Skip to main content
Go to the home page of the European Commission (opens in new window)
English English
CORDIS - EU research results
CORDIS
Content archived on 2024-05-29

Characterizing Human Language by Structural Complexity

Objective

What makes us smart? Human body cells function in the same way as those of animals, and even the core cognitive competencies for vision, quantity perception, object mechanics, and other domains are virtually the same in humans as in some animals. Nevertheless humans have addressed the basic problems of life (food, shelter, mating, locomotion, ...) in completely different ways from even their closest animal kin, and have risen to dominate the planet. Recently complex syntactic processing has been identified as one core area where humans differ from primates.

The central question of the CHLaSC project is: How much of human uniqueness can be traced back to this one basic difference? Addressing this question is a team from five different fields (biology, semantics, language acquisition, cognitive development, and anthropology). We focus on structural complexity in language and in other cognitive systems, and the question whether extra-linguistic structural complexity is derived from language.

The three core objectives we pursue are:
1) Describe precisely the difference in syntactic processing ability from a comparative, developmental, and socio-cultural perspective.
2) Develop formal models of the semantic mechanisms relating language to other cognitive domains.
3) Investigate how variation in the use of structural complexity in language correlates with the availability of structural complexity in social cognition.

This project complements the already funded Neurocom project in the behavioural and socio-cultural domain. The CHLaSC project integrates linguistic semantics with the cognitive sciences, which is expected to broadly impact both fields and open up many new research opportunities. A broader social impact arises from the work on cognitive disorders, where opportunities for applications in diagnosis, therapy, and genetic research arise.

Fields of science (EuroSciVoc)

CORDIS classifies projects with EuroSciVoc, a multilingual taxonomy of fields of science, through a semi-automatic process based on NLP techniques. See: The European Science Vocabulary.

You need to log in or register to use this function

Keywords

Project’s keywords as indicated by the project coordinator. Not to be confused with the EuroSciVoc taxonomy (Fields of science)

Programme(s)

Multi-annual funding programmes that define the EU’s priorities for research and innovation.

Topic(s)

Calls for proposals are divided into topics. A topic defines a specific subject or area for which applicants can submit proposals. The description of a topic comprises its specific scope and the expected impact of the funded project.

Call for proposal

Procedure for inviting applicants to submit project proposals, with the aim of receiving EU funding.

FP6-2004-NEST-PATH
See other projects for this call

Funding Scheme

Funding scheme (or “Type of Action”) inside a programme with common features. It specifies: the scope of what is funded; the reimbursement rate; specific evaluation criteria to qualify for funding; and the use of simplified forms of costs like lump sums.

STREP - Specific Targeted Research Project

Coordinator

GEISTESWISSENSCHAFTLICHE ZENTREN BERLIN E.V.
EU contribution
No data
Address
Jaegerstr. 10/11
BERLIN
Germany

See on map

Total cost

The total costs incurred by this organisation to participate in the project, including direct and indirect costs. This amount is a subset of the overall project budget.

No data

Participants (4)

My booklet 0 0