Anthropological Linguistics Group
The diversity of grammatical and semantic structures found in human languages is shaped by the socio-cultural contexts in which those languages are used, and the culturally specific interactional needs that they serve. Grammatical structure emerges from interactional habits, which themselves are shaped by cultural settings. Factors such as kinship, gender, social organisation, mobility and subsistence all influence language use, contributing to its dynamic character and shaping its evolution over decades or millennia. In the Anthropological Linguistics Group at UZH, our goal is to connect the micro-dynamics of culturally specific interactions with the outcomes of millennia-long incremental changes. We do so by engaging with communities in the most socially diverse settings such as Papua, the Rift Valley and the Amazon, which provide crucial correctives to the Eurocentric biases of linguistic theory.