Fantastic talk by @kristian_tylen and colleagues from @AarhusUni @interact_minds (& @Nicolas_Fay)
showing how to combine archaeology, cognitive science and semiotics to study the possible symbolic function of South African cave engravings over several millenia. Engravings in these areas seem to evolve into more structured forms over time, perhaps signalling gradual refinement of symbolic tools. But the function of these potential symbolic tools is not very clear.

In yet another talk @kristian_tylen presents work with and @cordulavesper on the cultural route to the conceptualisation of space #Protolang7 Concepts have traditionally been thought of as either transcendental, biological, or grounded in social interaction. The latter refers for instance, how languages make conceptual distinctions, e.g. with regard to spatial relations

Cool work on complexity and simplicity in language evolution across species by @Limor_Raviv and @cedricboeckx. They start with an interesting discrepancy between animals and humans in how social complexity shapes the complexity of their communication systems #Protolang7 An important distinction we need to make is whether we are talking about grammar or simple signal variation, and what 'simple' or 'complex' actually refers too. The mirror pattern we see might relate directly to how we distinguish these concepts.

@YaaminMoot et al from @UoE_CLE show work on regularisation, naturalness, and systematicity in silent gesture experiments. They start with the question of we get from item-based preling communication to a system via several processes #Protolang7 One way to test this is using possible biases in word order. E.g. naturalness: specific orders preferred for specific meanings, or regularity: same WO used for a specific meaning, or systematicity: same WO across all meanings. We also know that WO can be conditioned on semantics

Greg Mills asks how people coordinate when they interact with each other.
#Protolang7 Usually we use reference games to study how conventions emerge to enable this. Which usually leads to patterns and the emergence of conventions lik enew referring expressions (or signs in experimental semiotics)

Magdalena Schwarz, @thematzing & Niki Ritt ask why do we trust others? Between kin it makes sense, but what how is trust maintained in non-kin within cooperative groups? Or even with strangers?
#Protolang7 Hypotheses on this involve social bonds, reputatio, gossip and 3rd party punishment that all help maintain trust. But what about strangers?

Cool talk by @greg_woodin (w/ @MarcusPerlman @BodoWinter) colleagues on the connections between metaphor, gesture, iconicity & mental sensorimotor simulations #Protolang Iconicity, e.g. in the form of sound symbolism is pervasive in the lexicon. Iconicity can also help ground symbols via sensorimotor simulation (e.g., representing what it means for something to be a 'tree'). We also find interactions of word processing with specific brain areas

Do languages spoken by larger communities rely more on sound-symbolism? (e.g. high front vowels ~ small, back low vowels ~ large) @shirilevari et al address this Q
at #Protolang7 Larger communities have more comm problems to overcome, so if sound symbolism makes lang easier to learn and process, this should be the case. They therefore looked at words for big/small in common and less common languages and synthesized

Multimodality is the future of language! Plenary by @ozyurek_a on how multimodality should shape our ideas of language (and thus its evolution) at #Protolang7 Earlier approaches into the fundamental nature of language have ignored multimodal aspects. Ozyurek, however, argues that language is an adaptive system that has been multimodal from the get-go and adapting to any setting it is thrown into (including future technologies)

@MichelDeGraff from @MITHaiti challenging prejudice about creole languages in his plenary at #Protolang7 Lang evo literature itself says we shouldn't mix up ontogenetic and phylogenetic evidence, and YET it appears often as a given to use pidgins and creoles as windows into the past. They are often treated similar to emerging sign languages. However, the conditions are not the same.