Research

Research program at a glance

The line of inquiry being pursued extends theoretical linguistics to investigate meaning in the natural world, specifically: how humans and non-human primates express meaning through body movement. 

The following case studies focus on the linguistic analysis of gesture and dance in humans [publications 5, 9] and non-human primates [publications 6, 7], and established proof of concept for new analytical [publications 4, 8] and experimental methodology [publications 3, 10]. These case studies contributed to the establishment of a new sub-field, Super Linguistics (using the term ‘super’ in its original Latinate meaning ‘beyond’) [publication 1].

Super Linguistics

[1] Patel-Grosz, Pritty, Salvador Mascarenhas, Emmanuel Chemla, Philippe Schlenker (2023). Super Linguistics: an introduction. Linguistics and Philosophy 46, 627–692.                        
https://doi.org/10.1007/s10988-022-09377-8

Super Linguistics is the application of methods broadly inspired by formal theoretical linguistics to non-standard objects of study outside of natural language. This foundational text outlines the sub-discipline’s research program and aim for a general theory of communicative signals. We show how methods inspired by theoretical linguistics can fruitfully unify diverse objects of study that include animal communication systems, iconicity in gesture, and dance.

[2]   Patel-Grosz, Pritty, Emar Maier, Philippe Schlenker (2023). Super Linguistics. Special issue of

    Linguistics and Philosophy, vol. 46. https://link.springer.com/journal/10988/volumes-and-issues/46-4

This special issue consists of 400 pages in the shape of 8 peer-reviewed articles plus the introduction in [1]. All editorial decisions were made in line with the journal’s standards of double-blind peer review, and the acceptance rate was 38.1%. 

Gesture research in humans and non-human primates

[4]   Matthew Henderson, Patrick Georg Grosz, Kirsty Graham, Catherine Hobaiter, Pritty Patel-Grosz (2024). Shared semantics: exploring the interface between human and chimpanzee gestural communication, Mind & Language. https://ling.auf.net/lingbuzz/007723

This experimental study is part of an ongoing lab-to-lab collaboration with the ‘Wild Minds’ Lab at St. Andrews; In this publication, we obtained findings corroborating the hypothesis that there is gestural form and meaning overlap between humans and chimpanzees. 

[5]   Patel-Grosz, Pritty (2023): The search for universal primate gestural meanings. Proceedings of Sinn und Bedeutung 27, Charles University, Prague. https://ling.auf.net/lingbuzz/007212

In this publication I outline the theoretical proposal that there are abstract atoms of meaning tracing back to our last common ancestor with chimpanzees, demonstrating how the lexical entries of such abstract semantic atoms can be formally modelled.

[6]   Francis, Naomi, Patrick Georg Grosz, Pritty Patel-Grosz (2023). THROW, Glossa: a journal of general linguistics 8. https://doi.org/10.16995/glossa.8455

[7]   Patel-Grosz, Pritty, Matthew Henderson, Patrick Georg Grosz, Kirsty Graham, Catherine Hobaiter  (2022). Primate origins of discourse-managing gestures: the case of hand-fling, Linguistics Vanguard. https://doi.org/10.1515/lingvan-2022-0004

Publications 5 and 6 demonstrate how theoretical semantics can be leveraged in the study of negative assessment gestures which are  found in both humans [5] and non-human primates [6]; negative/discouraging gesture functions are highly prevalent in the gestures of non-human great apes.

Structure and meaning in Dance in humans and non-human primates

[8]   Camille Coye, Kai Caspar, Pritty Patel-Grosz (2024). Dance displays in gibbons: biological and linguistic perspectives, Primates. https://doi.org/10.1007/s10329-024-01154-4

We show that a linguistically informed analysis of dance displays in female nomascus gibbons can follow a nested grouping organisation, previously unattested in non-human primates. 

[9]  Patrick Georg Grosz, Ragnhild Torvanger Solberg, Jonah Katz, Mai Ha Vu, Alexander Refsum 

      Jensenius, Pritty Patel-Grosz (accepted, to appear). Outline of the narrative grammar of electronic 

  dance music, Musicae Scientiae. 

This linguistics-musicology collaboration establishes linguistically informed tools for annotating the narrative structure of electronic dance music. Utilizing such structural annotations, will allow us to trace how dancers’ gestural behaviour responds to structural components of the music.

[10] Patel-Grosz, Pritty, Patrick Grosz, Tejaswinee Kelkar, Alexander Refsum Jensenius (2022). Steps  towards a semantics of dance, Journal of Semantics 39, 693–748. https://doi.org/10.1093/jos/ffac009

[11]  Patel-Grosz, Pritty, Jonah Katz, Patrick Grosz, Tejaswinee Kelkar, Alexander Refsum Jensenius (2022). From music to dance: the inheritance of semantic inferences. Empirical Issues in Syntax & Semantics 14. http://www.cssp.cnrs.fr/eiss14/eiss14_patel-grosz_et_al.pdf

This research on dance semantics shows that dance incorporates cognitive mechanisms for reference tracking also found in gesture and human language [9], and provides experimental evidence that dance in response to music inherits expressive meaning inferences from the music [10].