Alexandra Bosshard

Alexandra Bosshard, MA

PhD Student

Comparative Communication and Cognition Group

How did human language evolve? What can the communication systems of different animals tell us about language? About our sheer infinite possibilities to express ourselves vocally, about structure and about meaning?

Invested in these questions, I am pursuing a PhD at the University of Zürich under the supervision of Simon Townsend, Balthasar Bickel, and Paola Merlo (University of Geneva). The aim of my PhD is to explore compositionality in non-human primates. Specifically, we try to decipher the possible origins of this complex concept by looking at primates’ vocal communication systems.

I am part of the NCCR Evolving Language, which encourages interdisciplinary research in their quest to uncover the origins of human language.

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Publications

Leroux, Maël; Chandia, Bosco; Bosshard, Alexandra B; Zuberbühler, Klaus; Townsend, Simon W (2022). Call combinations in chimpanzees: a social tool?. Behavioral Ecology, 33(5):1036-1043.
Bosshard, Alexandra B; Leroux, Maël; Lester, Nicholas A; Bickel, Balthasar; Stoll, Sabine; Townsend, Simon W (2022). From collocations to call-ocations: using linguistic methods to quantify animal call combinations. Behavioral Ecology and Sociobiology, 76:122.
Leroux, Maël; Bosshard, Alexandra B; Chandia, Bosco; Manser, Andri; Zuberbühler, Klaus; Townsend, Simon W (2021). Chimpanzees combine pant hoots with food calls into larger structures. Animal Behaviour, 179:41-50.

Department of Comparative Language Science

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Alexandra Bosshard

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