Philippe Schlenker is a senior researcher at CNRS (Institut Jean-Nicod, Paris) and a Global Distinguished Professor at New York University.  He was educated at École Normale Supérieure (Paris), and obtained a Ph.D. in Linguistics from MIT, and a Ph.D. in Philosophy from EHESS (Paris). He has taught at École Normale Supérieure, Paris, at the University of Southern California, at UCLA, and, since 2008, at NYU. P. Schlenker’s early interests included semantics, pragmatics, the philosophy of language and philosophical logic. He has conducted research on indexicals  and indirect discourse, intensional semantics, anaphora, presuppositions, as well as semantic paradoxes. 

In recent work, he has advocated a program of 'Super Semantics' that seeks to expand the traditional frontiers of the field. He has investigated the semantics of sign languages, with special attention both to their logical structure and to the rich iconic means that interact with it. In order to have a point of comparison for these iconic phenomena, P. Schlenker has also investigated the logic and typology of gestures in spoken language.  In collaborative work with primatologists and psycholinguists, he has laid the groundwork for a 'primate semantics' that seeks to apply the general methods of formal linguistics to primate vocalizations. And in recent research, he has advocated the development of a detailed semantics for music, albeit one that is very different from linguistic semantics.

Interests: Semantics, Pragmatics; Philosophy of Language; Philosophical Logic; Syntax, Morphology; Sign Language Linguistics (ASL and LSF); Gesture Semantics; Music Semantics; Primate Vocalizations and Gestures

Ph.D (Linguistics), MIT, September 1999; Ph.D (Philosophy), École des Hautes Études en Sciences Sociales, Paris, January 2002. Habilitation à Diriger des Recherches, École des Hautes Études en Sciences Sociales, Paris, April 2005; Qualification (CNU, Professeur, Linguistique), January 2006. 

Editorship (past and present): Managing Editor, Journal of Semantics (2009-2012); Member of the Editorial Boards of Natural Language Semantics, Semantics & Pragmatics, Linguistics & Philosophy, and Language & Linguistics Compass (Semantics and Pragmatics section).

Executive role
• Management Board, Association of Logic, Language and Information (FoLLI), 2022-
• Board of Directors, Association of ERC Grantees (AERG), 2023-

Advisory role
• Scientific Council of the CNRS Institute of Humanities and Social Sciences (INSHS), 2023-2028
• Head of the Advisory Board, Journal of Semantics, 2013-2020  
• Executive committee of IAST  (Toulouse Institute of Advanced Studies), 2012-2017

Membership: Academia Europaea, 2017-

Temporary: slides for CEU talk, January 31, 2024