On October 28th, the exhibition “The Mind-Body Problem” opened its doors to the public. It is the fruit of a collaboration between the NCCR Evolving Language and artist Robin Meier Wiratunga. This work stems from the intriguing discovery that birds dream in songs, which they will then sing in the following days. Through algorithms, the artist recreates these fragments of acoustic dreams and makes them audible.
On October 1st, 2025, Dr. Jane Goodall passed. Her contributions throughout her long life transformed the field of primatology and reshaped the way we understand humans within the animal kingdom. Here, the members of the NCCR Evolving Language reflect on the impact Dr. Goodall has had, and continues to have, on their work and lives.
Many of our researchers attended the 58th Annual Meeting of the Societas Linguistica Europaea (SLE) from 26-29th of August 2025 hosted at the Université Bordeaux Montaigne in Bordeaux, France, and contributed through workshops, talks and poster sessions.
Nina Kazanina, Valentina Borghesani, and Giulia Li Calzi represented the NCCR Evolving Language at the Society for the Neurobiology of Language (SNL) 2025 conference. This was a great introduction to the next edition, which will be held in Geneva from September 30 to October 2, 2026.
Lucie Attout joined the Faculté de Psychologie et Sciences de l’Education (FPSE) of the University of Geneva as an assistant professor in Psycholinguistics and Speech-Therapy and the NCCR Evolving Language. “For a long time, I’ve been fascinated by the human capacity for learning,” she says. Her research focuses on the importance of short- and long-term memory processes in learning, and the underlying mechanisms.
Working in partnership with the New Guinea Binatang Research Centre (NGBRC), Pr. John Mansfield, Roger Maikei, and Sara Schindler recently completed a field expedition to document and study the endangered Mum \[kqa] language in the Josephstaal region, Papua New Guinea.
When populations meet, they typically exchange genes. Their languages meet too, and such encounters can change languages. But how much do languages actually change through contact, and do these changes differ depending on the type of contact? To address these questions, an international study led by the University of Zurich links global patterns of genetic exchange with linguistic data.
Voices are with us all the time, whether in conversations, podcasts or movies. But what if we are suddenly no longer sure whether it is a person speaking on the other end? Today, artificial intelligence can generate voices that sound deceptively real. How does this work technically and linguistically? Phonetics professor Volker Dellwo explores this in the newest episode of Schampar Digital Podcast, by the DIZH.
For decades, we have seen dogs as expert interpreters of human cues – animals that we’ve shaped through artificial selection to fit in with our lifestyles. What if that was only half of the story? Recent findings from researchers of the NCCR Evolving Language challenge this one-sided model and propose a more reciprocal one: communication between humans and canids evolved not just as a linear result of human-driven selection, but rather developed through an interactive process of mutual influence.
After being an SNSF professor for 6 years, Rico Sennrich has taken on a new role. This August, he became an assistant professor in computational linguistics at the University of Zurich. During his masters in English Literature, his minor on computational linguistic drew him into the field. “In computational linguistics, it’s easy to test your theories,” he says.