The Institute for the Interdisciplinary Study of Language Evolution

The ISLE Institute was launched in 2025 as the successor institution of the Department of Comparative Language Science (DCLS) and the Center for the Interdisciplinary Study of Language Evolution (ISLE Center). ISLE is dedicated to the comparative study of languages and their varieties, with a strong emphasis on the evolution of the current dynamics of language in the form learning, change and processing. This explicitly evolutionary perspective requires a thoroughly interdisciplinary spirit of team science, bringing together expertise from historical linguistics, distributional-typological linguistics, neuro/-psycholinguistics, and anthropological linguistics, with robust bridges to other social, biological and cognitive sciences. This approach enables a deeper understanding of how languages evolve, are learned, and function across diverse contexts and how this dynamic is rooted in biological evolution. The ISLE institute’s interdisciplinary commitment has developed over the past ten years when the former DCLS hosted the inter-faculty Center for the Interdisciplinary Study of Language Evolution, which was co-initiated by Sabine Stoll (DCLS/ISLE) and Marta Manser (Department of Evolutionary Biology and Environmental Studies, Science Faculty) and then continued by Sabine Stoll and Carel van Schaik (Department of Evolutionary Anthropology, Science Faculty). The integration between disciplines is further strengthened by the National Centre of Competence in Research (NCCR) Evolving Language, directed by Balthasar Bickel and hosted by the DCLS/ISLE since 2020.

Our research profile was further strengthened in 2021 with the introduction of a neuro-cognitive focus, expanding its scope to include the brain-language interface. This addition complements the previously-established phylogenetic (diachronic), ontogenetic (developmental), and glottogenetic (biological-evolutionary) foci and was marked by the appointment of Prof. Martin Meyer in October 2021. In summer 2023, the establishment of a new professorship in Anthropological Linguistics with Prof. John Mansfield added a vital socio-cultural dimension, allowing for a more comprehensive understanding of language evolution in its social and cultural contexts.

The department integrates research on the biological foundations of the human capacity for language learning, transmission, and processing with the documentation and modeling of grammatical structures across the world’s languages. All research areas are guided by a radically comparative perspective, spanning species, languages, populations, language families, developmental stages across the human lifespan. A central focus is on the mechanisms of linguistic change and the factors that drive it, spanning neuro-cognitive and social dimensions alike. Collaborations with population genetics both in humans and domesticated species and geography further extend the research scope to global and long-term evolutionary dimensions.

The diachronic research perspective is further reinforced through close collaboration among Indo-European Studies, Distributional Linguistics, Psycholinguistics and Neurolinguistics. This cooperation allows a targeted investigation into the foundations and conditions of language change. A key ambition since the Insitute’s inception has been the integration of qualitative analyses with advanced quantitative methods, a combination that has proven highly productive. This is evidenced by a strong record of publications and the successful acquisition of competitive external funding by the Swiss National Science Foundation (SNSF).

Over the years DCLS has increased its cross-disciplinary integration both internally and externally. This has paved the way to its transformation into the ISLE institute. The ISLE institute asserts the interdisciplinary and evolutionary perspective more than ever and is planned as one out of three pillars that, together with partners at the Universities of Geneva and the University of Neuchatel, continue the NCCR’s mission beyond its funding period (2020-2032).