Description and aim

We have invited four international speakers to talk about their expertise in studying language diversity at the level of individuals, languages, and/or species, namely:

• Constance Scharff (Freie Universität, Berlin)
  Title: "Songbirds and other critters as model organism for speech and language"
• Franck Ramus (CNRS, Paris)
  Title: "Neuroanatomical and language variation at the individual level"
• Friederike Luepke (University of London)
  Title: "The necessity of small differences. Multilingualism as a social strategy in a shared cultural space"
• Jonathan Peelle (Washington University in St. Louis, Missouri, USA)
  Title: "Individual differences in neural responses to diverse speech signals"

In addition, four ‘local’ speakers will represent the research that is taking place within our own PI groups. In this way, we hope to foster interaction between ‘familiar’ and ‘unfamiliar’ research:

• Pralle Kriengwatana (Leiden University)
  Title: "Resolving speaker variability in speech: a comparison of humans and songbirds"
• Clyde Francks (MPI)
  Title: "Genomics and language"
• Mark Dingemanse (MPI)
  Title: "Conversation across cultures: Unity and diversity in systems of language use"
• Hans Rutger Bosker (MPI)
  Title: "Diversity in how listeners cope with variation in speech"

In order to streamline the presentations and discussions, each speaker will be asked to present their view on the following three topics:

• To what extent is it possible to establish links between the different levels of language diversity? In other words, how can the study of diversity at one level inform the study of diversity at another level?
• What new techniques are available or required to study diversity at these three levels?
• Are there levels of diversity that are not included in this WP that should not be ignored?

Finally, two PhD students will present an overview of their projects on language diversity - starting September  2014 as part of WP5:

• Luis Miguel Rojas-Berscia (RU)
• Fabian Heim (Freie Universität, Berlin)
  
  

Contact and Location

Hans Rutger Bosker
Phone: +31-24-3521373

Evelyn Veen
Phone: +31-24-3521336

Max Planck Institute for Psycholinquistics
Wundtlaan 1; Room 163
6525 XD, Nijmegen
The Netherlands

Acknowledgements

This workshop has been made possible through funding from the Language in Interaction Consortium and a Radboud Internationalisation grant from Radboud University.