Lithuanian and Latvian are the two main surviving members of the unusual Baltic family, but have had quite different influences in recent centuries – people who have learnt both languages (whether native Balts or foreigners) reflect on their similarities and contrasts deepbaltic.com/2026/06/08/h...

How Do the Two Main Baltic Languages Differ? Locals and Foreigners Speak

Latvian and Lithuanian are the two major surviving languages from the highly idiosyncratic Baltic family – a third member, Old Prussian, fell out of use in the 18th century. Some consider variants lik...

deepbaltic.com

A new study led by researchers at @cardiffuni.bsky.social has used a modified version of Minecraft to explore how symbolic communication might have evolved. 🔗 tinyurl.com/kjy5ce8y 🧵👇 #langsky #linguistics #language

Minecraft study sheds new light on how language may have evolved

Cardiff University researchers have used Minecraft to explore why early humans may have started inventing shared signals

tinyurl.com

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...

Version 1.0 of the Grammaticon is now online! This has been in the making for over eight years. Quite a few of the entries are still preliminary, but I hope to expand and improve it over the coming months and years. Comments are welcome! An intro text is here: dlc.hypotheses.org/4316

#Rome has two new metro stations! This week, Line C opened the Porta Metronia and Colosseo-Fori Imperiali stations, which double as museums of Imperial Rome. #Roma #transit Here's an eye-opening plunge into Colosseo-Fori:

🚨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...

Coming soon - Turner & Hoffmann on Creative Construction Grammar. In this, we argue that the domain-general process of Conceptual Blending is the cognitive operation that combines constructions. BTW this will be published open access! www.cambridge.org/core/element...

Interacting agents can create shared communication systems without ever knowing if signals are successfully received. The conventionalisation process involves a curious interaction between joint attention and individual behavioural differences. doi.org/10.1371/jour.... Work with Casimir Fisch.

Exploiting individual differences to bootstrap communication

Author summary A fundamental question in the field of language evolution is how a communication system can emerge in a population that is initially unable to communicate. One theory is that human comm...

doi.org

"A compelling and thought-provoking analysis of human sociality and the origins of language." The Interaction Engine by Stephen C. Levinson (@mpi-nl.bsky.social), Out Now & #OpenAccess https://cup.org/4nusznG #OA #Linguistics #LangSky 🐦🐦

Hang it in the Louvre

The data is actually part of my forthcoming book, ”Exploring Meaning in Surveillance Discourses through Corpora“ - available to pre-order now (with a discount code 😉 😇), and coming out in March 2026 (so stay tuned ☺️) #cl2025 @cl2025.co.uk @bloomsburyacad.bsky.social

Interested in Balkan languages? The definitive reference work has arrived – on 1000 pages, in open access. www.cambridge.org/core/books/b...

A Decade of Lingwiki: An informal history 2025 marks ten years of lingwik. I like round numbers, documenting informal histories and lingwiki, and so I wanted to celebrate this anniversary by sharing the parts of the lingwiki story I am familiar with. www.superlinguo.com/post/7870922...

A Decade of Lingwiki: An informal history Lingwiki...

A Decade of Lingwiki: An informal history Lingwiki is the name used for an informal network of people and events with the aim of improving the representation of linguistics on Wikipedia. Whether it’...

superlinguo.com

Children are incredible language learning machines. But how do they do it? Our latest paper, just published in TICS, synthesizes decades of evidence to propose four components that must be built into any theory of how children learn language. 1/ www.cell.com/trends/cogni... @mpi-nl.bsky.social

Constructing language: a framework for explaining acquisition

Explaining how children build a language system is a central goal of research in language acquisition, with broad implications for language evolution, adult language processing, and artificial intelli...

cell.com

Some years ago, I started to notice the phrase 'going forward' in the sense 'in the future, from now on'. When @tanjasaily.fi and Turo Vartiainen organised a workshop on constructional creativity and innovation and asked me to join, I decided to take a closer look. Here is the result:

Wow!

Dr Ella Hawkins@ellamchawk.bsky.social · last yr.

Today is National Biscuit Day, and it’s about time that I populated this account with biscuit (cookie) sets from the past few years. Here are some of my favourites. 🧵 First up, a set inspired by the delicious designs of William Morris and John Henry Dearle.

I will forever be haunted by this footage. Trawling has only been filmed underwater a few times in documentary history, and never with such clarity. What’s so heart-rending about these shots is watching how the animals don’t just get swept up — they swim for their lives. 🌎🦑🧪

🔴 Remember Aria, the “moonshot" research agency dreamed up by Dominic Cummings? It's funded by £800m in public money but exempt from FOI laws We decided to fight for transparency... and we won 🎉 New on Democracy for Sale w/ @lucasamin.bsky.social democracyforsale.substack.com/p/dominic-cu...

Democracy for Sale 1, Dominic Cummings 0

We fought to expose the £800m research agency that Cummings built to escape scrutiny - and we won.

democracyforsale.substack.com

"Words acquire new meanings by creative processes of semantic extension. We studied this experimentally: participants conventionalise novel labels with a partner, then extend labels to convey new meanings. Salient shared associations facilitated figurative semantic extensions." See link below!

Andrew Smith@andrewdmsmith.bsky.social · last yr.

New article in @cognitionjournal.bsky.social with @kennysmithed.bsky.social and Josie Bowerman. www.sciencedirect.com/science/arti...

New article in @cognitionjournal.bsky.social with @kennysmithed.bsky.social and Josie Bowerman. www.sciencedirect.com/science/arti...

Semantic extension in a novel communication system is facilitated by salient shared associations

Creative processes of semantic extension play a key role in language change, grammaticalisation, and (by hypothesis) the early origins and evolution o…

sciencedirect.com

New paper on metonymic and metaphorical semantic extension in a novel communication system with @kennysmithed.bsky.social and Josie Bowerman out in Cognition. www.sciencedirect.com/science/arti...

This is high art

You think the arbitrary arrest of political dissenters cannot happen in the UK? It already does. www.quaker.org.uk/news-and-eve...

Quakers condemn police raid on Westminster Meeting House

Police broke into a Quaker Meeting House last night (27 March) and arrested six young people holding a meeting over concerns for the climate and Gaza.

quaker.org.uk

Five years ago today, most historical UK monthly rainfall observations were not available to scientists. But the 66,000 pieces of paper containing the data had been scanned. With covid lockdown approaching we saw an opportunity to transcribe the data. #RainfallRescue began... 🧵

🔴 For *four years* officials refused to release names of all companies linked to Conservative donors and party figures put in the 'VIP' lane for bumper Covid contracts Now a judge has ordered them to. Huge win for @jennacorderoy.bsky.social (and DfS) democracyforsale.substack.com/p/government...

Government loses legal battle over Covid ‘VIP Lane’

Exclusive: Judge slams “most unsatisfactory” Cabinet Office and orders release of names of 'VIP' firms to Democracy for Sale reporter - after *four year* wait.

democracyforsale.substack.com

Unpublished 2011 results rescued from oblivion!⏳ osf.io/preprints/ps.... Effects of systematicity and frequency distribution (uniform, skewed) on artificial language learning. With Barbora Skarabela, @andrewdmsmith.bsky.social and @simonkirby.bsky.social

With yet more going round the houses in council tax - here is the secondary legislation I actually drafted that could reform it tomorrow andywightman.scot/2024/02/scra...

Scrapping the Council Tax is Straightforward - Land Matters

Today, the STUC has published an open letter to Scotland’s political parties urging them to revalue Scotland’s domestic property in order to provide an accurate tax base for the Council Tax which is s...

andywightman.scot

My paper with @bodowinter.bsky.social and @jwgrieve.bsky.social was published in the Journal of Linguistic Geography today. 🎉 It’s a tutorial on how to use R & ggplot2 to visualise linguistic map data. doi.org/10.1017/jlg....

NEW How Harry and Watson forced News Group Newspapers to admit wrongdoing Why the circumstances show it was NGN wanting to avoid a public trial—and not the costs risk on the claimants—that brought this case to its end By me, at @prospectmagazine.co.uk www.prospectmagazine.co.uk/ideas/law/th...

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!