Can a bluesky plea possibly summon up someone near Christchurch who has a rotary phone gathering dust in their garage? (Wanting to borrow one for a prop for a school play)

Published today. The vowel in 'just' is undergoing an independent sound change, separate from any changes to KIT or STRUT. Filed under the ever-growing category of "things that were supposed to be fun little papers, that unexpectedly ended up taking many years" www.degruyterbrill.com/document/doi...

Today's L4 at inflekt.net requires knowing a quirk of the dictionary. I wonder if you've found it yet @upsidebackwards.bsky.social ?

The NSF 2027 budget has noted that they will close out the Social, Behavioral, and Economic Science Program (SBE). This is not a good thing. nsf-gov-resources.nsf.gov/files/FY-202...

Here's the pōtiki, being Ashburton-famous. Can't wait for this show to open next week. It looks stunning. Also can't wait for it to be over, when we have a much-needed week of nothingness planned.

I hit my head against the L4 inflekt, then realised I was mistakenly doing a regular puzzle instead of the daily. So here it is via the 'share puzzle' feature, in case @amycgale.bsky.social, @upsidebackwards.bsky.social or (anyone else) can beat me. greybeetle213.github.io/inflect/?mUK...

They made them take down the videos because they would cause "reputational damage" to people like this young man, Nathan Cavanuagh, so definitely don't post this all over the internet with the name Nathan Cavanaugh attached, or this guy might suffer reputational damage. This guy, Nathan Cavanaugh.

Relatively painless level 4 at inflekt.net today @amycgale.bsky.social

Killing time in Hakatere, waiting to collect a child, and wondering if I'll ever beat @amycgale.bsky.social at inflekt.

CorpusPhon2 will take place on Monday 29/6/26 in Montréal, Québec, right after LabPhon20. Submissions are due on 3/13/26 and our website has been updated to reflect this. Please consider submitting to our workshop! sites.google.com/view/corpusp...

“Humans across multiple languages spontaneously associate the nonwords kiki & bouba with spiky & round shapes, respectively...We tested the bouba-kiki effect in baby chickens. Similar to humans, they spontaneously chose a spiky shape when hearing a kiki sound & a round shape when hearing a bouba.”😲🧪

I'm happy with 'ease' but my 'owe' can likely be beaten. @amycgale.bsky.social

Maybe today's the day I'll edge ahead of @amycgale.bsky.social (www.inflekt.net)

May I suggest that what everyone needs in their life right now is a daily linguistics puzzle. Here's me bashing through a few lvl 1 'inflekt' puzzles, & my solution to today's daily level 3 & 4 (RP) - in thread. And no, I don't have anything else I should be doing, thanks for asking. www.inflekt.net

Lots of my lovely tweeps (of old) helped out by participating in this experiment. Turns out y'all have a lovely big te reo Māori proto-lexicon, and your implicit knowledge of Māori words looks to be stronger than NZ teenagers. Thank you so much for your help! www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10....

Linguists, as an early christmas present, I hereby present you with a link to 'inflect'. I am addicted, and you will be too. greybeetle213.github.io/inflect/

Have proudly graduated up a level in 'inflekt'! greybeetle213.github.io/inflect/ And no. I definitely don't have any other things I should be doing....

1. New Zealand doctors are officially suing to reverse the country's ban on puberty blockers for gender affirming care. “These regulations are being enacted based on politics, not on clinical evidence." Subscribe to support our journalism. www.erininthemorning.com/p/were-takin...

I'm sure it's totally coincidental that the AoNZ government's changes to the Marsden Fund have been followed by successful applications led by female investigators dropping from 55% to 33%, and successful applications led by Māori investigators dropping from 13% to 5%. 🫠 🧪

I appear to have spoken to a reporter who took seriously the gravity of NZ's science crisis does anybody have a newsroom pro subscription so that I can learn what other choice phrases I used on the record? newsroom.co.nz/2025/10/29/w...

Anyone wanna come and hang out with us at NZILBB? We're advertising a fun postdoc position on a project looking at the representation of part of speech in te reo Māori. Do get in touch if you have questions. jobs.canterbury.ac.nz/jobdetails/a...

Word got around that I'm willing to write reviews. No posts for two years, then bang! – two reviews in two days. #Ōtautahi #Christchurch #Lyttelton #theatre #Shakespeare #QueenLear

I want to explain a few things and then it might be clearer why UK trans people are upset. In 2001 I married my wife, Sylvia. In 2005 I started medical transition. (1/13)

love my job. I get to work with great collaborators on fun projects like this one, published today. For his thesis, Andy looked at the production and perception of singing by NZers. He shows, consistent with previous work, that NZ singing is dominated by an American-influenced style.

Since search is dead, how soon do you think Google Scholar is headed for the Google Graveyard? I'm betting it's soon, and academia is NOT prepared

This is the move.

Seven of the sources cited in MAHA commission's report do not exist: “The paper cited is not a real paper that I or my colleagues were involved with," says one researcher. www.notus.org/health-scien...

I'm very excited to see this new work led by Gia Hurring is now out. We did a lot to shore up our approach to PCA for investigating vocalic covariation and find striking commonality of patterns across multiple corpora of New Zealand English and panel data doi.org/10.1017/S095...

Hey one of the largest disability support providers in the country has COMPLETELY RUN OUT OF MONEY and no one is hearing me SCREAM IT FROM THE HILLTOPS. Please boost this and please send it to your MPs.

We’re seeking nominations for up to five outstanding dissertations in cognitive science for the Glushko Dissertation Prize! Each prize will be accompanied by a ✨$10,000 award✨ Self-nominations are welcome! Learn more and nominate at cognitivesciencesociety.org/glushko-diss... 🗓️ Deadline: Jan. 18

Important thread for everyone in NZ. If you think the treaty bill is awful, this is the one they are distracting you from. Submissions close Jan 13th

Hot on the heels of humanities & social sciences being removed from the Marsden Fund, now MBIE will no longer provide top-up funding to successful Horizon Europe projects. Announced December 19 and ahead of the SSAG report. Govt determined to cripple these disciplines.

The attack on the humanities and social sciences by the New Zealand government continues.

It’s not clear to me this is about funding “impactful science” as opposed to that just being a useful excuse for their gutting of some of the important mechanisms for showing their policies do harm.

Here's my original email. The list of "sensitive" subjects is scarily broad and also vague, and covers most marginalized people and communities.

Kicking of DoReCo's Bluesky presence with a bang: DoReCo 2.0 was published today, featuring open-access, time-aligned spoken corpora on, by now, 53 language, ca. 7,000 words each, with morpheme glosses for 38 of them. Check it out at doreco.huma-num.fr

Researchers pen scathing open letter to Minister over Marsden Fund changes "I find it immensely ironic that the Minister is basing this decision on its benefit to the economy, when the study of the economy is itself classed as a social science."

So I've had this ruler for a while that I grabbed from Dad's house. Last week Mum commented on how old it looked. Me: "Well it belongs to Marc Cole, whoever that is" Mum: "I taught him at primary" Me: "Well you stole his ruler" Does Kiwi Bluesky have the power to reunite Marc Cole with his ruler?

Initial analysis of the impact on Marsden Fund changes on success rates for Māori researchers, with a link through to modelled data based on the 2024 funding round here: www.maramatanga.ac.nz/publication/...

I've been playing this deadpan German linguistics bop on repeat for the past 12 hours and I'm delighted to report that it's on youtube now!! 🎶 More, more, more morphology 🎶

Yeah, you can tell the government didn't want any leaks or advance resistance to its cuts for Marsden research for humanities and social sciences - universities completely out of the loop according to this:

Unbelievable: “The focus of the Fund will shift to core science, with humanities and social sciences panels disbanded and no longer supported. Real impact on our economy will come from areas such as physics, chemistry, maths, engineering and biomedical sciences" www.beehive.govt.nz/release/mars...

nzilbb.vowels: Vowel Covariation Tools (0.3.1) is now on CRAN. The package contains many useful functions for applying Principal Component Analysis to vocalic data and visualising the results. Website and documentation here: nzilbb.github.io/nzilbb_vowels/ #rstats #sociophonetics

Went to see Moana 2 reo Māori today. Lovely to see it in te reo, but we were all disappointed that it had English subtitles, and very distracted by them. Does anyone know if there are also screenings without subtitles? (And if so, bonus points if you know how we find one in Ōtautahi!).

Non-speakers of te reo Māori in NZ have extensive implicit language knowledge. Our new paper adds data from kids. Implicit knowledge of te reo is built both in childhood and in adulthood. Continuing exposure throughout the lifespan leads to increased knowledge. degruyter.com/document/doi...

Emanuel Schegloff, one of the founding figures of Conversation Analysis has passed away. Aside from the brilliant, concise yet often very long papers, he taught so many of us the patience and imagination required for ‘unmotivated listening’ .

NZILBB is currently advertising a postdoc position for the Marsden project "Does Machine-Assisted Writing Erase Linguistic Diversity?". jobs.canterbury.ac.nz/jobdetails/a...