Dear members of the ILCB community,

We hunt for treasures in the data… but also in the streets of Marseille! 

This year, Elin Runnqvist and the PhD program team—Etienne Thoret and Leonardo Lancia—organized a treasure hunt for the annual welcoming day of the ILCB docs and postdocs, around 30 students. The same team is organizing various lunch talks throughout the academic year. These events are open to all members of the ILCB, providing a great opportunity for scientific and informal exchanges. 

I would like to thank all ILCB members who participated at the annual conference of the Society for the Neurobiology of Language (SNL), with special thanks to Cheryl Frenck-Mestre and Xavier Alario, the local organizers. The conference was a great success with over 800 attendees from 26 countries. The ILCB was well represented through a symposium on the “Origin and function of hemispheric asymmetry for language: Insights from neuroscience, animal models and clinical practice.” 

We finally managed to hire a new operation coordinator to replace Sabrina Rodrigues and Marien Gouyon. Her contract will start on December 1st and her name is Lilia Mena. We will present her in the next newsletter. Please reserve her a warm welcome.

Hope to see you at our next event: the workshop on prosody and dialogue organized around the habilitation defense of Cristel Portes (see below).

Best wishes,

Johannes

"a specific focus on analogy (similar features and function but not shared ancestry) and homology (shared ancestry) [...reveals...] that combinatorial features of animal communication are analogous but not homologous to natural language. Homologies are found instead in cognitive capacities of attention manipulation which are enriched in humans, making possible many distinctive forms of communication, including language use."

Thom Scott-Phillips and Christophe Heintz. 2023.

“Animal Communication in Linguistic and Cognitive Perspective.”

Annual Review of Linguistics 9 (1): 93–111.

On Friday, December 1st,

Cristel PORTES (LPL, Aix-Marseille Université & CNRS) will defend her Habilitation memoir entitled 

From the Prosody of Discourse to Intonational Meaning in Dialogue(s)

Along with this defence, a scientific workshop is organized with the following preliminary program

Fri. Dec. 1st, 2023 @ LPL (Aix-en-Provence)

10h00 Brechtje Post (University of Cambridge, England)

11h30 Stefan Baumann (University of Cologne, Germany) 

12h15 Lunch

14h00 Soutenance HDR, Cristel Portes (LPL, Aix-Marseille Université & CNRS)

17h00 Social hour

December 4th to 6th (Mon.-Wed.) 2023

at Campus-Saint-Charles.

Elin Runnqvist (LPL) will present her research "UNE COPIE DU MONDE DANS NOTRE TÊTE !" at the next NeuroStories event, organized by the NeuroMarseille Institute.

NeuroStories is a series of 15 minutes "stand-up" presentations on the cerveau. (The event is in French.) Five speakers will provide complementary views on how the brain adapts to its environment. 

January 25th at 7 PM -- Amphithéatre Noailles, 63 La Canebière, 13001 Marseille