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SUMMARY:Turn-taking\, language processing and the evolution of language  -
  Prof. Stephen Levinson (Max Planck Institute for Psycholinguistics\, Nijm
 egen)
DTSTART:20151112T170000Z
DTEND:20151112T180000Z
UID:TALK61741@talks.cam.ac.uk
CONTACT:26863
DESCRIPTION:The diversity of languages contrasts with the universality of 
 much of the communicational infrastructure that makes language possible. A
 n important component of this infrastructure is the turn-taking system of 
 conversation\, the Stephen Levinsoncore ecological niche for language use.
  This system puts intense pressure on language processing: cross-linguisti
 cally\, we mostly respond within 200 milliseconds\, even though language e
 ncoding takes at least three times as long. It can be shown using many dif
 ferent measures (e.g. response times\, breathing\, EEG) that we beat the c
 lock by predicting what the other is going to say and starting production 
 as soon as we can. This raises interesting questions about why this system
  is the way it is\, what functional pressures it puts on language structur
 e and language diversity\, and how it originated\, which I will briefly ad
 dress.\n\nI will argue that the current system can best be understood with
 in an evolutionary context in which the turn-taking system was antecedent 
 to the complexities of modern language so that increasingly complex messag
 es became squeezed into short turns\, with the consequence of extreme comp
 ression\, inference enrichment of the Gricean kind\, a tendency for fixed 
 word orders\, amongst other things. Some support for this account can be f
 ound in ontogenetic and phylogenetic studies of turn-taking which I will b
 riefly review.
LOCATION:Queen's Building\, Emmanuel College
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