Language holds a special place in the study of the human mind because it is both unique to our species and apparent in every normally developing human. However, the study of language and the mind has been carried out largely in parallel by two distinct groups of researchers. On the one hand are linguists, who begin with detailed observations about large numbers of specific languages, and then develop theoretical models of how language in general is learned and used. On the other hand are cognitive scientists, who use a combination of experimentation to test theories about how language is implemented in the mind, along with and computational tools to develop precise formal models of the mental functioning that underlies language. Linguists and cognitive scientists focus on the same questions about language and the mind, but they bring different approaches to bear for gathering evidence and, at present, there is very little interaction between these two scholarly communities. As an initial step towards bringing together linguists and cognitive scientists working on language and mind, The University of California, San Diego will host the first joint meeting of the Conceptual Structure, Discourse, and Language Conference, and the Embodied and Situated Language Processing Workshop in October, 2010. These are two leading conferences on language and the mind, for linguists and cognitive scientists, respectively. This joint meeting will be structured to facilitate cross-disciplinary interactions, in several ways. First, the meeting will begin with a day of parallel tutorials on the methods and theoretical models used in linguistic and cognitive science approaches to the topic, respectively. These will familiarize participants with work in the neighboring discipline. Second, oral presentations will be held in a single-session format, meaning that there will only be one presentation at any given time. This means that all participants, regardless of their background, will attend the same talks. Finally, the lunch and coffee breaks will accompany large poster sessions, which will provide junior researchers with an opportunity to present their work and interact with other scholars.
This joint meeting will offer a forum for interdisciplinary communication of scientific findings, with the ultimate goal of fostering eventual collaboration among researchers studying language and the mind in different ways. The research presented at this meeting will predominantly be basic science, but the aim of developing and refining our understanding of how the human mind learns, produces, and understands language has far-reaching potential benefits. These range from computational tools that facilitate access to information for computer users in general, or for disabled and illiterate populations, to diagnosis techniques and therapeutic approaches for developmental and acquired language disorders.
With NSF support, the faculty and students of the Department of Cognitive Science at the University of California, San Diego, organized and hosted a joint meeting of two conferences. The first is the conference on Conceptual Structure, Discourse, and Language (CSDL), the biennial meeting of the North American branch of the International Cognitive Linguistics Association. We propose held CSDL jointly with Embodied and Situated Language Processing (ESLP), a relatively new conference that brings together psycholinguists, cognitive psychologists, neuroscientists, and computer scientists interested in situated and embodied aspects of language processing. The dates were September 16-19, 2010 on the UCSD campus. Eleven distinguished scholars accepted our invitations, and provided both plenary addresses, as well as tutorials that provided baseline knowledge that facilitated interdisciplinary interactions. The Intellectual Merit of this joint CSDL/ESLP conference was that, for the first time, it brought together two populations of researchers who work on closely related questions but who use very different methodologies - cognitive linguists on the one hand and psycholinguists and cognitive psychologists studying embodied and situated language processing on the other. In addition to the invited speakers, who are among the most productive and influential researchers in their respective fields, we had 29 oral presentations and 75 poster presentations, chosen through a competitive review process from 130 submitted abstracts. Broader Impact occurred at several levels: First, we brought together two conferences from neighboring disciplines, creating a forum for interdisciplinary interaction. Second, there was a training component to the joint meeting–we held a pair of day-long tutorials in which cognitive linguists were introduced to experimental methods, and experimentalists were exposed to cognitive linguistics. Third, these initiatives are having substantial impact on the next generation of scholars; we increased student participation through merit- and need-based student travel subsidies, enabling 25 graduate students to present their research or participate in the tutorials. In service of this goal, we also included three poster sessions, which increased graduate student participation opportunities. In addition, the conference had a major impact on the infrastructure of linguistics scholarship at the University of California, San Diego, providing our students with numerous intellectual and professional opportunities. The two co-organizers (Benjamin Bergen and Pia Knoeferle) worked directly with one Graduate Student Assistant in coordinating all aspects of the organization and running of this four-day conference. The Graduate Assistant recruited students (both graduate and undergraduate) in the Cognitive Science department and organized six committees, each with specific and manageable duties. They also supervised each committee and liaised with the co-organizers in all aspects of the conference. The faculty co-organizers provided specific assistance and support, overseeing the entire year-long project, and took on primary duties in areas that require expert knowledge, such as the reviewing of abstracts. The funding was used for the following items: one two-quarter, half-time (ten hours per week) Graduate Student Assistantship; twenty-five Graduate Student Travel Fellowships; registration fee remissions for those students; and local travel expenses for them.
