early days and all the details have yet to be worked out, so this
is your chance to be a part of creating something potentially
important.
You are invited to join us for the /Stanford Open Source Lab/ founding
meeting:
Where: The learning theater on the ground floor of Wallenberg Hall
When: Monday, November 26th at 3:30 pm.
We have already put an early framework in place and you are most
welcome to participate:
*We have a very new mailing list
<https://mailman.stanford.edu/mailman/listinfo/opensource> and
our archives <https://mailman.stanford.edu/pipermail/opensource/> are
open.
*We have a wiki up at: http://opensource.stanford.edu/ (you should
be automatically logged in as you via Webauth if you want to jump
right in and contribute.). Should you be unable to attend our
meeting then you will find the minutes here.
Any questions about the meeting can be directed to Henrik Bennetsen -
hbe .. stanford.edu
____________
BERKELEY REDWOOD SEMINAR
on Tuesday, 27 November 2007, 12 noon
508-20 Evans Hall (Berkeley)
http://redwood.berkeley.edu/seminars.php
"How are error derivatives represented in the brain"
Geoff Hinton
Computer Science, University of Toronto
Neurons need to represent both the presence of a feature in the
sensory input and the derivative of an error function with respect to
the neural activity. I will describe a simple way in which they can
represent both of these very different quantities at the same time and
show that this representational scheme would make it easy for real
neurons to back propagate error derivatives so that higher level
feature detectors can fine-tune the receptive fields of lower level
ones.
____________
MATHEMATICAL LOGIC SEMINAR
on Tuesday, 27 November 2007, 4:15pm
Bldg. 420:048
http://www-logic.stanford.edu/
"Clausal Logic over Scott Domains with an application to
Feature Constraint Systems"
Bill Rounds
Michigan, Stanford
Domain theory was introduced by Scott around 1971, originally to
provide denotational models of the untyped lambda-calculus. Since then
many connections between domains and logic have been established.
I'll review some work of Zhang and myself, providing a
domain-theoretic foundation for disjunctive logic programming. This
foundation is built on clausal logic, a representation of the Smyth
powerdomain of a so-called Scott domain. We indicate the completeness
of a resolution rule for inference in such a clausal logic; we
introduce a natural declarative semantics and an equivalent
fixed-point semantics for disjunctive logic programs. At the end we
mention an application to feature constraint systems, which gives a
disjunctive logic programming semantics for constraint-based
grammatical formalisms like head-driven phrase-structure grammar.
____________
STANFORD SECURITY SEMINAR
on Tuesday, 27 November 2007, 4:30pm
Gates 4B center area (opposite 490)
http://theory.stanford.edu/seclab/sem.html
"Distributed Knowledge Authorization Language"
Yuri Gurevich
Microsoft Research
DKAL is a new expressive declarative authorization language for
distributed systems. It is designed with user-centric access control
in mind, and it features targeted communication and nested
quotations. Knowledge plays a key role in DKAL. In principle, every
principal computes "his" own knowledge. A resource manager permits the
use of the resource if he concludes, on the basis of information
available to him, that the permission should be granted. DKAL rests on
the firm foundation of existential fixed-point logic. It has not been
implemented yet.
____________
CSLI COGLUNCH
on Thursday, 29 November 2007, 12 noon - 1:00pm
Cordura Hall 100
http://www-csli.stanford.edu/events/Coglunch/
"Meaningful Talk"
Yossi Feinberg
GSB, Stanford
Recent developments in the interface of Economics and Logic yield the
promise of capturing phenomena in strategic interaction that was
previously beyond theoretical economic modeling. We consider one such
application in the case of strategic situations that players may
perceive differently. We show that the content of messages sent in
this setting carries strategic implications without resorting to prior
conventions and beyond the observations made in the literature dealing
with cheap talk communications. The content of the message becomes
strategically meaningful since it reveals perceptions. Various forms
of interaction between meaningful statements and strategic behavior
are discussed.
____________
SSP10: SYMBOLIC SYSTEMS FORUM
on Thursday, 29 November 2007, 4:15pm
Bldg. 380:380C (Math Corner)
http://symsys.stanford.edu/ssp_events
"How Science Thinks:
The Science and Engineering of Science and Engineering"
Jeff Shrager
Symbolic Systems
For over three decades cognitive scientists have been studying how
science works and how scientists think. What have we learned about
scientific cognition and about science as a human activity? How has
this informed cognitive science more generally? How has it helped us
build semi-automated discovery systems and better tools to support
scientific practice and facilitate discovery? How does this all play
with the Web 24.0 vision? (**) In this talk I'll use some of my own,
and a lot of other people's research to lead a guided tour to some
partial answers to these interesting question.
About the Speaker: Jeff Shrager is consulting associate professor of
Symbolic Systems. His work spans human and machine learning and
development, and both computational and "wet" marine biology and drug
discovery. He current leads the Health Care Initiative at CommerceNet
which is using Web 24.0 technology (**) to build Virtual
Pharmaceutical Companies to address rare and orphan diseases.
(** If Web 1.0 is the current web, Web 2.0 the social web, Web 3.0 the
semantic web, and Web 4.0 the programmable web, then Web 24.0
(1*2*3*4) is be the programmable social semantic web. I just made this
term up for this talk, but it's actually rather appropriate, as you'll
see!)
____________
CS547: HUMAN-COMPUTER INTERACTION SEMINAR
on Friday, 30 November 2007, 12:30-2:00pm
Gates B01
http://hci.stanford.edu/cs547/
"Context Aware Computing:
Understanding and Responding to Human Intention"
Ted Selker
MIT Media Lab
http://web.media.mit.edu/~selker/
This talk will demonstrate that Artificial intelligence can
competently Improve human interaction with systems and even each other
in a myriad of natural scenarios.
Humans work to understand and react to each others intentions. The
context aware computing group at the MIT Media lab has demonstrated
that across most aspects of our life, computers can do this too. The
groups demonstrations range from car to office kitchen to and even
bed. The goal is to show that human intentions can be recognized
considered and responded to appropriately by computer systems.
Understanding and acting appropriately to intentions requires more
than good sensors, it requires understanding of the value of the
input. The context aware demonstrations therefore rely completely on
models of what the system can do, what the tasks are that can be
performed and what is known about the user . These models of system
task and user form a central basis for deciding when and how to
respond in a specific situation
About the Speaker: Dr. Ted Selker is an Associate Professor at the MIT
Media Laboratory, the Director of the Context Aware Computing Lab,
co-director of the Caltech/MIT Voting Technology Project, and also of
the Counter Intelligence/ Design Intelligence special interest group
on product design of the future. His work strives to demonstrate that
people's intentions can be recognized and respected by the things we
design. His work is recognized for creating demonstrations of a world
in which people's demonstration of desires causes computers to help
them across natural and complex domains, such as kitchens, cars, email
and voting. This work uses sensors and artificial intelligence in
adaptive models of users' systems and tasks to create keyboardless
computers. Ted's work takes the form of prototype concept products
supported by cognitive science research. He particularly works to show
how this approach helps product design to bridge communication gaps
for technology and people. Ted's work is also applied to developing
and testing user experience technology and security architectures for
recording voter intentions securely and accurately. Prior to joining
MIT faculty in November 1999, Ted was an IBM fellow and directed the
User Systems Ergonomics Research lab. He has served as a consulting
professor at Stanford University, taught at Hampshire, University of
Massachusetts at Amherst and Brown Universities and worked at Xerox
PARC and Atari Research Labs.
Ted's research has contributed to products ranging from notebook
computers to operating systems. He is known for the design of the
TrackPoint in-keyboard pointing device found in many notebook
computers, as well as many other innovations at IBM. Ted's work has
resulted in numerous awards, patents, and papers and is often featured
by the press. Ted was co-recipient of the Computer Science Policy
Leader Award for Scientific American 50 in 2004 and the American
Association For People with Disabilities Thomas Paine Award for his
work on voting technology in 2006.
____________
BERKELEY INFORMATION ACCESS SEMINAR
on Friday, 30 November 2007, 3:00pm - 5:00pm
107 South Hall (Berkeley)
http://courses.ischool.berkeley.edu/i296a-1/f07/schedule.html
"Terminology Mapping for Distributed Search"
Vivien Petras
GESIS-IZ, Bonn, Germany
Between 2004-2007, the German Federal Ministry for Education and
Research funded a major terminology mapping initiative at the GESIS
Social Science Information Centre in Bonn (GESIS-IZ) with the task to
organize, create and manage 'cross-concordances' between major
controlled vocabularies (thesauri, classification systems, subject
heading lists) centred around the social sciences but quickly
extending to other subject areas. To date, 62 mappings between 25
different controlled vocabularies and almost half a million relations
were created. I will introduce the project, show some possible
applications and present results from an evaluation effort that was
targeted toward measuring the effectiveness of these mappings in
search.
"Conceptual Schemas for Events: Final Progress Report"
Ryan Shaw
no abstract
____________
PHILOSOPHY/PSYCHOLOGY/LINGUISTICS DEPARTMENT COLLOQUIUM
on Friday, 30 November 2007, 3:15pm
Jordan Hall 420:041
http://www-philosophy.stanford.edu/ce.html
"Assessing the relationship between Piraha, language, cognition, and culture:
What is at stake and how to proceed"
Ted Gibson
MIT
http://tedlab.mit.edu/
A foundational assumption of many researchers investigating the
universals of human language is that many properties of language are
independent of the cultural context and the non-linguistic cognitive
abilities of the(ir) speakers. But it's not clear that this
assumption is warranted. Everett (2005) described the case of the
Piraha, an isolated Amazonian tribe who are allegedly characterized
by very unusual linguistic and non-linguistic cognitive properties
(e.g., finite language, lack of words for numbers and colors, lack of
quantifiers). Critically, he argued that all these properties can be
accounted for by a general cultural constraint against abstraction.
The validity of these claims remains an open question. I will report
some initial results from a set of experiments I conducted in
collaboration with Mike Frank and Ev Fedorenko during a visit to a
Piraha village in January 2007 in order to test some of these claims.
____________
END MATERIAL
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