Inferring Language History and Pre-History

A Santa Fe Institute Working Group

Thursday July 12 and Friday July 13, 2007

Thursday July 12: Focus on Linguistic Data and Databases

2:00 - 2:15 PM Welcome and Logistical Details (Chris Wood and Wayne Cote, SFI)

2:15 - 3:15 PM Documenting Endangered Languages (Joan Maling, NSF)

3:15 - 3:30 PM Break

3:30 - 4:30 PM Overview of the EHL Database and Etymological Dictionaries (George Starostin, RSU)

4:30 - 6:00 PM Discussion

7:00 PM Dinner at Santacafe

8:30 - 9:00 AM Breakfast

9:00 - 10:00 AM Language as a Complex System: Implications for Inferring Distant Relationships (David Lightfoot, NSF)

10:00 - 11:00 AM Applying the Comparative Method to Distant Relationships (George Starostin, RSU)

11:00 - 11:15 AM Break

11:15 - 12:15 PM Constraints on Inferring Linguistic Prehistory (Lyle Campbell, Utah)

12:15 - 1:15 PM Working Lunch: Title TBA (Bonny Sands, NAU)

1:15 - 2:15 PM Origin and Evolution of Language and Languages (Merritt Ruhlen, Stanford)

2:15 - 3:15 PM "Bottlenecks" in Linguistic Prehistory (Murray Gell-Mann, SFI)

3:15 - 3:30 PM Break

3:30 - 5:30 PM Discussion

7:00 PM Dinner at Pink Adobe

Tanmoy Bhattacharya, Santa Fe Institute, tanmoy@santafe.edu

Lyle Campbell, University of Utah, lyle.campbell@linguistics.utah.edu

Doug Ewrin, Smithsonian Institution and Santa Fe Institute, ERWIND@si.edu

Murray Gell-Mann, Santa Fe Institute, mgm@santafe.edu

David Lightfoot, National Science Foundation, dlightfo@nsf.gov

Joan Maling, National Science Foundation, jmaling@nsf.gov

Ilia Peiros, ilia@santafe.edu

Merritt Ruhlen, Stanford University, ruhlen@stanfordalumni.org

Bonny Sands, Northern Arizona University, sands@lowell.edu

George Starostin, Russian State University, gstarst@yandex.ru

Eric Smith, Santa Fe Institute, desmith@santafe.edu

Geoffrey B. West, Santa Fe Institute, gbw@santafe.edu

C. C. Wood, Santa Fe Institute, ccwood@santafe.edu