Projects
PREDILING: Prediction Across Languages and Cultures
The PREDILING project is part of a fundamental research approach in cognitive linguistics, aiming to study the anticipatory dimension of language across languages and cultural contexts. It is based on the central hypothesis that language is not only descriptive of the world as it is, but also predictive of the world as it could be. Indeed, every natural language possesses a systematic grammatical apparatus through which speakers project events, qualify their likelihood, and situate them within their own horizon of expectation.
The study relies on the comparative and typological analysis of multilingual corpora to reconstruct this complex linguistic apparatus. The research focuses on identifying and comparing linguistic markers of prediction, such as tense systems, moods and aspects, epistemic modalities, conditional structures, and probability assessment methods. This approach highlights regularities and variations in how the future, the hypothetical, and the possible are expressed, structured, or left implicit within different linguistic systems.
Particular attention is paid to cultural differences in the conceptualization of time and the verbalization of the future. The project examines how some cultures favor explicit and assertive projection, while others prioritize nuanced, indirect, or highly ambiguous forms. Whereas traditional grammar has historically focused on describing how languages record the past and document the present, predictive grammar, as conceptualized within this project, precisely maps the mechanisms by which languages anticipate and shape the future.
PREDILING thus aims to provide an international map of linguistic expressions of prediction, demonstrating how languages and cultures structure the perception, understanding, and projection of possible worlds. By linking language, cognition and horizon of expectation, the project contributes to a better understanding of the discursive mechanisms of anticipation and opens up innovative perspectives for the theoretical and typological analysis of discourses and the large language models that underlie current artificial intelligence systems.
CRIMENTALIA : Linguistic Expression of Violence Across Languages and Artificial Intelligence
The CRIMENTALIA project is embedded in an interdisciplinary research framework that brings together linguistics, social sciences, psychology, and artificial intelligence in order to examine how violence is expressed linguistically across languages and cultural contexts. It is based on the premise that violence, whether physical, symbolic, institutional, or verbal, is not manifested solely through actions, but also through specific linguistic forms that vary according to language, social norms, and historical frameworks.
The study relies on the analysis of large-scale multilingual corpora, including testimonies, judicial narratives, media discourse, digital interactions, and narrative productions. Artificial intelligence–based language models are used to identify and compare linguistic markers of violence, such as lexical fields, syntactic constructions, enunciative modalities, forms of reference to perpetrators and victims, and discursive processes of justification, normalization, or denunciation. This approach makes it possible to reveal both regularities and variations in how violence is explicitly stated, narrated, or left implicit.
Particular attention is paid to cultural differences in the conceptualization and verbalization of violence (cf. GRÈLIA Symposium, 2026). The project explores how some languages tend to make violent acts explicit, while others favor indirect, euphemistic, or metaphorical forms. It also analyzes how normative and legal frameworks shape discourse by determining what can be named, mitigated, or rendered unspeakable. In this context, artificial intelligence enables the articulation of micro- and macro-level analyses, combining linguistic precision with large-scale comparison.
CRIMENTALIA ultimately aims to produce an international mapping of the linguistic expressions of violence, showing how languages and cultures structure the perception, understanding, and narration of violent phenomena. By linking language, power, and social norms, the project contributes to a deeper understanding of the discursive mechanisms of violence and opens new perspectives for the comparative analysis of criminal and social discourse in a globalized context.
