Want to do an experimental PHD on the evolution of human language? Only one more week left to submit your application!

Evolvable AI paper here with some major Darwinians 'threats of a new major transition in evolution' This builds on Szathmary's 'major transitions' (with Maynard Smith) and Luc Steels' work with embodied robots. https://www.pnas.org/doi/10.1073/pnas.2527700123

Out now: The full proceedings volume of this year's #Evolang @evolangconf.bsky.social - 575 pages full of interdisciplinary research on the origins and evolution of language! doi.org/10.17617/2.3...

Excited to share our new paper in Child Dev! 🎉 We taught children names for 'monster' toys. Some names matched the sounds they made, some didn't. Children, especially 3-yr-olds, learned matching names more easily. Iconic words support word learning. Read here: track.smtpsendmail.com/9032119/c?p=...

New paper with Svetlana Kuleshova, @acwiek.bsky.social, @symbolicstorage.bsky.social, Marta Sibierska, Marek Placiński, Johan Blomberg, Przemysław Żywiczyński, Sławomir Wacewicz: Exploring the guessing-game experimental paradigm doi.org/10.1111/cogs...

"Do Great Apes Use Iconic Gestures?" Insightful, detailed discussion by @mperlman.bsky.social. Great to see a bunch of threads of evidence—including comparison to human children—in one place. wires.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10....

📣📣📣Job alert Multimodal Language Department Max Planck Institute for Psycholinguistics MAX PLANCK RESEARCH GROUP LEADER POSITION (W2 BBESG) lnkd.in/eaq5MW9a

Very interesting attempt to trace back the early evolution of a “system of conventional signs” (proto-writing system) 🧪✍️ www.pnas.org/doi/10.1073/...

A surprising new study shows that baby chickens react the same way that humans do when tested for something called the "bouba-kiki effect," which has been linked to the emergence of language. n.pr/4rBdZgj

Just published in Science, baby chickens show the bouba-kiki effect! In an accompanying Perspective, @bodowinter.bsky.social and I argue a broader, multimodal framework of iconicity is needed to illuminate the origins of language. www.science.org/doi/10.1126/...

This new paper in Science is also accompanied by a cool perspective piece by @mperlman.bsky.social & @bodowinter.bsky.social! #language #linguistics www.science.org/doi/10.1126/...

So excited to see the Oxford Handbook of Iconicity in Language come out!! Here is my chapter on Experimental approaches to sound symbolism: academic.oup.com/edited-volum...

Our paper (w/ @bodowinter.bsky.social and @mperlman.bsky.social) is finally out, officially 🥳. In it, we set ourselves the lofty goal of defining iconicity, focusing on its subjectivity, context-dependence, and gradability. Let us know if you agree with our definition? 🤔 doi.org/10.1093/oxfo...

Really nice to see this reappraisal of "design features for language". Our book "A Multimodal Language Faculty" also discusses design features, and I believe presents the only model of language that satisfies the type of linguistic framework that they advocate www.bloomsbury.com/us/multimoda...

Super proud of this fabulous team for challenging old comparative frameworks and rethinking what makes language language. Read more in the thread below 👇 or here 📖😊: www.cell.com/trends/cogni...

🚨NEW PUBLICATION ALERT!🚨 The 'Design Features' of Language Revisited (w/ @mperlman.bsky.social @glupyan.bsky.social Koen de Reus & @limorraviv.bsky.social) Feature Review out now in #OpenAccess in @cp-trendscognsci.bsky.social! #language #linguistics Paper: doi.org/10.1016/j.ti...

Very excited to announce that yesterday I submitted my PhD thesis: The Linguistic Life of the Kufr Qassem Deaf Community: Language Emergence, Variation, Change, and Persistence. I dedicate this thesis to my people: the resilient Palestinian people

Super excited to share our new multimodal corpus analysis, "Iconic Words Are Associated With Iconic Gestures" 🥳 Project led by our PhD student Ell Wilding and in collab w/ @jeannettel.bsky.social & @mperlman.bsky.social: doi.org/10.1111/cogs...

And it comes together with a reply! It was an interesting and fruitful discussion about the iconicity of different type of r-sounds :) www.nature.com/articles/s41...

Remember the cool finding by @bodowinter.bsky.social et al. that the "trilled r" [r] is associated with roughness? Well, Rémi Anselme, François Pellegrino (@laboratoireddl.bsky.social) & myself show in www.nature.com/articles/s41... that this seems more general and applies to all "r-like" sounds.

New review/theory/argumentative paper is out: "The size and shape of sound: The role of articulation and acoustics in iconicity and crossmodal correspondences". The paper delves deeply into what phonetic and cognitive mechanisms underpin spoken language iconicity. Link: doi.org/10.1121/10.0...

My latest article, "Vocal gestures in early multimodal communication: A commentary on Karadöller, Sümer and Özyürek", is now available to read in First Language. There is a paywall, but I can share the electronic version with anyone who needs it. doi.org/10.1177/0142...

Sign Language Contact, Variation, and Change 2025 conference at the University of Birmingham, UK: we are now inviting abstracts on any topic related to language contact/translanguaging, sociolinguistic variation, and language change in signing communities. sites.google.com/view/slcvc-w...

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!

Very much enjoyed presenting my poster at #TISLR15 in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia today! One important message in our poster is that factors like methodology, researcher's background, and language documentation may affect one's result. Happy to share/discuss more via DM or Email!

New paper out today in Frontiers in AI! The sociolinguistic foundations of language modelling We argue sociolinguistics provides a foundation for understanding LLMs and addressing many challenges www.frontiersin.org/journals/art... doi.org/10.3389/frai... techxplore.com/news/2025-01...

I'm excited to see this study published in Gesture, led by @kirstyrgreen.bsky.social. We get deep into the nitty-gritty of infants' early production of iconic gestures.

‘From Birds to Words: Onomatopoeia, Metaphor, and the Language of Birdsong’ Please join us for the inaugural lecture of Professor @bodowinter.bsky.social on Friday 21 February 2025 (16:00-17:00) in the Alan Walters Building, University of Birmingham.

Does sound symbolism show up in real language? Do real words for spiky things sound "spiky"? Words for small things sound "small"? I'm excited to share this new review paper summarising the existing work by myself and many others on these questions! compass.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/...

I made a starter pack of Iconicity Researchers! Please message me if you’d like to be added, or have suggestions for anyone else who should be added! go.bsky.app/C2F5iKC

Oh yeah good call! I just saw comics and thought "Neil"^^ For unconventionalised onomatopoeia there's also cool work by @mperlman.bsky.social and Gary Lupyan www.nature.com/articles/s41... and nice cross-cultural folllow up work by @acwiek.bsky.social et al www.nature.com/articles/s41...

Linguists, is there actually work on this kind of unconventionalized onomatopoeia? 🐦🐦

👩‍🎓👨‍🎓Fully funded PhD position available to come work with me at @unioslo.bsky.social using iterative learning experiments to understand the evolution of sound symbolism. 🔴 Deadline is 12. Jan '24 ⏲️ Desired starting date is Mar/April '24 shorturl.at/7hLH0

Move over bouba-kiki! New study on crossmodal iconicity shows [r] = rough and [l] = smooth, even in langs that conflate them. The results show "that speech sounds are not just acoustic objects, but they also have a texture and a shape to them". #iconicity 🐦🐦

This is an interesting article - apparently it's crosslinguistically common to associate a trilled R sound with a jagged line shape. You've got to wonder if this kind of research could be relevant for writing system development... www.theguardian.com/science/2024...

Hi BlueSky! Check out our new paper on mouthing patterns in the bimodal multilingual deaf community of Kufr Qassem www.cambridge.org/core/journal...

I'm excited to share our new study on cross-modal iconicity from our special issue in JASA! We show [r] is rough and [l] is smooth even in languages that conflate them within one phoneme. The effect is even stronger than the bouba/kiki effect!

This cool study by @acwiek.bsky.social, @susfuchs.bsky.social @mperlman.bsky.social @bodowinter.bsky.social and co-authors being reported by Guardian here: www.theguardian.com/science/2024...

It's out—my new #openaccess paper with Bodo Winter in Cognitive Science (@cogscisociety.bsky.social) 🥳. Thread 👇 (1/11) onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/...

Our paper on tracking air sacs in siamang with wider applications for other animals is now out! journals.plos.org/ploscompbiol... With sound (WARNING: siamang are loud!)! wimpouw.com/videos/air_s... Special thanks to Jaderpark Tierpark for allowing us to do the research: www.jaderpark.de/home.html