Yosef Prat
Marie Curie Fellow
I am interested in how human language capacity emerged and how it evolved over time. Linguistic abilities are widely regarded as a hallmark of our species, yet how these skills evolved remains poorly understood. As a Marie Skłodowska-Curie Postdoctoral Fellow, I investigate the evolutionary advantages of a core feature of human language: the arbitrariness of the sign. My approach combines cross-linguistic analysis, psycholinguistic experiments, and computational modelling.
Trained as a behavioural ecologist and animal cognitive scientist, I apply an evolutionary perspective to behavioural and psychological phenomena. My previous work has spanned the vocal communication of bats, cognitive modelling of learning in cleaner fish, and the evolutionary foundations of decision-making.