Mélissa Barkat-Defradas

Surprisingly, the study of language activity has long been conducted in isolation from any questioning of its biological function. In fact, the humanities and social sciences (anthropology, linguistics) have long defended the idea that language arose outside of any selective pressure. In this paradigm, the human being - defined as a fundamentally cultural being with few instinctive behaviours - would have "invented" articulated language (in the same way as writing). In this purely culturalist conception, the question of the raison d'être of language behavior has long been evacuated from scientific investigation in favor of an extensive study of the proximal and sensorimotor mechanisms that underlie it. However, by asking the question of the ultimate causes of human language, we can raise original issues and answer questions that are still unanswered. The aim of my research is to demonstrate that the synergy of approaches developed in linguistics and evolutionary biology can significantly advance our understanding of this specifically human faculty. Trained as a linguist, my work focuses on:(1) The study of the voice as an honest signal enabling the speaker to display - via certain vocal characteristics - his phenotypic quality and increase his reproductive success(2) The study of linguistic and genetic proximity. Following on from the work initially carried out by geneticist L. Cavalli-Sforza, I am studying the genetic diversity of Arab populations in order to gain a better understanding of the linguistic variability of the Arabic-speaking world.(3) The study of the role of the family in the transmission of socially valued linguistic forms, which suggests that language skills - which differ according to the social background of individuals - play a part in the social structuring of human populations.



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