Workshop on Language Processing and Language Evolution: Special Session at the 2017 CUNY Conference on Human Sentence Processing

语言学领域的一个中心目标是描述人类大脑将语言形式与某种意义表征联系起来的过程-这是人类独有的过程。在当今世界，语言障碍和外语学习越来越重要，新媒体和新形式的语言使用（例如互联网）发挥着越来越大的作用，寻求赋予计算机理解人类语言的算法正在激增，对日常生活产生越来越大的影响。在心理语言学领域，最常见的方法是把语言作为给定的，并研究人类理解和产生这些语言的话语的过程。在这里，使用功能语言学，数量类型学和进化的想法，研讨会的参与者将探索相反的方法。以人类信息处理的一些知识为基础，参与者将研究语言之间的系统差异，语言内部语法结构的变化，以及语言结构的历时出现和发展。使用这种语言的进化观点，演讲者将讨论关于处理和语言结构之间关系的新假设，并对人类语言如何在说话者和随着时间的推移运作提出新的见解。这个项目是一个特别会议，语言处理和语言进化，将与第30届纽约市立大学人类句子处理年会一起举行。CUNY人类句子处理会议是北美对人类如何理解和产生语言感兴趣的科学家的首要活动。会议定期收到超过300份摘要，大约35个口头报告和150个海报。大约400名科学家（教师，博士后，研究生和本科生）作为观众和演讲者参加会议。与会者来自美国和加拿大各地，以及欧洲、澳大利亚、东亚和拉丁美洲。作为一个跨学科的论坛，会议非常成功，吸引了来自语言学，心理学，计算机科学，教育，神经科学和哲学领域的研究人员。特别会议的目的是扩大我们目前对语言处理的了解，从语言演变模式的角度更丰富地描述人类学习和使用的语言系统：这些语言系统是如何形成的。研讨会的参与者将探讨人类语言如何受到信息处理限制的影响。最终目标是创造一个更现实和更有代表性的画面，说明语言之间的多样性以及人类思维如何代表和处理这些语言。

It is a central goal of the field of linguistics to characterize the process by which the human brain links the forms of language with some representation of meaning--a process unique to humans. Understanding this process has practical value in a world where language barriers and foreign language learning are increasingly important, where new media and new forms of language use (for example, as on the Internet) play an increasingly large role, and where algorithms that seek to bestow computers with understanding of human languages are proliferating and have increasing impact on day-to-day life. Within the field of psycholinguistics, the most common approach is to take languages as given and to study the processes by which humans comprehend and produce utterances in those languages. Here, using ideas from functional linguistics, quantitative typology, and evolution, workshop participants will explore the reverse approach. Taking some knowledge of human information processing as given, participants will examine systematic differences among languages, variation among grammatical constructions within languages, and the diachronic emergence and development of language structures. Using this evolutionary view of language, presenters will discuss novel hypotheses about the relationships between processing and linguistic structure, and shed new light on how human language operates both within speakers and over time. This project is for a special conference session, Language Processing and Language Evolution, to be held in conjunction with the 30th Annual CUNY Conference on Human Sentence Processing. The CUNY Human Sentence Processing conference is the premier event in North America for scientists interested in how humans comprehend and produce language. The conference regularly receives well over 300 abstracts for roughly 35 oral presentation slots and 150 poster slots. Approximately 400 scientists (faculty, postdocs, graduate and undergraduate students) attend the conference as audience members and presenters. Conference attendees come from all over the United States and Canada, and from Europe, Australia, East Asia and Latin America. The conference has been remarkably successful as an interdisciplinary forum, drawing researchers from the fields of linguistics, psychology, computer science, education, neuroscience, and philosophy. The special session is designed to extend our current knowledge of language processing by providing a richer characterization of the linguistic systems that humans learn and use, from the perspective of models of language evolution: how these linguistic systems got to be the way they are. Workshop participants will explore how human languages have and have not been shaped by information processing constraints. The ultimate goal is to create a more realistic and representative picture of diversity among languages and of how the human mind represents and processes those languages.