Preparing a paper is hard; and other difficulties

I feel a bit like this... 3 years old and lost in a maze!

I've been trying my hardest to put together a full paper to submit to the 10th International Conference on the Evolution of Language (Evolang X).  It's the perfect motivation to dive into some related research before I start my PhD this Autumn.  It forces me to read and think about my project, and I'm hoping it means I'll have a good head start on getting to grips with the material.

But - and here's a news flash - preparing a paper is really hard!

It makes me wonder about the process researchers go through when submitting a paper.  Why did they choose that topic?  How did they decide what journal to submit to?  Is it a stipulation of a research team you're a part of that you need to produce a certain amount of publications?  Or is it entirely on the onus of a researcher to decide whether they want to publish a certain aspect of their work or not?

I'm full of lovely naieve questions like this.  Hopefully I'll come to understand this strange world more as I enter into it more seriously.

But back to the difficulty of writing this paper.

I guess I started out with 'wanting to write a paper for this conference' instead of 'having a piece of research and wanting to publish it' first.  It's a sort of top down rather than bottom up approach.  Is that a weakness in my research?  Like, I sat down with a blank page and wondered what question I could address, rather than having some original research I had been working on already, which I then decided to share.  Wrong approach?  Perfectly fine?  Who knows!

The piece is really pointing out a correlation between two cognitive abilities, and bringing together the research from the one discipline and offering it as something to apply to questions we have in another.  Is that reasonable?  Useful?  Warrented?  Interesting?

I have a project proposal that I submitted for my PhD, which I am treating as a roadmap for what areas of research I should further familiarize myself with, before creating a more robust project idea that really will end up shaping something that can confidently be called a PhD project.  At the moment I'm aware it's more 'grand proposals' and less 'coherent plans' at this stage, but I really want to get to grips with what I will be addressing and how I will address it over the next three years.

And the first step I have decided is to write this paper.  It will be a small piece of research that will (hopefully) be the first contribution to the form and shape of my PhD.  Will it come together as something useful?  I hope so.

Evolang 10 in Vienna, Austria - and reflections on the last Evolang

Kyoto

February of last year was the 9^th biannual conference on the evolution of language – known affectionately as Evolang (http://kyoto.evolang.org/).  I had done some major saving and scraping to get together enough funds to go (especially since I had just had a wedding four months previously!), and dragged my new husband along with me too, promising that the evolution of language offers archaeologists PLENTY of interesting talks and networking opportunities.

I’ve been to Kyoto before, in 2006 when I went on a lone backpacking trip across Japan.  I absolutely loved the country and was so excited to return and utilise my rusty Japanese (for which I had brushed up on by taking an evening course after work twice a week, and submerged myself in language lesson podcasts!  (http://www.japanesepod101.com/).

Vienna

It was my third time attending an Evolang conference, and my first time actually presenting.  I had two posters – one written with Luke McCrohan called Sea Crossings are an Unreliable Indicator of Language Ability in Hominids.  The second I piece I presented, and on an idea I had been slowly nurturing called The First Word Was Not a Noun.  It’s a subject I would ideally like to come back to and develop - I'm just not sure how.  What I do know is that the origins of syntax remains my most curious topic in language evolution…

So my husband and I spent 6 nights 7 days in Japan, and ended up having an amazing time.  Though we never quite recovered from the jet lag, we met up with some amazing people I’ve met at past conferences, and made new friends as well.  The conference itself was fantastic, and had some great talks by geneticist Simon Fisher, biolinguist Massimo Piatelli-Palmarini, and of course the incredible Simon Kirby. Palaeolithic archaeology in general was a bit lacking (understatement!), save for a few mentions of Neanderthals here and there (many thanks to Sverker Johansson).  Unfortunately the lack of archaeology, paired with copious amounts of talks on Zebra Finches, made the conference a bit boring for my archaeologist non-linguist husband.

As the conference was now a year ago I don’t trust myself to go too in depth on any of the topics heard (in fact I’m just too lazy to retrieve my notes), but I'll try to be good when the next one rolls around - which will be in 2014 in Vienna!

http://evolangx.univie.ac.at/

Plenary speakers will include:

• Michael Arbib
• Rob Boyd
• Bill Croft
• Chris Knight and Jim Hurford
• Ann Senghas
• Joan Silk
• Kenny Smith

I hope to see you there!