"A compelling and thought-provoking analysis of human sociality and the origins of language." The Interaction Engine by Stephen C. Levinson (@mpi-nl.bsky.social), Out Now & #OpenAccess https://cup.org/4nusznG #OA #Linguistics #LangSky 🐦🐦

Hang it in the Louvre

The data is actually part of my forthcoming book, ”Exploring Meaning in Surveillance Discourses through Corpora“ - available to pre-order now (with a discount code 😉 😇), and coming out in March 2026 (so stay tuned ☺️) #cl2025 @cl2025.co.uk @bloomsburyacad.bsky.social

Interested in Balkan languages? The definitive reference work has arrived – on 1000 pages, in open access. www.cambridge.org/core/books/b...

A Decade of Lingwiki: An informal history 2025 marks ten years of lingwik. I like round numbers, documenting informal histories and lingwiki, and so I wanted to celebrate this anniversary by sharing the parts of the lingwiki story I am familiar with. www.superlinguo.com/post/7870922...

Children are incredible language learning machines. But how do they do it? Our latest paper, just published in TICS, synthesizes decades of evidence to propose four components that must be built into any theory of how children learn language. 1/ www.cell.com/trends/cogni... @mpi-nl.bsky.social

Some years ago, I started to notice the phrase 'going forward' in the sense 'in the future, from now on'. When @tanjasaily.fi and Turo Vartiainen organised a workshop on constructional creativity and innovation and asked me to join, I decided to take a closer look. Here is the result:

Wow!

I will forever be haunted by this footage. Trawling has only been filmed underwater a few times in documentary history, and never with such clarity. What’s so heart-rending about these shots is watching how the animals don’t just get swept up — they swim for their lives. 🌎🦑🧪

🔴 Remember Aria, the “moonshot" research agency dreamed up by Dominic Cummings? It's funded by £800m in public money but exempt from FOI laws We decided to fight for transparency... and we won 🎉 New on Democracy for Sale w/ @lucasamin.bsky.social democracyforsale.substack.com/p/dominic-cu...

"Words acquire new meanings by creative processes of semantic extension. We studied this experimentally: participants conventionalise novel labels with a partner, then extend labels to convey new meanings. Salient shared associations facilitated figurative semantic extensions." See link below!

New article in @cognitionjournal.bsky.social with @kennysmithed.bsky.social and Josie Bowerman. www.sciencedirect.com/science/arti...

New paper on metonymic and metaphorical semantic extension in a novel communication system with @kennysmithed.bsky.social and Josie Bowerman out in Cognition. www.sciencedirect.com/science/arti...

This is high art

You think the arbitrary arrest of political dissenters cannot happen in the UK? It already does. www.quaker.org.uk/news-and-eve...

Five years ago today, most historical UK monthly rainfall observations were not available to scientists. But the 66,000 pieces of paper containing the data had been scanned. With covid lockdown approaching we saw an opportunity to transcribe the data. #RainfallRescue began... 🧵

🔴 For *four years* officials refused to release names of all companies linked to Conservative donors and party figures put in the 'VIP' lane for bumper Covid contracts Now a judge has ordered them to. Huge win for @jennacorderoy.bsky.social (and DfS) democracyforsale.substack.com/p/government...

Unpublished 2011 results rescued from oblivion!⏳ osf.io/preprints/ps.... Effects of systematicity and frequency distribution (uniform, skewed) on artificial language learning. With Barbora Skarabela, @andrewdmsmith.bsky.social and @simonkirby.bsky.social

With yet more going round the houses in council tax - here is the secondary legislation I actually drafted that could reform it tomorrow andywightman.scot/2024/02/scra...

My paper with @bodowinter.bsky.social and @jwgrieve.bsky.social was published in the Journal of Linguistic Geography today. 🎉 It’s a tutorial on how to use R & ggplot2 to visualise linguistic map data. doi.org/10.1017/jlg....

NEW How Harry and Watson forced News Group Newspapers to admit wrongdoing Why the circumstances show it was NGN wanting to avoid a public trial—and not the costs risk on the claimants—that brought this case to its end By me, at @prospectmagazine.co.uk www.prospectmagazine.co.uk/ideas/law/th...

JOB ALERT! Come work with me! 34-Month Postdoc Position here at the Center for Language Evolution Studies, Nicolaus Copernicus University in Toruń in my project "Paths to Polysemy" Job offer here: www.umk.pl/en/jobs/?tas... Please repost & share widely!

I've become slightly obsessed with anachronyms; words that are used in an anachronistic way, by referring to something that was appropriate in a former time. E.g. to clock in, to film something, to hang up the phone, to dial a number. I've collected a list.

In Eugene Ionesco’s play, ‘Rhinoceros’, nearly all of the characters gradually turn nto Rhinoceroses. It’s a parable about how fascism spreads, and how its opponents concede one minor point after another before they nosedive into nazi savagery. Niall Ferguson. And ‘conservatives’ everywhere:

The worst parliament in history … so far.

Exited this short article on language evolution for a general audience by Slawek Wacewicz and me is now out. It's part of a Theme Issue of "ACADEMIA. The magazine of the Polish Academy of Sciences" on Evolution #language #linguistics doi.org/10.24425/aca...

New paper: The communicative principle of relevance This is a law-like generalisation about communicative behaviour; and in my view a landmark in our understanding of human interaction. This short piece briefly explains and updates it in (I hope) useful ways static1.squarespace.com/static/64e38...

Actual, glorious BlueSky this morning on campus. Mid-November in Scotland!

🧵SALT🧵 It's been snowing in the UK and the road gritters are out in force, begging the question: Have you ever wondered where that grit actually COMES from? The answer is more magical, beautiful and fascinating than you probably realised. 1/14

I learned some stuff about Bluesky I did not know by reading this. Maybe worth passing it on to others so we can all start getting the full benefit of the 🦋.