the first European festival on creativity

2012 Programme

Event #20

Andrea Moro

I speak, therefore I am The hidden waft: the secrets of language

One of the most surprising aspects of the human code of communication is that words, though lined up one after another, can also relate to each other from a distance, for instance when a noun is separated from its verb. It is like when one closely observes a tapestry and realizes that the dots forming a complex picture are but same-color threads which emerge and plunge back into the fabric and create an unexpected connection between distant parts of the pattern. Knowing the other side of the tapestry, the hidden waft supporting the fabric, is as much as what we can expect from linguistic explanations. One property of this structure is that it makes it possible to build an infinite number of sentences. It is just this infinity that characterizes all human languages and only them, distinguishing us from all other animals.

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Andrea Moro, Professor of General Linguistics at the Scuola Univestitaria Superiore IUSS of Pavia, studies the link between human languages structure and the brain. He has been visiting scientist at the MIT and at Harvard University. He is member of the Accademia Pontificia di Arti e Lettere. Planning artificial grammars, he showed that language rules are not just arbitrary conventions but are restricted by the neurobiological architecture of the brain. He published essays in various languages, among them Breve storia del verbo essere (Adelphi, 2006) and Le lingue impossibili (Cortina, 2017). He also debut in fiction with the novel Il segreto di Pietramala (La nave di Teseo, 2018) with which he won the Flaiano Award. At the end of August he will publish the essay La razza e la lingua. Sei lezioni contro il razzismo (La nave di Teseo).


All theevents2012


   

Event #1

Gustavo Zagrebelsky

The right to culture, the responsibility of knowledge

Event #2

Marco Santagata

Dante: an egocentric or a prophet? Creativity and writing as a mission

Event #3

Anna Salvo

Sorrow is like a telescope that helps us look into the distance: creatività and suffering

Event #4

Andrea Moro

I speak, therefore I am Like the starry sky: visions of language across the centuries

Event #5

Giulia Lazzarini

WALL – before and after Basaglia

Event #6

Alfredo Lacosegliaz, Paolo Rumiz

I Narrabondi. A reading in music

Event #7

Alessandro Barbero

How did women think in the Middle Ages? St. Catherine of Siena

Event #8

Luca Scarlini

Dancing thought: the body as a thinking mechanism

Event #9

Duccio Demetrio

The tenth Muse: Writing and its myths

Event #10

Giuseppe Civitarese

Get out your colors! Dreaming as the mind’s poetic function

Event #12

Franco Cordero

The phobia of thinking

Event #13

MASBEDO

The artist as sacred parasite

Event #14

Marino Niola

Between organic and divine. Food as knowledge, resistance and penance

Event #15

Giacomo Marramao

Power, creativity, change

Event #17

Ascanio Celestini

How stories are born

Event #18

Erri De Luca

Words as tools

Event #19

Ruggero Pierantoni

It’s all a matter of size

Event #20

Andrea Moro

I speak, therefore I am The hidden waft: the secrets of language

Event #21

Marc Augé

The primacy of knowledge

Event #22

Enzo Moscato

Toledo Suite. Concerto spettacolo

Event #23

Alessandro Barbero

How did women think in the Middle Ages? Christine de Pizan

Event #24

Gianfranco Capitta, Rafael Spregelburd

Seven sins that make life possible

Event #25

Gustavo Pietropolli Charmet

Teenagers in school: studying the past, ignoring the future

Event #28

Mauro Agnoletti, Ilaria Borletti Buitoni

Culture, environment, landscape. For a possible, sustainable future

Event #30

Sergio Givone

Invention and discovery. About creation

Event #31

Jacopo Perfetti

La Street Art e il caso Banksy

Event #32

Haim Baharier

Qabbala and an economy of justice

Event #33

Mario Brunello

CELLO AND… hidden voices, revealed voices. A concert

Event #34

Telmo Pievani

When the human mind was born. How we became Homo sapiens

Event #35

Andrea Moro

I speak, therefore I am The word and the flesh: the neurobiology of language

Event #36

Marco Paolini

Of men and dogs. Dedicated to Jack London (music by Lorenzo Monguzzi)

Evento n.11

Paolo Pejrone

For a modern garden—in form and substance

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