28. augustil annab Dr Gareth Roberts (Pennsylvania Ülikool) külalisseminari eksperimentaalsemiootikast (Experimental semiotics: Social experiments on meaning and structure)

28. august, 14.15 - 16.00, Jakobi 2-306

Gareth Roberts on mõnda aega arendanud omanäolisi eksperimente, mis võimaldaks uurida keele ja teiste märgisüsteemide muutumist ja arenguprotsesse. See lähenemine on saanud tuntuks eksperimentaalsemiootika nime all (vt tema 2012 ülevaateartiklit) ning on hakanud teaduskirjanduses kanda kinnitama.

Seminari eesmärk on tutvustada seda lähenemist, eesmärke ja mõningaid tulemusi ning arutleda selle perspektiivide üle. Seminar toimub Jakobi 2-306.

Tema koduleht: http://www.drgarethroberts.com/; https://psychology.sas.upenn.edu/people/gareth-roberts
Publikatsioonid: http://www.drgarethroberts.com/publications
Labor: http://www.drgarethroberts.com/cultural-evolution-of-language-lab

Seminar toimub inglise keeles.

Kõik huvilised oodatud!

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On August 28, 14.15-16.00 Dr Gareth Roberts (Pennsylvania University) will give a guest seminar on experimental semiotics (Experimental semiotics: Social experiments on meaning and structure).

Gareth Roberts has for a while been developing innovative experiments that would allow the evolution and change of language and other sign systems to be studied. This approach has come to be known as experimental semiotics (see his 2012 review article) and has come to gather a growing literature.

The aim of the seminar is to introduce the approach and some of its results and to discuss its perspectives. The seminar will take place in Jakobi 2-306.

His homepage: http://www.drgarethroberts.com/; https://psychology.sas.upenn.edu/people/gareth-roberts
Publications: http://www.drgarethroberts.com/publications
Lab: http://www.drgarethroberts.com/cultural-evolution-of-language-lab

All welcome!

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Abstract:

Experimental semiotics: Social experiments on meaning and structure

Conducting experiments on communication is hard, but to do so is important if we want to genuinely test hypotheses about how it works, how humans convey meaning, and where linguistic structure comes from. One big stumbling block in answering these questions is that human participants come to the lab with full fledged languages already, which have evolved over millennia to have complex structure and to convey complex meanings. An experimental approach has been developed over the last couple of decades that helps deal with this. By stripping away some of what the participants bring to the lab, while leaving other biases intact, this approach allows us to control more factors and answer more questions than is often assumed possible. Here I present this approach with examples from my own work

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Gareth Roberts is an assistant professor in Linguistics at the University of Pennsylvania, US. In his research, he has been interested in cultural evolution of language - how and why languages came to be the way they are and how this might connect to other cultural or sign systems. Practically, he applies innovative experimental methods to study the use and development of linguistic and sign systems in the lab. While his background is in linguistics, he is very open to working with non-linguists to study also non-linguistic phenomena.