Ce lundi 8 Avril 11H Salle des Voûtes - Intervention d’Isabelle DAUTRICHE, (Equipe DePhy – Développement et Phylogénie)

Title : The primitive of semantic computations in human infants and baboons (Papio papio)

Human languages share a number of universal features, from the properties of lexical meanings to the way these meanings are composed and realised on the surface (i.e. word order). In this talk, I will present the results of a research program investigating experimentally the cognitive origins of these shared features of language in non-human primates and in human infants to determine whether these properties can be found outside language and outside humans.  I will report three sets of studies suggesting that baboons (Papio papio) and infants (i) like to manipulate ‘concepts’ of the same shape as ours, (ii) can compose mental representations and (iii) display attentional preferences consistent with some of the word order found in language.