I had the rather surreal experience this afternoon of being woken up by the warning cries of (if I remember correctly) a putty nose monkey. No, I haven’t been travelling in Cameroon. Nor was I at the zoo. I was at a workshop on language evolution.

This could hardly have been better organised if I’d tried. Although I’ve been officially a PhD student since August 15th, I only defended my MSc thesis last Monday, so this was really my first week of settling into the new position. And the first thing I walk into is a workshop aimed squarely at my PhD research, at least in broad outline. It’s been an extremely full couple of days, with talks from 9am until 6pm and some really great presentations. While a lot is not directly useful for what I’m going to be doing, there were some really interesting ideas flying around that will probably spark some side projects for me.

It was the first talk after the lunch break, always a problematic time for staying awake. I’ve gotten into the habit of waking up pretty late, so starting at nine was a big effort for me. This morning I didn’t manage it, due to unwisely hitting the town last night, but even Friday after a full night’s sleep I dozed off in the hour after lunchtime. So there I was, head discreetly propped on my hand, eyes shut and face hopefully composed in an attitude of contemplation. (More likely twitching and drooling gently onto my arm, but optimism never hurts.) Klaus Zuberbühler was describing some evidence of syntax, or possibly discourse, in any event interesting structure, in the alarm calls of these putty nose monkeys. And he played samples.

These are weird noises, even when you know to expect them. They have names like “hack” and “pyow”. And they’re a really strange thing to be called back from the land of nod by, especially in a room full of evolutionary linguists.

I love my new job :-)