10 years after the initial idea, Artificial Humanities is here! Thanks so much to all who have preordered it. I hope you enjoy reading it and find this research approach as generative as I do. More to come!

One of the main linguistic conferences on phonology has just started. It's such a special moment, because who would have thought that a poster on whale phonology would be presented at the Annual Meeting on Phonology. @projectceti.bsky.social

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One of the main linguistic conferences on phonology has just started. It's such a special moment, because who would have thought that a poster on whale phonology would be presented at the Annual Meeting on Phonology. @projectceti.bsky.social

How to model learning of Mandarin tones with no supervision, from raw sound, with a realistic model of human language learning? The model learns the four tones (male only near perfectly) and also replicates stages of tone learning in language acquisition. What is more difficult to learn for children

Deep tonology!

Deep tonology!

is also more difficult for the models. For methodology on how to analyze internal layers in tone learning, see the paper with the amazing Kai Schenck: arxiv.org/abs/2509.17859

The peer reviews were stellar! We're excited to see the book out in the world

How to model learning of Mandarin tones with no supervision, from raw sound, with a realistic model of human language learning? The model learns the four tones (male only near perfectly) and also replicates stages of tone learning in language acquisition. What is more difficult to learn for children

Harvard University is protected by the constitution of Massachusetts, the oldest continuously used written constitution in the world. "Whereas our wise and pious ancestors, so early as the year one thousand six hundred and thirty-six, laid the foundation of Harvard College,

Beguš’s team identified two codas with distinct sound patterns that the researchers called an a-vowel and i-vowel. They also found that these vowels changed frequency in four ways: they can rise, they can fall, they can fall then rise or they can rise then fall7.

The frequency changes could be indicative of diphthongs."

Diphthongs, or gliding vowels, are created by combining two vowels in a single syllable, such as in ‘pout’, resulting in a frequency change as the lips and tongue move.

Vowels in human speech differ on the basis of the tongue’s position and the shape of the lips, such as for the ‘ee’ in cheese versus the ‘o’ in hot.

A news feature in Nature reporting on our paper that shows whale vocalizations are analogous to human vowels and diphthongs. The paper accepted for publication as of today @projectceti.bsky.social

Whale vowels in a feature in Nature today! "Beguš and his colleagues have since found that whale codas can differ in ways analogous to vowels and diphthongs in human language.

A news feature in Nature reporting on our paper that shows whale vocalizations are analogous to human vowels and diphthongs. The paper accepted for publication as of today @projectceti.bsky.social

Whale vowels in a feature in Nature today! "Beguš and his colleagues have since found that whale codas can differ in ways analogous to vowels and diphthongs in human language.

There is increasing interest in using AI tools not only to listen in on animal speech, but also to potentially talk back go.nature.com/4pqGYCP

our work with @metahaven.bsky.social

Berkeley linguists had a busy summer! lx.berkeley.edu/news/summer-...

Read about our work in ITNOW

Check out this amazing program for the Special Session on Deep Phonology at the Annual Meeting on Phonology 2025 to take place at UC Berkeley on September 27! More info: sites.google.com/berkeley.edu...

A beautiful quote by David this week in @newscientist.com: Gruber is more positive, though. “We wrote the definition of language and other animals will never be able to pass it, but if you see language as a continuum, then whales have it,” he says. @projectceti.bsky.social

Michiganders! I'm giving a colloquium at the CS department at the University of Michigan. Drop by an learn how our interpretability techniques can lead to scientific discovery.

Read about our paper in @spectrum.ieee.org IEEE Spectrum print edition.

A beautiful quote by David this week in @newscientist.com: Gruber is more positive, though. “We wrote the definition of language and other animals will never be able to pass it, but if you see language as a continuum, then whales have it,” he says. @projectceti.bsky.social

Read about our paper in @spectrum.ieee.org IEEE Spectrum print edition.

Michiganders! I'm giving a colloquium at the CS department at the University of Michigan. Drop by an learn how our interpretability techniques can lead to scientific discovery.

"We will soon be able to talk with other species. Which will be first?" (Chris Simms, New Scientist, Life, 25 Aug 2025). 💙🐬https://www.newscientist.com/article/2492442-we-will-soon-be-able-to-talk-with-other-species-which-will-be-first/

Check out this amazing program for the Special Session on Deep Phonology at the Annual Meeting on Phonology 2025 to take place at UC Berkeley on September 27! More info: sites.google.com/berkeley.edu...

We will soon be able to talk with other species. Which will be first?...

Read about our work in ITNOW

Check out this episode "we have grandmas swimming with other whales, they're taking care of each other's offspring. And they exchange in dialogues these clicks that on the surface look really alien. But if you look into them deeply, you can see a lot of linguistic traits." youtu.be/jaRUrN_SdNo?...

Check out this episode "we have grandmas swimming with other whales, they're taking care of each other's offspring. And they exchange in dialogues these clicks that on the surface look really alien. But if you look into them deeply, you can see a lot of linguistic traits." youtu.be/jaRUrN_SdNo?...

The full article: www.zeit.de/2025/36/spra...

Berkeley linguistics is hiring an Assistant Professor in language revitalization! aprecruit.berkeley.edu/JPF05022

Honored to be featured in DIE ZEIT, Germany’s leading weekly. The piece explores the uniqueness (or not) of human language and spotlights our infant‑like, more realistic alternatives to LLMs as well as our work on metalinguistic abilities of LLMs.

Honored to be featured in DIE ZEIT, Germany’s leading weekly. The piece explores the uniqueness (or not) of human language and spotlights our infant‑like, more realistic alternatives to LLMs as well as our work on metalinguistic abilities of LLMs.

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Berkeley linguistics is hiring an Assistant Professor in language revitalization! aprecruit.berkeley.edu/JPF05022

Morris Alper, Moran Yanuka, Raja Giryes, Ga\v{s}per Begu\v{s}: ConlangCrafter: Constructing Languages with a Multi-Hop LLM Pipeline https://arxiv.org/abs/2508.06094 https://arxiv.org/pdf/2508.06094 https://arxiv.org/html/2508.06094

Morris Alper, Moran Yanuka, Raja Giryes, Ga\v{s}per Begu\v{s} ConlangCrafter: Constructing Languages with a Multi-Hop LLM Pipeline https://arxiv.org/abs/2508.06094

When you’re big you can play the big violin

We're delighted to host the annual @projectceti.bsky.social workshop on Decoding Communication in Nonhuman Species. The team's linguistics lead, Berkeley Professor @begus.bsky.social, was profiled in a recent @ucberkeleylibrary.bsky.social feature. www.lib.berkeley.edu/about/news/l...

Teaching children science has never been more important. Thrilled that our paper on finding new patterns in whales with AI interpretability helped inspire Kathryn’s new book, The UFO Files. The book asks: How would we decode an alien communication system?

If clapping is inappropriate during movements, why does YouTube think it can slap me with commercials during movements?!

Available online now…