5th July/mis Gorffennaf 2023: Kateryna Krykoniuk

The mystery of language evolution through the lens of experimental semiotics: What lies within our grasp? 

Wednesday 5th July/mis Gorffennaf 2023: Kateryna Krykoniuk, Cardiff University

1pm in Room 3.58 of the John Percival Building on Colum Drive [Note the change of room from our usual venue]. or online via Zoom.

In this talk, I will present our latest findings from the AHRC-funded project of ‘Causal approaches to investigating language evolution’ (PI: Dr Seán Roberts). The primary goal of this project is to develop tools that shed light on the evolution of language, and it centres on the pivotal research question of what the social, economic and ecological conditions for the evolution of complex communication systems are. I will begin by providing an overview of the project, followed by a detailed exploration of experimental case studies conducted within the virtual world of Minecraft. Drawing upon the framework of experimental semiotics (e.g., Galantucci & Garrod, 2011), these carefully designed experiments aim to recreate crucial stages in language evolution within a controlled laboratory environment. Our approach leverages a causal methodology (e.g., Pearl 1991) and the Causal Hypotheses in Evolutionary Linguistics Database (CHIELD, Roberts, 2018), providing a novel model to address seemingly intractable questions across various fields. Specifically, I’ll present a multimodal analysis of participants’ interaction from a set of experiments where human participants collaborated in building a house within a 3D virtual world in Minecraft. Participants were restricted from using speech but were equipped with other tools to construct a simple symbolic communication system: they could use their virtual avatar to point, and they could also knock on the table. The insights gleaned from this analysis have led to a new hypothesis regarding the emergence of symbolic systems (Irvine & Roberts, 2016).

This seminar will be hybrid although Kateryna will be present and we encourage in-person attendance in Room 3.58 of the John Percival Building [Note the change of room from our usual venue]. To join online click here.