Language Invariants

An international interdisciplinary conference on "Language Invariants and Mental Operations" was held at Gummersbach near Cologne in September 1983. It was the second of its kind organized and sponsored by the UNITYP Research Group, Cologne, under the auspices of the Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft.

In its design the conference differed considerably from the standard model: all participants were discouraged from primarily presenting the results of their own work. They were expected to think more about what they didn´t know than what they did know. Extensive materials were issued and circulated long before the conference began. An overall problem was posited which consisted in elucidating the interrelation between: 1. language invariants as reconstructed by the linguist on the basis of language diversity, and 2. the traces of mental operations as uncovered by means of adjacent sciences. This dominating problem was further specified and differentiated into four major problem areas.

This volume reflects what became to be called "the Gummersbach spirit"; it reflects a truly joint process of problem solving which will continue to stimulate research on all sections of this vast interdisciplinary area.