In the mountainous area of the Greater Hindukush in northern Pakistan, north-western Afghanistan and Kashmir, some fifty languages from six different genera are spoken. The languages are at the same time innovative and archaic, and are of great interest for areal-typological research. This study investigates grammatical gender in a 12-language sample in the area from an areal-typological perspective. The results show some intriguing features, including unexpected loss of gender, languages that have developed a gender system based on the semantic category of animacy, and languages where this animacy distinction is present parallel to the inherited gender system based on a masculine/feminine distinction found in many Indo-Aryan languages. / I den här studien undersöks grammatiskt genus i ett antal språk som talas i ett bergsområde beläget i norra Pakistan, nordvästra Afghanistan och Kashmir. I området, här kallat Greater Hindukush, talas omkring 50 olika språk från sex olika språkfamiljer. Det stora antalet språk tillsammans med den otillgängliga terrängen har gjort att språken är arkaiska i vissa hänseenden och innovativa i andra, vilket gör det till ett intressant område för arealtypologisk forskning. Resultaten av den här undersökningen visar att en del språk i urvalet helt har tappat sitt grammatiska genus trots att det anses vara ett relativt stabilt språkdrag. Några språk har utvecklat ett nytt grammatiskt genus baserat på en animacitetsdistinktion, antingen som det enda kvarvarande systemet, eller parallellt med ett nedärvt indoariskt genussystem baserat på biologiskt kön. / Language contact and relatedness in the Hindukush region (421-2014-631)

La conception de la mémoire adaptative défend l’idée selon laquelle la mémoire humaine a évolué, pendant toute l’histoire de l’Homme, de sorte à résoudre des problèmes adaptatifs spécifiques (e.g., trouver de la nourriture, se protéger des prédateurs). De nombreuses recherches soutiennent cette conception en montrant, par exemple, que nous mémorisons mieux les informations quand nous les traitons relativement à notre propre survie (Nairne, Thompson, & Pandeirada, 2007). Récemment, un nouvel effet mnésique est venu renforcer cette approche fonctionnelle de la mémoire : l’effet animé. Il correspond à une meilleure mémorisation des entités animées (entités vivantes, capables de se déplacer de façon autonome, e.g., bébé, sauterelle) comparativement aux entités inanimées (entités non vivantes, e.g., bouilloire, corde). Cet effet serait dû à la plus grande importance des entités animées que de celle inanimées pour la survie et/ou la reproduction. Traiter ces entités de façon privilégiée a été primordiale pour la survie de nos ancêtres, et en conséquence, pour l’évolution de l’espèce humaine. Dans ce travail de thèse, nous nous sommes focalisés sur l'effet animé en mémoire épisodique afin de mieux comprendre les mécanismes proximaux qui le sous-tendent et ses conditions d’apparition. Ainsi nos principaux résultats ont-ils permis d’établir que l’effet animé en mémoire est : (1) lié au processus de remémoration (rappel conscient de détails contextuels) ; (2) indépendant des ressources cognitives disponibles ; (3) en partie sous tendu par de l’imagerie mentale et (4) modérément modulé par le contexte d’encodage. / According to the adaptive memory view, human memory was shaped in the distant past to remember fitness relevant information (e.g., finding food, protecting ourselves from predators). An increasing number of studies favor this view, by showing that information related to to survival is memorized better than information not related to survival (Nairne, Thompson, & Pandeirada, 2007). Recently, a new type of findings further supports this functional approach of memory: animacy effects, that is to say the observation that animates (living things able of independent movements; e.g., baby, grasshopper) are remembered better than inanimates (non-living things e.g., teakettle, rope). One account of this memory effect has been that animates are of greater importance for survival and/or reproduction. In effect, knowing how to interact with animates was crucial for the survival of our ancestors, and thus, for the evolution of our species. In this work, our main purposes were to identify some proximate mechanisms underpinning animacy effects in episodic memory as well as the contexts in which these effects are observed. Taken overall, our findings accord with the claim that animacy effects in memory are: (1) linked to recollection (conscious recall of contextual details); (2) independent of cognitive resources; (3) partially underpinned by mental imagery and (4) to some extent modulated by encoding context.

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Cette thèse interroge le dialogue théorique et pratique entre les sens et le design. En éclairant les échanges qui s’instaurent entre les sciences contemporaines de la perception et les nouvelles approches sensorielles du design, elle laisse apparaître un paradigme inédit de la création et de la cognition. Elle montre qu’un modèle de design sensible émerge sous l’impulsion de nouveaux modèles cognitivistes de la perception, qui vient transformer les domaines de la création. Les arts plastiques investissent les sens corporels, amplifiés par les technologies ; l’architecture remet en cause la tradition visiocentrée de l’espace, et s’ouvre une conception spatiale de type atmosphérique. À la frontière de ces mouvements, surgit un paradigme du design focalisé sur la relation tangible et multisensorielle entre l’homme et le monde de l’artificiel. Grâce à la réhabilitation des sens pragmatiques, les théories antidualistes de la perception, en conjonction avec les sciences cognitives et les technologies numériques, inspirent la conception d’artefacts orientés vers l’engagement corporel et les relations matérielles. L’obsolescence du modèle des cinq sens permet de revisiter scientifiquement des phénomènes comme les synesthésies, la plasticité perceptive et les correspondances sensorielles. Le dépassement de l’idée de sens entendus comme des organes récepteurs, conduit à considérer les aspects immatériels de la perception, tels que l’expressivité et l’intentionnalité attribuées aux choses. Dans ce contexte, cette thèse explore la manière dont la sensorialité redevient un sujet de recherche et de création. Entre philosophie, psychologie expérimentale et histoire de l’art et du design, elle interroge le modèle rationaliste du design et montre que l’émergence de ce nouveau paradigme est motivée par l’exigence de s’affranchir du modèle industriel guidé par la relation visuelle et fonctionnelle de la forme et des usages. Suivant un cheminement non nécessairement linéaire, la recherche se concentre sur les moments clés et les figures majeures du dialogue entre design moderne et théories des sens, et montre que ce dernier, engagé depuis la Renaissance, n’a cessé d’alimenter les relations entre perception et arts du disegno. / This thesis examines the theoretical and practical dialogue between design and the senses. Shedding light on the exchanges taking place between the contemporary sciences of perception and the new sensorial approaches of design, it reveals a new paradigm of creation and cognition. The thesis puts forward the emergence of a sensitive design model promoted by new cognitivist models of perception, transforming the domains of creation. Magnified by technology, contemporary arts are permeating the bodily senses; while architecture challenges the visually centered tradition of space, and an atmospheric conception of space opens up.Emerging at the marches of these movements is a paradigm of design focused on the tangible, multi-sensorial relationship between the human world and the artificial world. Anti-dualist theories of senses, coupled with cognitive sciences and digital technologies, conceive artifacts that are inclined towards material relationship and involvement of the body, made possible by the rehabilitation of pragmatic senses. Obsolescence of the five senses model allows the scientific rediscovery of several phenomena such as synesthesia, perceptive plasticity and sensorial interactions. Surpassing the notion of senses as mere receptive functions, leads us to examine the immaterial aspects of perception, such as expressiveness and intentionality attributed to things.In this context, this thesis explores how sensoriality becomes once again a subject for research and creation. Overlapping philosophy, experimental psychology, and the history of art and design, it questions the rationalist model of design; it also shows how the need for freedom from the industrial model, as lead by the visual and functional relationship between form and usage, brings about the emergence of a new paradigm.Following a not essentially linear path, the research focuses on key moments, along with the major features of a dialogue between modern design and theories of the senses ; this dialogue, initiated since the Renaissance, never stopped nourishing the relationships between perception and arts of the disegno.

VERSION ANGLAISE DISPONIBLE AU DÉPARTEMENT; THÈSE RÉALISÉE CONJOINTEMENT AVEC L'ÉCOLE DES SCIENCES DE LA COMMUNICATION DE L'UNIVERSITÉ MCGILL (DRS. K. STEINHAUER ET J.E. DRURY). / La présente thèse reprend trois articles de recherche (deux études et un article de revue) portant sur les neurosciences cognitives du langage, chacun desquels a été écrit en vue d’identifier les bénéfices que la théorie (neuro)linguistique contemporaine pourrait tirer d’une étude exhaustive des processus cognitifs et neuraux sous-tendant les troubles du spectre autistique (TSA) et inversement. Deux études y sont présentées, utilisant la méthode des potentiels évoqués, lesquelles fournissent des preuves préliminaires, chez des individus typiques, de deux aspects de la compréhension de phrases nécessitant une recherche approfondie chez des personnes autistes : (1) Les corrélats neuraux de la nature syntaxique et sémantique particulière des verbes d’expérience (par exemple The girl has feared the storm) contrairement aux verbes d’action (par exemple The kids have eaten the fries) et leur interface potentielle avec la Théorie de l’Esprit – la capacité d’attribuer des états mentaux à soi et à autrui – pour laquelle les personnes autistes semble accuser un retard et/ou un déficit, et (2) les corrélats neuraux des compétences en « imagerie visuelle », telles quelles sont identifiées à l’aide des Matrices de Raven, sur les processus de détection de violations de catégories grammaticales (par exemple He made the meal to enjoy with friends/He made the enjoy to meal with friends) dans un paradigme expérimental “équilibré” et en modalité visuelle. L’article de revue cherche à fournir une perspective plus large du rôle que les neurosciences cognitives des TSA peuvent jouer dans l’étude biologique du langage. L’importance de considérer l’autisme comme un « style cognitif » plutôt qu’un trouble en soi y est défendue, en particulier contre la notion commune d’autisme en tant que déficit de Théorie de l’Esprit. Au delà de leurs perspectives potentielles de recherche future auprès de populations autistes, ces trois articles cherchent à répondre à plusieurs questions de recherche cruciales sur le développement et la compréhension du langage (c’est à dire le débat sur la «P600 sémantique», les théorie d’échantillonnage asymétrique de la perception de la parole et de la musique, le rôle de la vision dans le langage, la modularité, les styles cognitifs et l’inférence Bayesienne). / The present thesis comprises a set of three research articles (two studies and one review article) on the cognitive neuroscience of language, all of which were written with the purpose of understanding the benefits that contemporary (neuro)linguistic theory may draw from an extensive study of the cognitive and neural processes underlying Autism Spectrum Disorders (ASD) and vice versa. Two studies are presented, using event-related brain potentials, which provide preliminary evidence in typical individuals for two aspects of sentence processing in need of future investigation in ASD participants: (1) The neural correlates of the peculiar syntactic and semantic nature of verbs of experience (Experiencer Subject verbs, i.e., The girl has feared the storm) as opposed to verbs of action (Agent Subject verbs, i.e., The boys have eaten the fries) and their potential interface with Theory of Mind – the ability to attribute mental states to self and others – known to present delays and impairments in autism, and (2) the neural correlates of “visual imagery” skills, as assessed through the Raven Matrices, on comprehenders’ ability to detect word category violations (e.g., He made the meal to enjoy with friends/He made the enjoy to meal with friends) in a balanced visual paradigm and their potential insights into the role of visual imagery in language comprehension, known to play a potentially predominant role in ASD. The review article attempts to provide a larger perspective on the role of the cognitive neuroscience of ASD in the biology of language, in which the importance of considering autism as a “cognitive style” rather than as a disorder is given greater value, especially relative to the common notion of autism solely as a Theory of Mind impairment. Aside from their potential prospects for future research in autistic populations, these three articles also attempt to frame their topic of inquiry into the broader context of contemporary research questions on language development and language comprehension, such as the role of animacy in language processing (the “semantic P600” debate), asymmetric sampling theories of speech and music perception, the role of vision in language, modularity, cognitive styles or Bayesian inference.

La présente thèse reprend trois articles de recherche (deux études et un article de revue) portant sur les neurosciences cognitives du langage, chacun desquels a été écrit en vue d’identifier les bénéfices que la théorie (neuro)linguistique contemporaine pourrait tirer d’une étude exhaustive des processus cognitifs et neuraux sous-tendant les troubles du spectre autistique (TSA) et inversement. Deux études y sont présentées, utilisant la méthode des potentiels évoqués, lesquelles fournissent des preuves préliminaires, chez des individus typiques, de deux aspects de la compréhension de phrases nécessitant une recherche approfondie chez des personnes autistes : (1) Les corrélats neuraux de la nature syntaxique et sémantique particulière des verbes d’expérience (par exemple The girl has feared the storm) contrairement aux verbes d’action (par exemple The kids have eaten the fries) et leur interface potentielle avec la Théorie de l’Esprit – la capacité d’attribuer des états mentaux à soi et à autrui – pour laquelle les personnes autistes semble accuser un retard et/ou un déficit, et (2) les corrélats neuraux des compétences en « imagerie visuelle », telles quelles sont identifiées à l’aide des Matrices de Raven, sur les processus de détection de violations de catégories grammaticales (par exemple He made the meal to enjoy with friends/He made the enjoy to meal with friends) dans un paradigme expérimental “équilibré” et en modalité visuelle. L’article de revue cherche à fournir une perspective plus large du rôle que les neurosciences cognitives des TSA peuvent jouer dans l’étude biologique du langage. L’importance de considérer l’autisme comme un « style cognitif » plutôt qu’un trouble en soi y est défendue, en particulier contre la notion commune d’autisme en tant que déficit de Théorie de l’Esprit. Au delà de leurs perspectives potentielles de recherche future auprès de populations autistes, ces trois articles cherchent à répondre à plusieurs questions de recherche cruciales sur le développement et la compréhension du langage (c’est à dire le débat sur la «P600 sémantique», les théorie d’échantillonnage asymétrique de la perception de la parole et de la musique, le rôle de la vision dans le langage, la modularité, les styles cognitifs et l’inférence Bayesienne). / The present thesis comprises a set of three research articles (two studies and one review article) on the cognitive neuroscience of language, all of which were written with the purpose of understanding the benefits that contemporary (neuro)linguistic theory may draw from an extensive study of the cognitive and neural processes underlying Autism Spectrum Disorders (ASD) and vice versa. Two studies are presented, using event-related brain potentials, which provide preliminary evidence in typical individuals for two aspects of sentence processing in need of future investigation in ASD participants: (1) The neural correlates of the peculiar syntactic and semantic nature of verbs of experience (Experiencer Subject verbs, i.e., The girl has feared the storm) as opposed to verbs of action (Agent Subject verbs, i.e., The boys have eaten the fries) and their potential interface with Theory of Mind – the ability to attribute mental states to self and others – known to present delays and impairments in autism, and (2) the neural correlates of “visual imagery” skills, as assessed through the Raven Matrices, on comprehenders’ ability to detect word category violations (e.g., He made the meal to enjoy with friends/He made the enjoy to meal with friends) in a balanced visual paradigm and their potential insights into the role of visual imagery in language comprehension, known to play a potentially predominant role in ASD. The review article attempts to provide a larger perspective on the role of the cognitive neuroscience of ASD in the biology of language, in which the importance of considering autism as a “cognitive style” rather than as a disorder is given greater value, especially relative to the common notion of autism solely as a Theory of Mind impairment. Aside from their potential prospects for future research in autistic populations, these three articles also attempt to frame their topic of inquiry into the broader context of contemporary research questions on language development and language comprehension, such as the role of animacy in language processing (the “semantic P600” debate), asymmetric sampling theories of speech and music perception, the role of vision in language, modularity, cognitive styles or Bayesian inference. / VERSION ANGLAISE DISPONIBLE AU DÉPARTEMENT; THÈSE RÉALISÉE CONJOINTEMENT AVEC L'ÉCOLE DES SCIENCES DE LA COMMUNICATION DE L'UNIVERSITÉ MCGILL (DRS. K. STEINHAUER ET J.E. DRURY).

Since the seminal work of Fritz Heider and Marienne Simmel (1944) the study of animacy perception, or the perception and attribution of life from the motion of simple geometrical shapes has intrigued researchers. The intrigue for psychologists and vision scientists then and today centered on the stark disconnect between the simplicity of the visual input and the universal richness of the resulting percept. Infant research in this domain has become critical in examining the ontological processes behind the formation of animated percepts. To date, little is known about how infants process these kinds of stimuli. While numerous habituation studies have shown sensitivity to animate motion in general, none to date has examined whether infants actually perceive animate displays as social interactions. The overarching goal of the present thesis is to answer this question and further augment knowledge about the mechanisms behind the formation of animated percepts in infancy. I, along with my collaborators, do so in three ways, in three separate studies. First, we examined visual attention during online observation of randomly moving geometrical shapes in adults and infants (Study I, using eye tracking). Second, we examine distribution of visual attention in infancy during online observation of non-contact causal interactions, focusing on the most ubiquitous, fitness relevant of interactions – chasing (Study II, using eye tracking). Third, we answer the question whether infants perceive social content in chasing displays by measuring the neural correlates in response to chasing (Study III, using EEG). The collective contribution of the present work is also three fold. First, it demonstrates that starting at the end of the first year of life, human visual system is sensitive to cues that efficiently predict an interaction. Second, at 5-months infants begins allocating attention differently across agents within interactions. Finally, attention to specific objects is not due to low-level saliency but the social nature of the interaction. Subsequently, I present the case that perception of social agents is fast, direct, and reflects the workings of a specialized learning mechanisms whose function is the detection of heat-seeking animates in motion.

This thesis is focused on the material known as the Mesolithic portable art. Earlier research have interpreted the material as representative art relating to ideology, mythology, prestige, ritual practices,and tribalism. Such interpretations are based on theoretical frameworks that build on hylomorphism and Cartesian metaphysics. By a change of theoretical framework, to a new animistic perspective based on a combination of Gilles Deleuze and Félix Guattari’s rhizome theory, Tim Ingold’s meshwork and Giordano Bruno’s theory of bonds in general, followed by the use of ChantalConneller’s method rhizomatic chaîne opératoire, I conclude that the motifs on the tools and pendants are communications to the animated subjects that make up and inhabit the environment. Furthermore, I conclude that the binary positions of function and ritual cannot be applied when studying the formgenerating process of this material, as the tools and pendants along with their applied motifs are a result of what is in between these binary positions.

This study delves into the syntactic notion of subject relation in Shona with the aim of characterizing and defining it. This is done through analysing data collected from two of the Shona speaking provinces in Zimbabwe, namely, Harare and Masvingo. The data collection procedures involved the tape recording of oral interviews as well as doing selective listening to different speeches. The data were then analysed using the projection principle, noun phrase movement transformational rule as well as the selectional principles established for the subject relation in the other well researched natural languages. The research found out that there is no one single rule that can be used to determine the subject of every possible Shona sentence. One has to make use of all the seven selectional principles established in the well-researched natural languages. The research managed to assess the applicability of the selectional rules in different sentences. The rules were then ranked according to their reliability in determining the subjects of each of the various Shona sentences. It also came to light that the Shona subject relation has a number of sub-categories as a result of the various selectional rules involved in determining them. These were also ranked in a hierarchy of importance as they apply in the language. For instance, whilst some are assigned to their host words at the deep structure or underlying level of syntax, some are assigned at the surface structure level and can be shifted easily. It also emerged that the freedom of the subject relation in the language varies with the sub-category of the relation. It came to light as well that in Shona both noun phrases (NPs) and non-NPs are assigned the subject role. / African Languages / D. Litt. et Phil. (African Languages)