Research topics

This research area explores the processes involved in constructing the linguistic system based on attested discourse productions. It is structured around two main axes. The first aims to theorize the relationship between language and discourse by analyzing discursive uses and their variation. It draws in particular on data provided by the second sub-area, which aims to build up a heritage of discursive uses and their description.

The Adjustments and disruptions in usage and meaning area seeks to model the processes by which discursive phenomena stabilize and destabilize in language. The aim is to identify, analyze, and define the various parameters involved in linguistic change, according to short (emergence trajectories), medium, or long (lexicalization, grammaticalization, obsolescence) diachronic periods. The objects of study are located at different levels: morphosyntactic (verbal tenses, verbal diathesis), orthographic, lexico-grammatical (collocations), lexical and pragmatic (discourse markers, autonymic modalization).

The phenomena are observed using computer-based corpus processing tools. Particular attention is paid to the parameter of discursive traditions.

The projects in the Discourse, Language, Heritage axis are carried out in collaboration with key institutions working on these issues (the French Departmental Archives Network, the Rivesaltes Memorial, the French National Library, and the DGLFLF).

Work in this area studies the functioning and dysfunction of speech and the interactional mechanisms that contribute to the integration or even overcoming of dysfunctions. It focuses on the oral production of children and adults, with or without language disorders and/or disabilities, as well as on language dysfunctions in conversation.

This research should lead to a better understanding of the interactive mechanisms that contribute to achieving communicative relevance despite the existence of dysfunctional speech. One of the original features of this theme is that it brings together phonetic, prosodic, linguistic, and anthropological perspectives. It also adopts a multimodal approach to language, taking into account the clinical, everyday, and artistic contexts involving people with disabilities (physical, mental, and/or psychological).

The research methodologies used in this theme include the creation of multimodal audiovisual corpora and ethnographic surveys, supplemented by a set of experimental data enabling the study of oral production phenomena with or without dysfunction.

The translational and transdisciplinary research conducted by the Connectivity, Plasticity, Cognition, Language research group (at the interface between language and cognitive sciences, computational neuropsychology, cognitive neuroscience, and medicine) aims to better understand the architecture of complex cognitive and language systems (e.g., semantic and language cognition, social and spatial cognition, speech perception and production systems, etc.), the neural networks on which they are based (in particular their structural and functional connectivity, but also their interactions), the inter-individual variability of these networks, their atypicality in certain disorders where cognition/language/speech are dysfunctional (e.g., severe stuttering), and their ability to reorganize/modulate following injury (i.e., post-lesional neuroplasticity).

We are also interested in the cognitive and neurocomputational mechanisms that govern post-lesion recovery and cognitive and language rehabilitation. To carry out this research, the researchers involved in this area use a multimodal and integrative approach that includes behavioral, language and neuropsychological assessments, functional and tractographic neuroimaging, disconnectomics, transcranial magnetic stimulation, direct electrostimulation mapping during awake brain surgery, and predictive and computational modeling techniques (e.g., psychometric networks, graph theory, artificial intelligence). One of the challenges of this research area is to translate the results into clinical practice.

This will be achieved in particular through the development of innovative neuro-rehabilitation strategies, the optimization of intraoperative mapping procedures for neural networks during awake neurosurgery, and the development of new neuro-oncological approaches (e.g., multi-stage brain surgery based on the evolutionary and individual potential of brain plasticity).
In summary, the objective of Connectivity, Plasticity, Cognition, Language is to move towards predictive and ultra-personalized clinical care in order to improve patients’ quality of life.