🚨 New Publication Alert! 🚨 Out now in Language and Linguistics Compass with @stefanhartmann.bsky.social & Antonio Benítez-Burraco: "The role of play in language structure, acquisition and evolution" compass.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/ln…

Bit embarrassed to be sharing this so late but I've been on parental leave... a short blog post explaining why this (not so) recent paper led by Stella Punselie & @dingemansemark.bsky.social offers a neat method to dispel some of the scepticism around iconicity: www.bonniemclean.net/news/2025-02...

So happy to see our chapter in Capturing Expressivity is now out! Our best dreams of all the wonderful ways you can explore #ideophones! 😍

🚨🚨🚨 I'm hiring a Postdoc for a 3-year position to come work with me at the University of Oslo using iterative learning experiments to understand the evolution of sound symbolism. Please share widely. 🔴 Deadline is May 31st '25 ⏲️ Desired starting date is Fall '25 shorturl.at/vSTZx

Super excited to run these experiments, thank you to @gorillapsych.bsky.social for funding curiosity-driven research! 🎉

Sharing a new paper with Kimi Akita, Jiyeon Park & Arthur Thompson. We introduce a new concept of "phonosemantic maps" for typological research on #iconicity, inspired by @haspelmath.bsky.social's semantic maps for tracking patterns of grammaticalistion. Enjoy! www.bonniemclean.net/news/2024-04...

A bit of wisdom from my HoD's whiteboard which is easy to forget in this output-oriented academic world

It's claimed perceptual language reflects a biologically grounded hierarchy of the senses. Using a stratified global sample of 100 languages, a new study led by @enorcliffe.bsky.social finds domain-general constraints explain lexicalization patterns instead. muse.jhu.edu/pub/24/artic...

Important #stats thread. Relatedly, it's also important to remember that it doesn't make sense to talk about error control under misspecified models. www.frontiersin.org/articles/10....

Apparently I have the same taste in tourist destinations as grey nomads... we've had a whole tour group of Australian retirees following us across our babymoon in Norway, so romantic 🤣

🚨 I'm looking to hire a post-doctoral researcher in multimodal communication to my ERC-funded project for 4️⃣ years! For more information, please see the announcement here: jobs.helsinki.fi/job-invite/3... Please share the announcement widely! #multimodality

Why does no one warn you the sleep loss of having kids actually starts during pregnancy already? Was planning to have this lovely time to farewell sleeping in but instead my body is waking me up earlier and earlier with each trimester 😭 Such betrayal!

The level of security checks @adobe.bsky.social makes you go through just to log in to edit a pdf you'd think you were trying to get access to nuclear launch codes or something. Definitely does not make me inclined to continue my free trial.

Awesome innovative #ideophone compound just witnessed in Japanese. The caption says my legs are shaking gakuburu gakuburu, which is a combination of two ideophones, gakugaku (sound of shaky legs, e.g. knees knocking) and buruburu (depicting a shaking movement). Love it! 😍🐶🌨️

Yes, it's not hard to say "spoken languages"!

Yes! Australia is the worst for disenfranchising overseas citizens. Like we somehow betrayed them by daring to leave 🙄 So bad for a country of immigrants!

Reading a review paper on abstract concepts. Very surprised to read colour-emotion associations are apparently found to be stable across cultures. So I check the study they cite of 30 "nations" (weird choice of unit). Look at the language family column, and also the double counting of languages

PSA for those into #iconicity the deadline for IACS-5 in lovely Lund next August is coming up on Monday next week (January 15th). Topics include - semiosis, polysemiosis, multimodality - universal vs culture specific semiosis - metaphor and metonymy konferens.ht.lu.se/iacs-5/

The LingComm grants are running again in 2024! We have (at least) two $500USD grants for communicating linguistics to wider audiences. Please share with colleagues, friends and students if they have a pop linguistics project that needs some support! lingcomm.org/grants/

Turkish #ideophones alter softness perception, awesome! www.frontiersin.org/articles/10....

Example for a successful language revitalization project: Salish School of Spokane doing a full immersion class room in Nsyilxcən (Colville-Okanagan Salish): youtu.be/urIlnR_6fRE?...

Everything you need to understand about Australian society once again perfectly encapsulated by the Aussie lamb ad 🤣 I live for these every year🐑🇦🇺 youtu.be/V1e0apyGASc?...

Love the sentiment, design, and fit of this shirt!

Yesterday, the account @lingdiscovery posted a thread on twitter with the title "Here are 3 reasons why I hate conlangs". In reply, I wrote this blog post that asks the question: What are Conlangs Good For? halmahera.hypotheses.org/700

Hello Zotero my old friend 😅 First paper I'm reading in the new year, intended to start on it this morning but better late than never! 🤓📖

Thank you @nigella.bsky.social for introducing me to speculaas with cheese, such a fantastic combination!

Shocked by how little awareness of covid there is in the Netherlands. My elderly mother-in-law can't get a covid vaccine as they've stopped offering them...in the middle of winter and christmas. So just a reminder #CovidIsNotOver and #LongCovid is 10-30% of MILD cases www.nature.com/articles/s41...

21-12-23 Dear Us, we made it. All the way to another Shortest Day. Whatever grim fuckery awaits, the LIGHT is coming back. January alone gives us 1 hour 20 minutes more. If we help one another, we can get there. We're brilliant, I love you, come ON. Yours, A GHOST PENSIONER

Unbelievable that these are the same people voting to open up new coalmines in Queensland, with one approved as recently as May this year!

What if we took some time off this holiday break rather than caught up on writing or submitted another grant proposal? It would certainly help even the playing field for the disabled folks catching up on doctor's appointments. Don't feed the publish or perish beast.

it's wild that R, the ubiquitous statistical computing language, was co-created by a Māori prof (Ross Ihaka) — and yet the vast majority of scientists who use R don't know this is like inventing the toaster. possibly the largest impact of a single member of an indigenous community on modern science

So looking forward to this! 😄😄😄

Absolutely blown away by this super holistic, *practical* Peircean (!) coding system for analysing polysemiotic utterances in Paamese and Pitjantjatjara sand drawing performances 😍 Amazing! Also really appreciate the discussion of signs vs signals! www.degruyter.com/document/doi...

Interesting! 🐒🧠 www.nature.com/articles/s41...

Wow, you can really tell at Arlanda how much more racist and anti-immigration Sweden has become since the new government got in. Sooooo much more questioning everyone than when we used to fly into Arlanda, and very reluctant to serve non-EU citizens even when they have customs workers doing nothing.

So apparently all the cold resistance I built up in Sweden vanished the second I stepped foot on Aussie soil again. How is it that 15 in Sweden feels warm but 15 in Australia feels freezing? It is what it is but I don't understand it

Today a group of respected climate scientists released their 2023 report on the terrifying state of our #climate. It should be read by every policymaker, decisionmaker, and journalist on the planet. Here is a thread of some key takeaways. #greensky #energysky 1/n

Woman the hunter. Love this piece from @sciam.bsky.social showing the idea of 'man the hunter' and woman the passive gatherer doesn't make sense, physiologically, anthropologically, or archaeologically. www.scientificamerican.com/article/the-...

Studying sensory language I'm so interested to know the psychology behind some of these candle names 😆 www.instagram.com/reel/CyvyCH-...

This paper might cause Steven Pinker to have a stroke. www.nature.com/articles/s41...

Introducing my husband to the Newtown institution that is Thai Pothong. Such nostalgia 🤖🇹🇭