Abstracts are due today for the 57th Annual Conference on African Linguistics and the 3rd Bantoid workshop! To be hosted in Buffalo in May, with remote presentation options. sites.google.com/view/acal57/...

It really is something to be abroad launching an NSF grant project - acting as a representative of American scientific excellence and beneficence - and having to watch as the leadership pisses all over its international reputation. Repeatedly.

Native American Scholars Initiative *Archives Training* and *Predoctoral* Fellowship Applications are due January 16! Archives Training Fellowship: 2-year fellowship for applicants with an MLIS or PhD Predoctoral Fellowship: 9-month residential fellowship for advanced doctoral student

So it turns out that Nature is willing to publish those guys who email the entire department with their pet theories about language.

@nature.com doesn't mind publishing "thoughts some dude had in the bathtub" as long as they're on language, apparently.

Years ago, 957 people from Twitter contributed to my research on 'because X' and I promised I'd share the results with them. I can't, because twitter, but please share it with people here anyway: www.degruyterbrill.com/document/doi... Non-paywalled pre-print: kar.kent.ac.uk/105654/ #linguistics

This is true and the right political move would be defending immigration as a universal good.

It turns out it's a lot easier to pack for fieldwork when you are not bringing a bunch of equipment with you. Who knew!

another morning when it’s an existentially shameful thing to be an american huh

2026 is starting to look a lot like 2003, only this time a grotesque caricature of the Ugly American is at the podium yelling "ACTUALLY YES THIS IS ABOUT THE OIL"

Not the main concern, but what is even going on in this photo? "Hey guys, check out my new TV"

likewise, a similar buzz of annoyance when "ñ" gets over-applied in Spanish-origin words. habañero peppers, named after the well-known city of Havaña, etc.

watching the CECOT 60 Minutes segment that CBS suppressed, it’s striking that Weiss specifically called out as unnecessary some of the most rigorous investigative work in the segment, including an explanation of how it was done (by human rights researchers)

This has been made available, so for purposes of commenting on Bari Weiss's decision to spike the story, here's a live-post of that segment. It begins with a "you may recall" summary of the deportation to el Salvador. Describes the admin's claim that it could deport the men without due process

it is important to read and understand this thread - especially this post. giving anyone a placebo in lieu of a vaccine in this environment is an unacceptable 'offshoring' of risk.

“Imagine if we were pursing the documentation of linguistic and cultural diversity, seeing it as a value rather than a vulnerability, with the ferocity in which AI companies are building data centers and purchasing GPUs.” ethanzuckerman.com/2025/12/05/g...

'kola' is also a basic vocabulary item in the typical language of the Cameroon Grassfields (and it grows well there too, just past the eastern border of this map) - in Kom, ibi [ībi᷇], pl. tɨbi [tɨ̄bi᷇]; proto-Grassfields likely has a word *-bɪ́(̀ )

not two days later - transcribing a Kom saying about inheritance and speakers turn out to have had two different readings of it (with lexical tone marking added): wù nyiŋ ɨkuyn ikfɨ "3sg runs (to) the bed of the deceased" wù nyìŋì ɨkuyn ikfɨ "3sg lies down (in) the bed of the deceased" +

NSF reorganization is, frankly, a bit odd, and we haven't run a story on it partly because it's hard to know what to make of it. The impetus for reorg, as I understood it, was to limit the siloing that occurs because NSF has so many (35ish) divisions. Now there will be 50+ sections.

in case it's useful info, the stuffy serif font the WH makes heavy use of is Instrument Serif; because it's a Google web font there's a little text box halfway down its page that you can use to write out random blurbs

the source article for the quote points out a major issue - orthographies for African languages sometimes don't mark tone, in spite of tone being crucial to word meaning! (and tonal pronunciation almost always changes postlexically, too - when you put words together into phrases) 🐦🐦

🤯 Phonetic Universal Uncovered! 🎤 We analyzed over 60,000 speakers across 75 languages and confirmed a universal phonetic bias: High vowels (like /i, u/) are consistently spoken with a slightly higher pitch (F0) than low vowels (/a/).

BREAKING: A federal judge ordered the government to restore Rümeysa Öztürk's SEVIS student record after it was wrongfully terminated in retaliation for exercising her freedom of speech. This allows her to fully engage with the opportunities of her PhD program.

Abstract season progress: [ █ █ █ █ █ █ - ] 6/7 feeling well rested a̵n̷d̸ n̵̨͝ͅo̵͎̿ŕ̵̪͈̰͇͐m̷̡̻̮̃̐͂͠a̸̤̜̮̲̽̅̌ĺ̴̹̖͉̉͒̈͆͑͘

Abstract season progress: [ █ █ █ █ - - - ] 4/7 😮‍💨

Abstract season progress: [ █ - - - - - - ] 1/7

Does anyone know anything about Praat and accessibility? TTU is beginning to request accessibility documentation (i.e. VPAT) for all software in use. My impression is that Praat doesn't play well with screen-readers, and I haven't been able to find a VPAT. #praat #linguistics #accessibility #a11y

time to look at my Praat Objects Window Wrapped for the year

Rstudio wrapped bsky.app/profile/sal....

5-year (!) postdoc opportunity: Join our Edinburgh team and do fieldwork on the Burun languages! Deadline for application: 17 December. Position starts March 1st, 2025 elxw.fa.em3.oraclecloud.com/hcmUI/Candid...

this was my first general election and let me tell you, I will delight in voting out Rick Santorum (R-PA) for the rest of my life

If anyone is curious about the current list of search terms being used by right wing activist organizations to harass university professors, here's a public records request I received today from Mike Howell of the Heritage Foundation. Not intimidating or meant to curtail by my speech at all, right?

Our School of Information Sciences is running four searches, and we can hire more than four candidates. Here’s the first link, for a job that might appeal to people working in history of information, history of science, or digital humanities. +

Did you know the heart imprints onto the voice? New preprint spearheaded by Marijn Hafkamp, confirming (seemingly forgotten) research from the 80's and testing for the first time possible biomechanical mechanisms (evidence points to heart-lung-voice interactions). wimpouw.com/files/Hafkam...

enjoying the ambiguity in "human washing machine" here

Nearly every mechanism that made my career possible—Ford, NSF, Harvard BiGS—is gone or on the way to the chopping block.

NEW from me - NSF cancels grant scheme for social science research. Seems the NSF quietly archived ALL calls for DDRIG grants in the SBE directorate. This is a massive blow for PhD students wanting to do cutting-edge social science research. 🏺🧪

there's another thing to explain here- grad students cannot just ask their university for this kind of money. as a funding source, that does not exist. the annual operating budgets of entire departments (not devoted to paying faculty/staff, etc) is usually *less* than this. 1/3

I want to explain why this is so bad for people who aren't familiar with National Science Foundation funding. in addition to "senior" projects that go to professors, there are a variety of other opportunities for grad students to get funding. 1/

Linguistics DDRIG is also archived 🐦🐦 this could mean it will be replaced by some new program, but at this point in time we have to assume many DDRIG opportunities that are "out of alignment" with admin priorities are just being discontinued.

CEDL is proud to announce Oluwasegun Amoniyan as one of four winners of the 2026 CEDL Travel Grants! Oluwasegun Amoniyan is a PhD student in Linguistics at the Univ of Pittsburgh & his interests include socio-phonetics and co-speech. Join us in celebrating at #LSA2026! web.cvent.com/event/d45318...

conference planners, we really have to do something about how all the abstracts are mysteriously due at the same time during finals week. I am working on something between 4 and 7 abstracts right now, I see Overleaf when I shut my eyes like when you play too much Tetris

At last! Open Access version of the book on MIT's site. One for the syntax nerds. I argue we need to replace Merge, that there are no Phases, and that we need to rethink the basic theoretical typology of Islands. Feel free to download with abandon! 🐦🐦 #syntax direct.mit.edu/books/oa-mon...

Here are the 11 workshops: www.bantugent.ugent.be/bantu11/#anc... #Bantu11

The cfp for the 11th International Conference on Bantu languages (#Bantu11) cfp is out! Deadline 1st Dec for submissions to the general session or to one of the 11 workshops, conf. in Ghent/online, 18th-21st August 2026 www.bantugent.ugent.be/bantu11/ #Bantu #linguistics

psych departments post a faculty job that has nothing to do with AI challenge

MeToo did not go far enough. People were saying "MeToo has gone too far" when it had barely just picked up momentum. It was an attempt at reckoning with how institutionally misogynistic and sexually exploitative most institutions are and what women are constantly put through. So it was crushed.