Human Nouns and Social CHANGE: a case study of Medieval French (9th-15th century)

ERC Starting Grant 2025 Proposal : Part B1 (CV and Track record excluded) and B2 Abstract: What am I? Being an applicant for the ERC Starting Grant, I am a junior researcher, while remaining a daughter, a mother, an emigrant and an immigrant. For my son’s toddler friend, I am a lady, for my 85 years old neighbour – a girl. If I accidentally push someone on the subway, he calls me an idiot, when I hold the door for a stranger, I am a charm. Thus, as any other human being in our complex social world, I receive a multitude of labels expressed through common nouns – human nouns (=HN). Their choice is never random and, beyond the descriptive function, is strongly conditioned by speaker’s and hearer’s identities and relationship, as well as the agency of the referents. HumaNS-CHANGE's design is based on the hypothesis that the HN lexicon responds to social changes both reflecting and driving the evolution of social organization (e.g."citoyenne" as term of address instead of "madame" during French Revolution) and cultural representations (e.g. "person" instead of "man" juged as inappropriate). Nevertheless, while linguistics and anthropology have extensively studied personal names, terms of address, and kinship in relation to social organization, the HN lexicon has been so far largely overlooked. HumaNs-CHANGE addresses this gap through a cross-disciplinary study of the HN lexicon and its evolution in Medieval French (9th-15th century). This period witnesses both the birth and development of standard written French and considerable changes of social institutions, providing a relevant frame for examining the evolution of HN. The core is a comprehensive analysis of linguistic usage of HN which results are further examined from historical science and linguistic anthropology perspectives. The team includes experts in French historical linguistics, Medieval French history, Linguistic anthropology and Statistical analysis for Human and Social Sciences and is led by PI, who has produced excellent research on the semantics and pragmatics of HN in Medieval French.