Summer Course on Learnability and Language Variation in San Sebastian

Cedric Boeckx and Aritz Irurtzun (CNRS-IKER, and external collaborator of the Barcelona Biolinguistics Initiative) are delighted to announce a summer course on learnability and language variation in San Sebastian, to take place at the palace of Miramar, on June 25-26, 2012. (Some readers of this blog may remember recent biolinguistics-related events hosted in Miramar, such as the Basque encounter with Noam Chomsky in 2006 or the 2010 meeting revolving around Bever's seminal 1970 paper).

In addition to the two organizers, presenters/teachers will include: Kenny Smith (Edinburgh), Judit Gervain (Paris), Guillermo Lorenzo (Oviedo), and Jennifer Culbertson (Rochester).

Learnability used to be at the forefront of research in generative grammar in the early 1980s, but we feel that after two decades in the background, learnability ought to make a come back, and generative grammarians ought to take advantage of findings in other linguistic traditions to rethink "Plato's problem" in a broader biolinguistic context.

To encourage students to participate, we will offer them the possibility of making a poster presentation on any aspect of learnability and language variation that they are working on. Details about this poster session will be posted in the near future. 

We look forward to seeing you there.

welcome Dr Txuss Martin

We are delighted to announce that freshly graduated Txuss Martin (NYU, PhD, 2012) will join our Biolinguistics Initiative here in Barcelona. Txuss was a major driving force behind the original Grup de Biolingüística at the Universitat de Barcelona before he moved to NYU, and, from a distance, has played a significant role in the establishment of our initiative. 

Course on Biolinguistics, Spring 2012

This Spring, Joana Rosselló will offer a course on Biolinguistics at the Universitat de Barcelona, beginning on February 6 (Mondays/Wednesday 8.30-10)

Cedric Boeckx Interview

Transcript of an interview conducted at the University of Porto (Fall 2011), where Biolinguistics Initiative Barcelona member Cedric Boeckx talks about "the right place for linguistics" with Pedro Martins and João Veloso.

Cycle of lectures - The biolinguistic re-turn

The members of Biolinguistics Initiative Barcelona intend to build on the foundations laid a few years ago by the Grup de Biolingüística, who among other things organized Evolang 7 and published "The biolinguistic turn" in 2006.
To symbolize this connection we have decided to organize a cycle of lectures ("the biolinguistic re-turn") in the Spring of 2012 featuring some of the contributors to the "Biolinguistic Turn". Speakers will include: Sergio Balari, Guillermo Lorenzo, Txuss Martin, Joana Rossello, Victor Acedo, Jordi Fortuny, and Antonio Benitez-Burraco.
Lectures by Cedric Boeckx, Raquel Santiago and Jordi Morata are also planned.
(Exact dates will be announced in future posts.)