Scope of symposium

This symposium, organized by the Distributed Language Group (DLG), aims to explore synergies and identify areas of collaboration between robotics and the language sciences. As starting point for the discussions, a perspective is proposed in which language is seen as a dynamic and distributed cognitive process.

The origins, evolution and acquisition of language and its role in human societies have long been studied by philosophers, linguists, psychologists, neuroscientists and cognitive scientists. In recent years, a distributed view of cognition and language has emerged. Control of embodied action is now seen as an emergent property of a distributed system composed of brain, body and environment.  Language ceases to be seen as a formal underlying system and, instead, becomes a heterogeneous set of culturally distributed processes. As a representation, language is seen as cultural product, perpetually open-ended and incomplete, and partly ambiguous. Language acquisition and evolution involve not only internal, but also cultural, social and affective processes.

In this context, many research questions open up: How does language transform human cognitive processes? How is language grounded in perception and action? In what ways does human phenomenology depend on linguistic experience? Can a distributed perspective on language clarify the nature of silent rehearsal (internal thought processes)? How does this relate to consciousness? How is language used to achieve joint experience? What is the embodied basis of cognition and social semiosis?

While the language sciences have, until now, focused on language in human societies, the robotics and artificial intelligence communities are becoming increasingly active in developing user-friendly robots, that is, robots that are flexible, adaptable and easy to command and instruct. These artificial agents need to cognitively interpret perception and action, accumulate and manipulate semantic information for decision-making and interact with human subjects using natural language.

There are two obvious contact areas between robotics and the language sciences. In the first, robots can be used as simulation models for empirical study of language origins, evolution and acquisition. This is an extension of the computational modeling approach to language. In the second area, current knowledge about language as a cultural product can be used to design and develop robots for practical applications.

The symposium is therefore intended for exploring the following issues:

• How can robots ground and use language for practical applications?

• How can robots be used for empirical work in the language sciences?

• How can robots acquire language when language is distributed?

• What does robotics imply for the language sciences?

• What questions do roboticists want to ask the language sciences?

• How can the language sciences contribute to the theoretical and practical study of how humans interact with robots?

• How can the language sciences evolve to address societies that include robots?

We invite papers that address these issues. To encourage interaction we welcome speakers from a wide range of disciplines and backgrounds.

Symposium format

The symposium will be a 2+ days event that gathers researchers from a wide range of backgrounds. The symposium format includes a number of Invited Speakers and a public call for papers. After the symposium, participants will be invited to submit a paper to a special issue of Connection Science on language and robots.