Workshop on Language Acquisition

[Jaap Murre]

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                        CALL FOR PAPERS
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     Workshop on 'Cognitive Models of Language Acquisition'
                        April 21-23, 1994
               Tilburg University, The Netherlands
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     Organizers:  Peter Broeder (Tilburg)
                  Jaap Murre (Cambridge)

     Scientific committee: Melissa Bowerman (Nijmegen)
                           Peter Coopmans (Utrecht)
                           Guus Extra (Tilburg)
                           Peter Jordens (Amsterdam)

     Sponsored by: L.O.T. (Landelijke Onderzoeksschool Taalkunde), 
                   The Dutch national Ph.D. program in Linguistics

AIM OF THE WORKSHOP
The workshop is centered around two basic questions with respect to
the nature and origins of language as "an individual phenomenon":

  (1) What constitutes knowledge of language?

  (2) How is knowledge of language acquired?

Currently, these questions are being addressed within different 
cognitive models of language acquisition which derive from strongly 
contrasting research paradigms. The paradigms start from fundamentally 
different assumptions about language (symbolic or subsymbolic) and 
the mechanisms that drive the process of language acquisition 
(inductive or deductive). 

The workshop will focus on processes of language acquisition in children 
and adults and on modelling theses processes. In particular, the 
acquisition and representation of words will be a central topic. The 
workshop aims to bring together researchers willing to discuss the merits 
and constraints of the various models based on the interdisciplinary 
approaches of linguistics, psychology, cognitive science, NLP, and AI.

PARTICIPANTS
Melissa Bowerman (Nijmegen), Harald Clahsen (Colchester), Vivian Cook 
(Colchester), Peter Coopmans (Utrecht), Walter Daelemans (Tilburg), 
Guus Extra (Tilburg), Michael Gasser (Indiana), Steven Gillis (Antwerp), 
Peter Jordens (Amsterdam), Gerard Kempen (Leiden), Brian MacWhinney 
(Pittsburg), Paul Meara (Swansea), Dennis Norris (Cambridge), Kim Plunkett 
(Oxford), Henk van Riemsdijk (Tilburg), Mike Sharwood-Smith (Utrecht), 
Paul Smolensky (Colorado), Sven Stromqvist (Goteborg).

ABSTRACTS
We invite those interested to submit a two-page abstract (for a 30
minute oral presentation) by January 15, 1994. We would prefer to 
receive the abstracts by e-mail. 

The organizers can be contacted at the following addresses:

Peter Broeder                      Jaap Murre
Department of Linguistics          Medical Research Council
University of Tilburg              Applied Psychology Unit
P.O. Box 90153                     15 Chaucer Road
5000 LE Tilburg                    Cambridge CB2 2EF
The Netherlands                    United Kingdom

tel:    +31 13-662239              tel:    +44 223 355294
fax:    +31 13-663110              fax:    +44 223 359062
e-mail: peter.broeder at kub.nl       e-mail: jaap.murre at mrc-apu.cam.ac.apu