2025

[June 2025] Jeremy Kuhn has been awarded a CNRS Bronze Medal. The recognition is extraordinarily well deserved; congratulations to him!

[April 2025] We are delighted to announce that Yair Lakretz was ranked second for one of four junior CNRS positions in linguistics, and that Jeremy Kuhn was ranked third for one of five senior CNRS positions in linguistics. Congratulations to both!

[April 2025] Nicolas Guérin defended his dissertation entitled "Sémantique, Traduction et Connaissance dans les Modèles de Langage basés sur les Transformers". The jury, composed of experts in cognitive science, philosophy, and machine learning reported their very high impression of the work and the solid presentation. Nicolas also accepted a job in industry immediately after. Congratulations Nicolas!

[2025] Milica Denić, who obtained her PhD in the group, has accepted a position as a maître d'enseignement et de recherche (senior lecturer) in the Linguistics Department at the University of Geneva. Congratulations Milica, we look forward to following your research onwards and continuing the interactions.

2024

[December 2024] Thomas Souverain defended his dissertation entitled "Comment l'IA nous classe : Expliquer l'IA dans les services financiers et la recherche d'emploi, des solutions techniques aux enjeux éthiques". The dissertation was funded by a CIFRE convention between ENS-PSL (P. Egré supervisor) and two companies (Dreamquark, France Travail) that trained Thomas as a data-scientist and AI engineer. The thesis is a contribution to explainable AI and AI ethics, with a focus on fairness in AI classification. It received high praise from the committee (MA Dilhac, JG Ganascia, A. Ozkes, S. Ruphy). Thomas is now a postdoctoral researcher at the French Alternative Energies and Atomic Energy Commission (CEA), doing research on large language models. Congratulations Thomas!

[December 2024] Quentin Blomet defended his dissertation entitled "Mixed consequence logics", investigating duality relations and interpolation in the logics ST, TS and their family. The thesis, co-supervised by P. Égré and A. Tamminga, was a co-tutelle between ENS-Paris and Greifswald University in Germany. Quentin defended his work in front of a panel of international experts (E. Chemla, S. Fritella, F. Poggiolesi, E. Ripley, D. Szmuc) and received a magna cum laude, the highest distinction in the German system. Congratulations Quentin!

[December 2024] Jakob Süskind defended his dissertation entitled "A theory of verisimilitude", supervised by P. Égré, and revisiting Popper's concept and solving a number of problems of Popper's account of approximation to the truth, using a framework inspired by a Hamblin-style account of the semantics of questions. The thesis was acclaimed as an important novel contribution in formal epistemology and the philosophy of science by the committee (A. Barberousse, J. Brumberg-Chaumont, G. Cevolani, H. Rott, J. Sprenger). Congratulations Jakob!

[December 2024] Yair Lakretz defended his massively multidisciplinary HDR. The HDR is a diploma recognizing qualification to supervise PhD candidates in France. Long overdue.

[September 2024] Janek Guerrini defended his dissertation, supervised by Benjamin Spector, on Sept. 12. The title is  "Conceptual representations in grammar : complex meanings, simple composition” and investigates the relationship between conceptual representations and linguistic structures by presenting and solving new puzzles involving bare plurals and plural definites across Germanic and Romance languages, generic sentences, similarity constructions, and adjectival modification. It received high praise from the committee (I. Charnavel, G. Chierchia, P. Egré, O. Percus, V. Schmitt, and B. Spector). Janek is now a postdoctoral researcher in Frankfurt.

[September 2024] We have learned with great sorrow that Jean-Pierre Gautier has died. A highly influential primatologist internationally (see here), he had published numerous pioneering studies of primates (including on the reconstruction of phylogenies using call similarity), and a remarkably pedagogical textbook on the evolutionary biology of African guenons. He had also played a key role in our own team's initial efforts to reconstruct the evolutionary history of some primate calls. A workshop in his honor had been organized in 2014 by  Lucie Ravaux and Robin Ryder.

[May 2024]  Paul Egré's ANR team HYBRINFOX (ANR Astrid AI) came in 1st place on an automated language classification task concerning subjectivity at the CheckThat! 2024 competition.

[May 2024] Nur Lan defended his broad and deep PhD Dissertation ; the thesis is entitled "Simplicity-Based Language Modeling Using Artificial Neural Networks". Some see it as a promise of a stronger AI.

[March 2024] Semanticist Uli Sauerland (ZAS) is one of eight internationally renowned figures to join the CNRS as “fellow-ambassadors” in 2024.

[March 2024] Semanticists Irene Heim and Hans Kamp have been awarded the 2024 Rolf Schock prize in logic and philosophy (perhaps the closest thing the field has to a Nobel Prize) for their (mutually independent) development of dynamic semantics for natural language.

[February 2024] Carlo Geraci's project (with N. Abner and others) on sign language phylogeny has been published in Science. Read more about the article in English here and in French here.

[January 2024] Jeremy Kuhn defended his Habilitation à Diriger des Recherches (HDR) with aplomb; the HDR is entitled "Sign language semantics: iconicity and the grammar."

2023

[September 2023] Léo Migotti Ramponi defended with flying colors a dissertation entitled "Investigating musical meaning: Empirical evidence for a music semantics" (advisors: Philippe Schlenker and Jean-Julien Aucouturier; August 31, 2023). He almost immediately went on to become a permanent professor and researcher at Institut Français de la Mode in Paris. Congratulations, Léo!

[September 2023] Diego Feinmann, a former PhD student and postdoc in our group, will be starting as an Assistant Professor at IPI PAN (Institute of Computer Science, Polish Academy of Sciences) in Warsaw. Congratulations!

[July 2023] Benjamin Spector has been awarded an ANR grant for his collaborative research project CogComMean, "Communicative efficiency, cognitive constraints, and lexical meaning."

[June 2023] Members of our team organized the workshop "Applications of game theory in the study of language." More information here.

[March 2023] Jeremy Kuhn has been awarded funding for a 3-year PhD student to work on the project Meaning, Gesture, and Sign in Mesoamerica, in collaboration with Robert Henderson of the University of Arizona.

2022

[December 2022] Diego Feinmann, a former PhD student and postdoc in our group, has been awarded a Juan de la Cierva scholarship, to be held at Pompeu Fabra University. Congratulations Diego!

[November 2022] Justine Mertz, a former PhD student in our group, has been awarded a Fyssen grant to study coarticulation in LSF at the IfL-Phonetics Lab at the University of Cologne.

[September 2022] Janek Guerrini,  a PhD student in the group, won the Best Poster Award at the 2022 Student Session of the European School of Logic, Language, and Information. Congratulations Janek!

[April 2022] Mirko Santoro, a former PhD student in the group, has been awarded a CNRS Bronze Medal. Congratulations, Mirko!

2021

[July 2021] Charlotte Hauser, a former PhD student in our group, has been awarded the Grand Prix of the BPI innovation I-PhD concours, based on a project initiated during her PhD research. Congratulations Charlotte!

[July 2021] Maria Giavazzi has been awarded an ANR ‘jeunes chercheur.e.s’ grant for her project, The role of phonetic substance in prosodic conditioning: From diachrony to synchrony, and back.

[July 2021] WooJin Chung, postdoc in our team in 2019-2021, has accepted a tenure-track position at Seoul National University's Department of Linguistics.  Congratulations WooJin!

[June 2021] Amir Anvari, a current postdoc and a former Cogmaster and PhD student in our group, has just accepted a tenure-track position at MIT's Department of Linguistics and Philosophy.

[June 2021] Mora Maldonado, a former PhD student in our group, has been ranked 1st for a job at CNRS.

[April 2021] Salvador Mascarenhas has been awarded funding for a three year collaboration with Yasutada Sudo of UCL for their project Language in Reasoning.

[March 2021] Philippe Schlenker has been awarded a CNRS Silver Medal "for the originality, quality and importance of his work, recognized on a national and international level."

2019

[December 3, 2019] Amir Anvari defended with great success a dissertation (or rather  'three dissertations', as a jury member mentioned) on 'Meaning in context' (advisors: Philippe Schlenker and Benjamin Spector). Congratulations to him!

[November 4, 2019] We are delighted to announce that Mirko Santoro, who defended his dissertation at the IJN in 2018, has joined the CNRS as a permanent researcher, affiliated with the laboratory SFL of Paris 8. We are proud to see that our network of sign language researchers continues to grow, making Paris one of the best places in the world to study sign language linguistics!

[June 21, 2019] Milica Denić defended her excellent dissertation, 'Language and logic: the cases of negative polarity items and scalar implicatures' (advisors: Emmanuel Chemla and Benjamin Spector). Congratulations, Milica!

[May 13, 2019] Salvador Mascarenhas is hiring new postdocs to start in September 2019. See here for details.

2018

[December 19, 2018] Mirko Santoro defended his excellent dissertation entitled 'Compounds in sign languages: the case of Italian and French Sign Language' (advisor: Carlo Geraci). Congratulations, Mirko!

[July 13, 2018] Salvador Mascarenhas's project 'Entre langage et raisonnement' ('Between Language and Reasoning') will be funded by the ANR. Congratulations to him!

[July 10, 2018] We are thrilled to announce that Jeremy Kuhn will be joining LINGUAE as a permanent CNRS researcher ('Chargé de Recherche') in October 2018. 

[June 5, 2018] Mora Maldonado defended with flying colors her dissertation entitled 'Understanding Semantic Ambiguities: an Experimental Perspective' (advisors: Emmanuel Chemla and Benjamin Spector). Congratulations to her!

[May 20, 2018] Amir Anvari received the 'best presentation award' at SALT 2018 (MIT). Congratulations to him!

Starting in September 2018, the LINGUAE seminar will be moved from Wednesday, 11:30am to Thursday, 11:30am (Salle de Réunion du Pavillon).

[May 2018] The memorial for Morris Halle, one of the founders of contemporary linguistics, can be viewed online.

[May 2018] Philippe Schlenker was recently elected to Academia Europaea. He has also been awarded an Advanced Grant from the European Research Council.

2017

[December 2017] Valentina Aristodemo defended (with flying colors) her dissertation on Gradable constructions in Italian Sign Language (advisors: P. Schlenker; C. Geraci). Congratulations to her!

[June 2017] The 2017 LINGUAE Lectures were given by Philip Tetlock (UPenn), a leading expert of the psychology of judgment.

– Philippe Schlenker is delighted to announce that Melissa Berthet will join our group between September 2017 and April 2018 to conduct research (in collaboration with Klaus Zuberbühler's group in Neuchâtel) on primate linguistics. 

– Salvador Mascarenhas and Emmanuel Chemla are delighted to announce that Rachel Dudley has just accepted a two-year postdoctoral position to work with them on Interpretation, Reasoning, and Decisions.

2016

– Brent Strickland has been hired as a researcher (Chargé de Recherche) by CNRS at Institut Jean-Nicod. Congratulations to him!

– Salvador Mascarenhas has accepted an Assistant Professorship at ENS's Department of Cognitive Studies (DEC, in linguistics). He will be a member of Institut Jean-Nicod. Welcome aboard!

– We are delighted to announce that Brent Strickland was ranked second for one of four CNRS junior positions in linguistics; that Emmanuel Chemla was ranked third for one of four CNRS senior positions in linguistics, and that Paul Egré was ranked first for one of four CNRS senior positions in philosophy. Congratulations to all three!

– Alexandre Cremers defended his dissertation On the Semantics of Embedded Questions (March 24, 2016; advisor: Emmanuel Chemla).

– Emmanuel Chemla was selected as one of 20 scholars worldwide that are invited to apply for (up to 10) awards from the McDonnell Foundation. Congratulations to him, and good luck with the next step!

– Paul Egré has won a Bronze Medal from CNRS. Congratulations to him!

– The Deutsche Gesellschaft für Sprachwissenschaft decided to give their 2016 Wilhelm-von-Humboldt dissertation award to (current LINGUAE member) Manuel Križ  for his dissertation on Aspects Of Homogeneity In The Semantics Of Natural Language, defended in 2015 in Vienna. Congratulations to him!

2015

– The LINGUAE Lectures 2015 were given by Didier Demolin (University of Paris 3) on primate communication, human sound systems, and music.

– Several new post-docs are joining our group this Fall:

• Manuel Kriz (a former visitor) will work on semantics and experimental semantics  (SEMEXP project).

• Jeremy Kuhn (a former visitor) will work on semantics and sign language linguistics in our group (FRONTSEM project).

• Tal Linzen will work on distributional semantics in collaboration with Benjamin Spector and Emmanuel Dupoux.

• Steven Verheyen will work on the semantics and psychology of vagueness in collaboration with Benjamin Spector and Paul Egré.

– We are delighted to announce that Benjamin Spector has been promoted to 'Directeur de Recherche' within CNRS, and that Paul Egré and Benjamin Spector are now 'Maîtres de Conférences Attachés' at ENS (at the Philosophy Department and at DEC respectively). Congratulations to both!

– Brent Strickland's paper on non-signers' knowledge of 'Wilbur's Generalization' appeared in PNAS.

2014

– January 2014: We are delighted to announce that Vincent Homer is joining Institut Jean-Nicod (and the LINGUAE team) as a CNRS Chargé de Recherche, and that Lucie Ravaux is joining our group as a Research Coordinator.

– We are delighted to announce that on December 10, 2014 our regular collaborator Yann Cantin defended with great success his dissertation on the history of the French Deaf community. Congratulations to him! 

– LINGUAE member Benjamin Spector successfully defended his Habilitation on December 2,  2014. Congratulations to him!

– ENS hosted a Workshop for Young Researchers at ENS and LLING on Tuesday, October 28th. The purpose of the workshop was to provide an opportunity for MAs, PhDs, and postdocs in linguistics from ENS and Nantes to become better acquainted with each other’s research, through a series of short presentations.

– Benjamin Spector and Paul Egré (Institut Jean Nicod) have won an ANR grant for research on "Trivalent logics and natural language meaning" (ANR project, 212000 euros, 2015-2018).

– We took part on July 9, 2014 in a Primate Linguistics Workshop in Honour of Jean-Pierre Gautier, funded by a grant from PSL (PI: Robin Ryder), and organized by Robin Ryder and Lucie Ravaux.

– Emmanuel Chemla has been awarded a CNRS Bronze Medal. Congratulations to him!

– LINGUAE member Emmanuel Chemla successfully defended his Habilitation on February 26, 2014. Congratulations to him!

2013

[December 2013] Paul Egré gave keynote address to the Amsterdam Colloquium in December 2013.

[December 2013] We are sorry to announce that on December 12, 2013 Dominique Sportiche informed ENS that he would not take a Professorship he was offered within DEC following a competitive procedure in 2013. Since this decision came at a very late stage, nobody will be hired on this position; any future hiring will require a new procedure.

[December 2013] The 2013  Annual LINGUAE Lectures (December 2-6, 2013) featured Karen Emmorey (San Diego State). Details can be found here. The lectures were held in conjunction with a meeting of the sign language network COST.

[September 2013] Valentina Aristodemo (sign language linguistics, semantics, psycholinguistics) joined our group as a PhD student.

[September 2013] Three new members have just joined our group:

• Natalia Ivlieva (PhD 2013, MIT; semantics, pragmatics), arriving in October 2013;

• Erin Zaroukian (PhD 2013; Johns Hopkins; syntax, semantics, psycholinguistics), arriving in October 2013; 

• Lyn Tieu (PhD 2013, UConn; syntax/semantics, psycholinguistics)arriving in January 2014.

[September 2013] Emmanuel Chemla was invited to take part in September 2013 in the conference "The Cognitive Revolution 60 years on". He will also give a keynote address to SALT 2014.

[September 2013] Guillaume Thomas (who just finished a postdoc with us) will be joining Heinrich-Heine-University Düsseldorf as a postdoc.

[July 2013] Benjamin Spector gave an invited course on 'Scalar Implicatures and Grammar'  at the LSA Summer School 2013. 

[July 2013] Philippe Schlenker gave a keynote address to the International Congress of Linguists in Geneva.

[June 2013] Mirko Santoro has just obtained a 3-year Dissertation Fellowship from MERS (Ile-de-France). 

[June 2013] Yasu Sudo, currently a postdoc in our group, has been offered a tenure-track position at UCL’s Department of Linguistics.

[June 2013] Jeremy Kuhn (semantics and sign language, NYU) will be a visitor in our group at the end of June and in July 2013.

[May 2013] Chemla and Schlenker’s ERC Projects are both starting on May 1, 2013.

[Spring 2013] Salvador Mascarenhas (linguistics, NYU) is visiting our group for several months.

[Spring 2013] Emmanuel Chemla and Philippe Schlenker coordinated in the Spring of 2013 a research seminar on ‘Primate Linguistics’; more information  here.

2012

– Members of our group won three grants:

• Emmanuel  CHEMLA - ERC Starting Grant (‘starter’): ‘Psycho-Semantics: new data for formal semantics models, stronger frameworks for experimental studies'
  [A stronger integration of experimental psychology and formal semantic methods could have a decisive impact on both psycholinguistics and formal semantics. It requires important theoretical and methodological efforts from both communities]. Around 1.5 million euros, 5 years

• Philippe SCHLENKER’s project ‘New Frontiers of Formal Semantics’ ('FRONTSEM') won an Advanced Grant of the ERC (up to 2.5 million euros).
  [A broad project on the modular organization of meaning in human language (spoken and signed languages) and beyond (semantics of primate vocalizations and pragmatic effects in music]. (This grant supersedes the ERC Starting Grant SUPERSEM, which was won a few weeks earlier.)

• Dominique SPORTICHE and Patrick SAUZET (Université Toulouse 2 (UMR 5263)) have obtained a grant from the ANR:  ‘Syntactic Microvariation in the Romance Languages of France’
  [Documentation of endangered Romance languages in France + microvariation: investigation of correlated grammatical variables in very closely related linguistic varieties].  Around 400Keuros,  3 years.

– The 2012 Annual LINGUAE Lectures (November 19-23 2012) featured Fred Lerdahl (Columbia University), a pioneer of the formal study of music cognition.

– Heather Burnett (SSHRC Postdoctoral fellow) is joining LINGUAE for this academic year (2012-2013).

– Yasutada Sudo (MIT) and Guillaume Thomas (MIT) have now joined LINGUAE as postdocs  (September 2012).

– Jonah Katz won a Mellon postdoctoral fellowship at Berkeley starting in the Fall of 2012.

– Isabelle Charnavel has accepted a tenure-track position at Harvard’s Department of Linguistics.

– The annual semantics conference Sinn und Bedeutung 17  took place  at Ecole Normale Supérieure on September 8-10, 2012 (Chair: Emmanuel Chemla). EALing (Fall School in Linguistics) took place  immediately thereafter (organization: Dominique Sportiche).

Before 2012

– Marta Abrusan and Giorgio Magri, both former postdocs in our group, have obtained permanent positions at CNRS. (2011) 

– Benjamin Spector was awarded a CNRS ‘bronze medal’ (‘médaille de bronze’) for 2010.

– Philippe Schlenker’s paper ‘Presuppositions and local contexts’ was selected on the Philosopher’s Annual ‘top ten’ list for 2010.