Coming soon: a session on dolphin communication
18.02.2026 10:55
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Coming soon: a session on dolphin communication
New manuscript: "Animal Linguistics as an Integrative Framework for Animal Communication", with E. Chemla, and N. Mathevon, M. Hagiwara, O. Pietquin.
We argue that animal linguistics offers a unifying framework for animal communication.
lingbuzz.net/lingbuzz/009...
About to start. Please register ahead of the class if you wish to receive the link. Thanks!
First session on Monday, February 2, 2026 on Zoom. Please register below if you wish to receive the link. Thanks!
Today!
First session on Monday, February 2, 2026 on Zoom. Please register below if you wish to receive the link. Thanks!
The next session of the Animal Linguistics seminar will take place on Wed., Jan. 28, 5pm Paris, on Zoom only, world-wide. Speaker: Christoph Grüter: Bee talk - Communication in an unpredictable world.
All are welcome!
The specific theories are different from those of human linguistics, but the general goals and the division of labor among established modules (syntax, semantics, pragmatics…) are not. The field will require close collaboration between linguists, ethologists and AI specialists.
Finally, 4. through a "phylogenetic tree of animal signals", it seeks to retrace and explain the path from ancestral signals to modern ones ("evolutionary animal linguistics").
2. understand the extent and limits of variation in living species ("comparative animal linguistics"), and 3. investigate the cognitive basis of observed properties ("animal psycholinguistics").
With the same ambition as human linguistics (but often with very different analytical tools), animal linguistics seeks to 1. develop explicit models of animal communication ("formal animal linguistics"),
New manuscript: "Animal Linguistics as an Integrative Framework for Animal Communication", with E. Chemla, and N. Mathevon, M. Hagiwara, O. Pietquin.
We argue that animal linguistics offers a unifying framework for animal communication.
lingbuzz.net/lingbuzz/009...
The course is open, but interested participants should register online.
Course homepage: sites.google.com/site/philipp...
Registration: forms.gle/dETdu5dQZgB3...
1st session: Monday, Feb. 2, 2026, 10am Paris.
*** Online course on Multimodal Semantics in February-March 2026***
How should semantics and pragmatics look like after the “multimodal revolution”, which unearthed multiple new data from sign langages and from gestures? This course will offer partial answers.
Emar Maier's survey article on Super Linguistics:
lingbuzz.net/lingbuzz/009...
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📢 Come study cognitive science in Paris!
The Master’s program in Cognitive Science at @ENS_ULM, @psl_univ, and @EHESS_fr is now accepting applications for the next academic year.
🗓 Deadline: February 24, 2026
💻 Apply here: master-cognitive-science.ens.psl.eu/en/applicati...
The next session of the Animal Linguistics seminar will take place on Wed., Nov. 26, 5pm Paris, on Zoom only, world-wide. Speakers: C. Crockford & C. Girard-Buttoz, Chimpanzee Vocal Utterances: Flexible and combinatorial with protracted development
All are welcome!
First session of the Multimodal Semantics seminar this coming Tuesday, October 21, on Zoom only, with Lyn Tieu:
First session of our new online seminar on multimodal semantics: Tue October 21 with Lyn Tieu
We took viewpoints to be static. But this fails to account for remarkable cases in which, say, a tree classifier moves to represent apparent motion relative to a moving viewpoint. We propose 2 possible refinements of Iconological Semantics to account for such 'traveling shots'.
In earlier work, we proposed a new framework, Iconological Semantics, to account for the interaction between logic and iconicity in sign language classifiers. The 'glue' between logic and iconicity was viewpoint variables, referring to 'camera positions'. ling.auf.net/lingbuzz/007...
New paper with Jason Lamberton and Jonathan Lamberton: “Traveling Shots in Language: Towards an Analysis of Dynamic Viewpoints in ASL”, to appear in Linguistic Inquiry. ling.auf.net/lingbuzz/008...
Our online Animal Linguistics Seminar starts this coming Wednesday, September 24:
We hope that this work will have relevance at the intersection of the philosophy of language, sign language semantics, and the formal analysis of iconicity.
We find that it arguably leaves some facts unaccounted for, and consider an alternative in which Role Shift involves both context shift and viewpoint shift, hence a new take on Super Monsters.
Building on the formal framework of Iconological Semantics, which has an explicit pictorial component (https://
ling.auf.net/lingbuzz/007048), we develop a minimal analysis in which Role Shift only involves overt viewpoint shift.
We argue that a key observation, familiar from informal descriptions, has been missed by formal analyses: in ASL, Role Shift usually shifts the viewpoint ('camera position') relative to which iconic elements are evaluated.
an operation in which the signer visibly adopts someone else's perspective. But Role Shift has special properties that have motivated non-standard operators, called “Super Monsters”, which forces elements within its scope to be interpreted in a maximally iconic fashion.
Such operators were correspondingly called “monsters”. In the last 20 years, cross-linguistic semantic research has uncovered multiple monsters across spoken languages. In addition, some have claimed that context shift is overtly realized in sign language by Role Shift—
Recent manuscript on “Context Shift and Viewpoint Shift”, with Jason Lamberton and Jonathan Lamberton:
ling.auf.net/lingbuzz/009...
The philosophy of language of the 1970’s claimed that natural language lacks operators that can shift the context of evaluation of indexicals.