My neurologist is Bengali, so my appointment this afternoon was twice as long since he wanted to talk neuro shop with me and then ask me etymology questions about Perso-Arabic borrowings into Bangla

A very interesting research setup on grammatical differences and how brain processes them. Done with a couple of understudied languages, Hindi and Nepal. Finnish has a similar differential object marking depending on quantitative definiteness of the object. And a thorough Bsky-summary, thanks!

In other news, the proofs are up for my new paper, with a dream team of Subhs Shrestha, @linguistbrian.bsky.social, Diogo Almeida, Alec Marantz, and Rajesh Bhatt! direct.mit.edu/nol/article/...

At UCSC, our Psycholing 2 is a crash course on sentence processing for about 5 weeks, and then a practicum to do a novel research project for another 5 weeks. The 'final' is a poster presentation where each group gets to learn about what each other did.

The world upon seeing Pombon

I would give my life for Pombon

AAHHH I LOVE THIS DUMB DOG!!!

She’s the cousin he comes out to on one of their annual Thanksgiving walks

Really just the absolute floor of demands that ICE must be abolished, dismantled, and everyone involved with its creation held accountable.

Your reminder that cops in LA maje $20 to $30k more than starting tenure track faculty in the CSU system. In case you’re curious about priorities.

Oh hey paper acceptance! I didn't see it because I couldn't log into my old UGA e-mail lol 🫠

Did you know there’s a horror movie coming out about a translation error?

yes, Dems are 100% ok with it. if they weren’t, they wouldn’t have voted for it dozens of times or tried to hit Republicans from the right for not being “serious about the border” during the 2024 election or be totally abdicate fighting against it now. but they did all that, they’re social fascists

Democrats already warming up there 'ICE for all *who want it*' platform for 2028

"Should we vote to give more money to the people shooting my constituents in the face?" is not a complicated political question. And yet, Democrats don't seem able to answer it.

Another friend put it to me like this: "ICE has made the classic Nazi mistake. They've invaded a winter people in the winter."

Whoever took my gym bag at Santa Cruz Athletic Club at ~11:30 AM this morning, then spent ~$2,000 at a hardware store on my credit cards and withdrew more from the ATM, can you please at least return my cards, my weightlifting equipment, and my hearing aids please?

Raise your hand if you’re doing more in-class writing and activities on paper and the whiteboard.

It is now confirmed from multiple sources that ICE shot a legal observer dead on Portland in Minneapolis between 34th and 33rd street. The victim is dead

tooken

andy cohen's "am i excited about 2026? [pregnant pause] yeah. i... yeah. i mean, what's the alternative?" is the realest thing i've seen all night

Strict/sloppy ambiguity from Andy Cohen and Anderson Cooper on CNN’s NYE event: “Agree or disagree, if I went to the gym every I’d have an ass like the guys on Heated Rivalry” Andy Cohen, Anderson Cooper, and BJ Novak all hold up signs that say “disagree”

Multilingualism WithOut Words: A non-lexicalist model of bilingualism: https://osf.io/a5e3u

why don't they make dental treats for humans

What if instead of computers having mice they had RATS

Mass Effect style dialogue wheel except the only dialogue options ever offered are "No, yeah, for sure." and "Damn, that's crazy"

Gap-less filler in this description of Clair Obscur Expedition 33: 'Oh there's this giant lady that keeps painting the age that everybody dies' youtube.com/shorts/qtYJN...

1. Air Force One 2. Conspiracy Theory 3. Spawn 4. George of the Jungle 5. Men in Black Not looking good

I really hope that Marcus the Worm somehow produces the ADS' Word Of The Year next year

What a world to go to bed thinking about one mass shooting and wake up to news of another, a targeted hate crime, at a Hanukkah celebration in Sydney. And also in the video where an actual hero, Ahmed al Ahmed chooses not to kill one of the terrorists.

I’ve seen two kids post that the Brown University shooting is the second school shooting they’ve survived. This should enrage and radicalize everyone. Kids shouldn’t have to survive one shooting, let alone two. No more thoughts and prayers. It’s time to address the guns.

What a time to be a university professor, huh?

i can't imagine any unforeseen negative consequences to a policy like this. it's downright bulletproof

With Clair Obscur sweeping Game Awards 2025 I'm envisioning a future generation of Francophile otakus

Chilling. Where are the free speech advocates?

Had a pretty good day, especially since it was last day of classes of the quarter. Got home around 11 PM to find my door wide open and my cats missing. Anyway, it's 2:40 AM now and the cats are indoors after hours of me sitting outside with cat treats and a blanket trying to coax them out of hiding

discussing today in seminar: Ross, L. E., Kinitz, D. J., & Kia, H. (2022). Pronouns are a public health issue. American Journal of Public Health, 112(3), 360-362. ajph.aphapublications.org/doi/full/10.... #linguistics

Just learned that Arabic for Tamil uses complex vowel ligatures, like the Indian abugidas, which include the harakaat en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arwi

What if there was a whole league of legends

Really big announcement! See @wtimkey.bsky.social's thread for the details on an exciting new preprint from the NYU-UMass Syntactic Ambiguity Processing group. It is the culmination of the team's research efforts over these last couple of years, and we're really happy with it.

this is what it feels like to be a professor

i actually feel pretty fucking negative about the like. glee some of my acquaintances and colleagues are expressing about famous dudes in our field having ties to serial rapists. i think its actually not funny or exciting to find this out

I need there to be a Yorgos Lanthimos adaptation of The Picture of Dorian Gray ASAP

'how drunk can I send you something?'

Good things are possible and we don’t have to settle.

Jaw is on the floor watching election results. There's actually some hope

Love that the Bravely Default HD Remaster has a whole-ass rhythm minigame for Love In the Crossfire

There's a guy standing near the student union on UCSC campus with a giant banner that says 'POLYAMORY' and he's handing out flyers