Mélissa Barkat-Defradas
Research Scientist
Surprisingly, the study of language activity has long been conducted without any questioning of its biological function. In fact, the Human and Social Sciences (anthropology, linguistics) have long defended the idea that language appeared without any selective pressure. In this paradigm, the human being - defined as a fundamentally cultural being with few instinctive behaviors - would have "invented" articulated language (as well 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 the extensive study of the proximal and sensorimotor mechanisms that underlie it. However, asking the question of the ultimate causes of human language makes it possible to raise original questions and to answer questions that are still pending. My research aims to demonstrate that the synergy of approaches developed in linguistics and evolutionary biology can significantly advance our knowledge of this specifically human faculty. Trained as a linguist, my research interests include:(1) The study of the voice as an honest signal allowing 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 the work initially led by the geneticist L. Cavalli-Sforza, I study the genetic diversity of Arab populations in order to better understand the linguistic variability of the Arabic-speaking domain.(3) The study of the role of the family in the transmission of socially valued linguistic forms, which posits that language skills - different according to the social affiliation of individuals - participate in the social structuring of human populations.124 documents
- Rim Hamdi-Sultan, Melissa Barkat-Defradas, Emmanuel Ferragne, Francois Pellegrino. Speech Timing and Rhythmic Structure in Arabic dialects:a comparison of two approaches. International Speech and Communication Association, Oct 2004, Jeju Island, South Korea. pp.1613-1616. ⟨halshs-01740967⟩
- Rym Hamdi, Melissa Barkat-Defradas, Emmanuel Ferragne, François Pellegrino. Speech Timing and Rhythmic structure in Arabic dialects. 8th International Conference on Spoken Language Processing, 2004, Jeju, South Korea. , Proceedings of 8th International Conference on Spoken Language Processing, 2004. ⟨hal-01240539⟩
- Melissa Barkat-Defradas, Jalal Al-Tamimi, Thami Benkirane. Phonetic variation in production and perception of speech: a comparative study of two Arabic dialects. 15th International Congress of Phonetic Sciences (ICPhS), 2003, Barcelona, Spain. pp. 857-860. ⟨hal-03741494⟩
- Jalal Al-Tamimi, Melissa Barkat-Defradas. INTER-DIALECTAL AND INTER-INDIVIDUAL VARIABILITY IN PRODUCTION AND PERCEPTION: A PRELIMINARY STUDY IN JORDANIAN AND MOROCCAN ARABIC. In Ferrando, I. & Sanchez Sandoval, J.J. (Eds.). AIDA 5th Conference Proceedings (Association International de Dialectologie Arabe), Cadiz September 2002, pp. 171-186, 2003, 9788477867777. ⟨hal-03741485⟩
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