Andrea Moro: where words are born

Andrea Moro | Where words are born Beyond the Wall Saturday, 11 October 2026 | 2:00 p.m. | Piazza del Sole, Bellinzona Sconfinare Festival

Before it is ever spoken, a sentence takes shape in the mind. Language is not merely sound, nor simply a cultural convention: human language is rooted in the architecture of the brain, in its limits and possibilities, in the mysterious balance between biology and thought.

Why are some languages possible and others not? What do impossible grammars reveal about the way we are made? What differences exist between human grammars and those constructed by artificial intelligence? And what silence precedes the word, before it becomes a voice?

Andrea Moro, one of the leading scholars of the relationship between language and the brain, takes the audience on a journey to the frontiers of human language.

From his research into impossible languages to his most recent reflections, collected in Lucretius and the Bat with Blue Eyes (The MIT Press, 2025), his work shows that language is not merely what we say, but a profound structure that organises thought and makes our experience of the world possible.

An opportunity to explore language at its most enigmatic point of origin: where neuroscience, linguistics, philosophy and imagination meet.

The conversation will be moderated by Giovanni Pellegri, neurobiologist and science communicator.

Andrea Moro, member of the Accademia dei Lincei, is a linguist, neurolinguist and novelist. He is Professor of General Linguistics at the Scuola Universitaria Superiore IUSS in Pavia and at the Scuola Normale Superiore in Pisa.

His research focuses on the structure of human languages and the relationship between syntax and the brain. He has been a Visiting Scientist at MIT and Harvard University.

His most recent essays include I segreti delle parole, co-written with Noam Chomsky (La nave di Teseo, 2022), Parlo dunque sono. Istantanee sul linguaggio (Adelphi, 2024), and Lucretius and the Bat with Blue Eyes. Explaining the Universe with the Alphabet (The MIT Press, 2025).

His novel Il segreto di Pietramala (La nave di Teseo, 2018) won the Premio Flaiano. His second novel, Cinquantun giorni (La nave di Teseo, 2024), draws on the roots of the Iliad and reimagines it in the modern era, through a journey that includes a stop in Lugano.