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SFB 1760:  SiNoSi: Silence, Noise and Signal in Language

Subject Area Social and Behavioural Sciences
Humanities
Computer Science, Systems and Electrical Engineering
Term since 2026
Project identifier Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG) - Project number 551281144
 
The CRC investigates the role of silence and noise in our capacity for perceiving, learning and producing linguistic signals. Language has been conceptualized in terms of an idealized form-meaning pair, whereby a sign (in the form of sounds, gestures, writing or other modalities that can express language) is combined with a grammar for that sign and rules for mapping to a denotation (meaning). In practice, no real language follows this ideal. Silent yet meaningful elements pervasively violate the ideal pairing of form, grammar, and meaning. Humans are routinely able to filter out violations, they can ignore irrelevant dimensions of articulations, and even innovate “rule-breaking” patterns as part of language play and language change. Our effortless ability to make sense of silence (lack of overt form) and noise (spurious forms and rule violations) is quite remote from an idealized notion of form-meaning pairings. The CRC therefore puts forward the hypothesis that silence and noise are not aberrations, but should instead be analyzed as: 1) essential characteristics of human language; 2) the key to ensuring successful communication across interlocutors of different backgrounds. We see silence and noise as a fundamental part of language structure. In studying and systematizing silence and noise across different domains of grammar, different domains of data and different communicative situations, the CRC aims to understand how reliable signals emerge from seemingly fuzzy communicative practice. As part of this, we will formulate a novel take on language competence as designed to both enrich and filter the “said” as well as the “unsaid.” To this end, we propose developing an Algorithm of Interpretation. This crucially will take into account an understanding of the overall communicative situation as part of language competence and will be informed by a Systematics of Silence and Systematics of Noise. The goal is to model what we think of as the fiberglass aspect of language: it is resilient yet simultaneously flexible. We hypothesize that this combination of resilience and flexibility is in large part due to the effective and systematic use of silence and noise across different modules and domains of language. Understanding exactly how noise and silence can be analyzed in terms of a Systematics of Silence and Noise and how that feeds into an overall Algorithm of Interpretation is an ambitious program and one that requires long-term commitments and engagement from researchers representing all linguistic subdisciplines, including formal theoretical modeling, experimental hypothesis testing and computational approaches. Crucially, it must be combined with a perspective on language use in a variety of communicative settings. The CRC offers all of these components with a strong commitment to interdisciplinarity, both within linguistics and across disciplines.
DFG Programme Collaborative Research Centres

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Applicant Institution Universität Konstanz
 
 

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