Activities
14 Apr 2025Dr. Olivera Marković's talk
As part of the project "Multilevel-grounded Semantics: Language, Music, Visual Cognition", jointly implemented by the Center for Cognitive Sciences and Branch in Niš of the Serbian Academy of Sciences and Arts (No. O36-24, project coordinator: academician Aleksandar Kostić, project head: Prof. Dr. Mihailo Antović), Olivera Marković, Ph.D., research assistant in the Department of Serbian Language and Literature at the University of Niš, and member of the Center for Cognitive Sciences, gave a talk entitled "How We Understand Parodies: Toward the Parodic Mechanisms of (De)Stabilization". She focused on semantic tension as central to parody, where the audience should simultaneously recognize both the prototype (which is being imitated) and the prototype's negation (conceptual reversal). Through a series of examples, she suggested that a good way to approach the problem is to use the conceptual blending theory and its extended, multilevel-grounding model. A fruitful question-and-answer session ensued.
17-20 Mar 2025
Prof. Antović's talks in Bulgaria
In March, Prof. Mihailo Antović, head of the Center for Cognitive Sciences, was a keynote speaker at the workshop "Understanding vs. Knowledge in Science, Fiction and Art", organized by the Department of Philosophy at Sofia University in cooperation with the Bulgarian Academy of Sciences. The event gathered around 30 presenters from Europe and the USA. Two keynotes were Prof. Mitch Greene (University of Connecticut), who talked about language understanding by AI models, and Prof. Antović, who provided an overview of his work on cross-modal correspondences in music and language, in an effort to introduce his new "meta-schema" concept in cognitive linguistics. In addition, Prof. Antović gave a talk on his multilevel grounding model and the way it operates across cognitive domains (language, music, vision) in the Department of Cognitive Science and Psychology at the New Bulgarian University. The visit was supported by Sofia University and the CEEPUS programme. The talk at NBU was also an activity within the project "Multilevel-grounded Semantics: Language, Music, Vision", jointly conducted by the Center for Cognitive Sciences and the Branch in Niš of the Serbian Academy of Sciences and Arts (O36-24, coordinator: academician Aleksandar Kostić).
06-07 Dec 2024
Conference: "Schemas in Language, Music, and Visual Cognition"
With the kind support of the Serbian Science Fund (Program "Ideas", Grant No. 7715934, Structuring Concept Generation with the Help of Metaphor, Analogy and Schematicity – SCHEMAS), the Faculty of Philosophy and the Center for Cognitive Sciences organized an international conference titled "Schemas in Language, Music, and Visual Cognition", on Friday and Saturday, 6 and 7 December 2024. The event gathered around 30 presenters from all over the world (Albania, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Bulgaria, China, the Czech Republic, Germany, Greece, Netherlands, Poland, Portugal, Russia, Serbia, the UK, the USA, Ukraine). Distinguished keynote speakers were Prof. Beate Hampe, University of Erfurt (in person), Prof. Ray Jackendoff, MIT and Tufts University, and Prof. Todd Oakley, Case Western Reserve University (online). The event allowed us to hold an invaluable discussion on the underlying, schematic foundations of meaning in music, language, vision, and beyond (e.g. museum practices, dance, oral traditions). We established numerous new contacts with reputable international researchers and hope for even more collaboration in the near future.
