International Workshop

Language, Music, and Cognition: Psychological and neurocognitive modeling of

action, perception, processing and learning"
University of Cologne
September 27th - 29th 2012
Local organizers:
Martine Grice <martine.grice@uni-koeln.de>
Markus Philipp <markus.philipp@uni-koeln.de>
Beatrice Primus <Primus@uni-koeln.de>
Uwe Seifert <u.seifert@uni-koeln.de>
The goal of this interdisciplinary workshop is to gain empirical and theoretical insights
into the mental processes related to human language and communication. It will offer a
forum for discussion between researchers interested in the psychological and
neurocognitive modeling of verbal and non-verbal human communication. The
workshop is supported financially by the Scientific Forum of the University of Cologne.
The workshop will include three thematic blocks.
1. Linguistic representations and neurocognitive modeling
The first section consists of a genuine linguistic topic (the interplay of syntax and
semantics) from a psycho- and neurolinguistic perspective. We want to discuss the
cognitive processing of language, sentence processing, linguistic representations and
psycholinguistic modeling. The centre of interest lies on the syntax-semantic-interface,
thematic role ambiguities and the role of agentivity to build up interpretive relations.
Additionaly we want to emphasize language acquisition, language development and
psycholinguistic insights about language disorders. Head of this group is Prof. Beatrice
Primus, department of German Language and Literature at the University of Cologne.
2. Prosody and gesture: functional and formal representations
The second section is sketched for graphemics, prosody and gesture (including sign
language), focusing, for example, on the relationship of prosody and information
structure, the interplay of phonological and orthographical representations, theories of
implicit prosody and the relationship of prosody and sign language.
Head of this group is Prof. Martine Grice, department of phonetics and phonology at the
University of Cologne.
3. Music and language in a comparative neurocognitive research paradigm
The third section of the workshop is concerned with the relationship of music and
spoken language. As well as in section two, prosody will also play an important role
here, but the focus lies on the comparative perspective of music and language,
intercultural universals and cultural specifics of music. Perception and recognition of
music and the modeling of these processes will be the dominant topics.
Head of this group is Prof. Uwe Seifert, department of Systematic Music Science at the
University of Cologne.
Talks are scheduled with 30 minutes plus 15 minutes for discussion.
Poster session: We kindly call for poster presentations. Please send abstracts (max. 500
words) until May 31th to: markus.philipp@uni-koeln.de