Description of the Workshop

This workshop brings together researchers that are attempting to simulate the emergence and 
cultural evolution of communication systems with properties similar to those found in human 
natural languages. The workshop focuses in particular on experiments that use physically embodied
humanoid robots and target communication systems that exhibit grammatical structure and involve 
rich grounded conceptualizations of the world co-evolving with language. A typical example would be
an experiment in which autonomous robots evolve a spatial language to express spatial relations 
and perspective reversal or an experiment in which a case grammar emerges for expressing the role 
of participants in events, or an experiment in which a system of determiners arises to refer to 
sets of objects in the shared context of two situated communicating agents.

 

Venue

 

The AAALE workshop (pronounced as “Triple Ale”) will be held at the European Conference on 
Artificial Life (ECAL 2011), at the Cité Universitaire de Paris (France). For more information, 
see http://www.ecal11.org/ 

Call for Contributions


Contributions are solicited on all aspects of this grand challenge. They should preferably be 
based on mechanisms that have been effectively implemented and demonstrated to work on real robots.
Although aspects of perception and motor control are obviously very relevant to evolve grounded 
language, the workshop will primarily focus on issues related to conceptualization and grammar, and
to models of cultural evolution that are effective for explaining the complexity of human languages.
Experiments that simulate or relate to phenomena observed in human language evolution are particularly 
encouraged. Posters may include robot videos and demonstrations with physical robots are welcome.


 

More specifically, submissions are solicited on the following topics:

 

- Systems for conceptualization, grounded in sensori-motor experience

- Co-evolution of category formation and lexicon formation

- Computational formalisms supporting emergent grammar

- Factors driving the cultural emergence of grammatical systems

- Mechanisms for conceptual and linguistic alignment

- Origins and stabilization of language strategies

- Competition and coordination between language strategies

- Autonomous evolution of scripts for language games

- Semiotic dynamics of embodied agents

- Origins of speech systems

 

These topics should as much as possible be grounded in case studies.

 

Submission

 

Two types of submissions are solicited:

 

- Full papers get a 20’ slot for presentation. Two types of papers are possible: either papers 
that are in press for journals or edited collections, or papers which are newly written for the
workshop and may be published later elsewhere. New papers have the same page restrictions and 
should follow the same format as for the ECAL conference itself 
(see (see http://www.ecal11.org/submission/). 10 papers will be accepted for presentation.

-Posters and demonstrations. Proposals should be max. 2 pages. Demonstrations using real robots 
or video are highly encouraged. 10 posters/demonstrations will be accepted.

- Prizes for the best paper, best poster and best robot demonstration consists of a case of Triple
Ale.

 

Please send submissions to aaale@csl.sony.fr 

 

Important Dates

 

- Submission deadline: 15 May 2011

- Notification of acceptance: 1 June 2011

- Registration: Through the ECAL website (early registration possible before 10 June 2011)

- Workshop: Monday 8 August 2011

 

Organizers

 

-Luc Steels (University of Brussels (VUB AI-Lab) and Sony CSL Paris)

-Tony Belpaeme (University of Plymouth)

 

The AAALE workshop is organized as a satellite workshop of the ECAL 2011 conference in collaboration
with the Evolutionary Linguistics Association.


Contact

For further questions, please contact us at aaale@csl.sony.fr