Robert Nicolaï is a French linguist, member of the Institut Universitaire de France, recipient of the Research award Alexander von Humboldt, Emeritus Professor at the Université de Nice, founder and editor-in-chief of the Journal of Language Contact. He has published numerous articles and books, and has been instrumental in questioning established hypotheses on the evolution of Songhay languages as well as revisiting theoretical frameworks and attempting to establish an epistomological framework for language dynamics and the construal of meaning. He explores at once language contact phenomena, semiotic dynamics. Correlatively, his approach has led him to delve more deeply into the epistemology of the Humanities and how meanings take hold.
Contributors are Ad Backus, Françoise Gadet, Juan Carlos Godenzzi, Philippe Hambye, Inga Hennecke, Georges Lüdi, Aleksi Mäkilähde, Angelita Martinez, Joseph Salmons, Alyson Sewell, Janne Skaffari, Adriana Speranza and Andrée Tabouret-Keller.