Simon Devylder

Biographic Data

ID221414
NAMESimon Devylder
GIVEN NAMESSimon
FAMILY NAMEDevylder
SIGNATUREDEVYLDER S
AFFILIATIONSLund University
ORCID0000-0001-6758-9874
VERIFIEDYes
TOTAL WORKS6
TOTAL CITATIONS2
WORKS AS AUTHOR6
WORKS AS EDITOR0
FIRST PUBLICATION YEAR2018
LATEST PUBLICATION YEAR2026
H-INDEX1

  • The Cultural Evolution of Vanuatu Sand Drawings

    Open AccessSimon DevylderARTICLEJournal de la Société des…2026

    This article explores Vanuatu sand drawings through the theoretical framework of Cultural Evolution and phylogenetic methods. While this UNESCO-recognized practice has mainly been studied through anthropology, ethnomathematics, and semiotics, the paper argues that it can also be understood as an evolving cultural tradition. Drawing on ethnographic evidence and previous scholarship, it demonstrates that sand drawings display the key properties of …

  • Analyzing polysemiosis

    Open AccessJordan Zlatev, Simon Devylder et al.ARTICLESemiotica2023

    Human communication is by default polysemiotic : it involves the spontaneous combination of two or more semiotic systems , the most important ones being language , gesture , and depiction . We formulate an original cognitive-semiotic framework for the analysis of polysemiosis, contrasting this with more familiar systems based on the ambiguous term “multimodality.” To be fully explicit, we developed a coding system for the analysis of polysemiotic…

  • The archipelago of meaning

    Open AccessSimon DevylderARTICLEThe Australian Journal of…2022

    Vanuatu sand drawing has been listed by UNESCO since 2006 and has both fascinated and puzzled researchers from various disciplines for over a century. The inherent multi‐dimensionality of the practice makes analysis complex, and until very recently developing a systematic methodology to study this intangible art form was difficult. This paper aims to contribute to filling this gap with the analysis of a corpus of sand drawings documented on the i…

  • Motion event descriptions in Swedish, French, Thai and Telugu

    Open AccessJordan Zlatev, Johan Blomberg et al.ARTICLEActa Linguistica Hafniensia2021

    Motion-event typology has moved into a “post-Talmian” terrain of approaches focusing on an open-ended number of patterns across languages and constructions. Following a proposal to distinguish between four typological clusters, we systematically compared the motion event descriptions in four languages suggested to exemplify these clusters: Swedish, French, Thai and Telugu, with the help of an elicitation-based study. 20 adult native speakers of e…

  • Carving the body at its joints

    Open AccessSimon Devylder, CHRISTOPH BRACKS et al.ARTICLELanguage and Cognition2020

    Looking at the way different linguistic communities speak about a universally shared domain of experience raises questions that are central to the language sciences. How can we compare meaning across languages? What is the interaction between language, thought, and perception? Does linguistic diversity entail linguistic relativism? The literature on the naming systems of the body across languages have addressed these questions with little consens…

  • Diagrammatic iconicity explains asymmetries in Paamese possessive constructions

    Open AccessSimon DevylderARTICLECognitive Linguistics2018Cited by: 2References: 20

    Grammatical asymmetries in possessive constructions are overtly coded in about 18% of the world’s languages according to the World Atlas of Language Structures What primarily motivates these grammatical asymmetries is controversial and has been at the crux of the “iconicity vs. frequency” debate This paper contributes to this debate by focusing on the grammatical asymmetries of Paamese possessive constructions, and looking for the primary motivat…