Inbal Arnon
@inbalarnon.bsky.social
Cognitive scientist, linguist and developmental psychologist. Studying language learning, language evolution, and the links between them. https://www.arnonlanguagelab.com/
Some happy science news (a small light in times of darkness). New paper out with @luciewolters.bsky.social and Mits Ota: : Skewed distributions facilitate infants’ word segmentation. sciencedirect.com/science/arti...
Skewed distributions facilitate infants' word segmentation
Infants can use statistical patterns to segment continuous speech into words, a crucial task in language acquisition. Experimental studies typically i…
sciencedirect.com
Super clear thread by @simonkirby.bsky.social about our new paper on whale song
Simon Kirby@simonkirby.bsky.social · last yr.A thread explaining our new discovery about humpback whale song published today in Science... We found key statistical properties that characterise all human languages in another species for the first time. We have more in common with whales than we previously thought! doi.org/10.1126/scie...
My latest story for National Geographic, about the similarities between whale song and human language, featuring @inbalarnon.bsky.social, @simonkirby.bsky.social, @ellengarland.bsky.social, @masonyoungblood.bsky.social and @rferrericancho.bsky.social!
What the science of baby-speak can tell us about whale songs
A new study reveals that whale song and human languages share features that make them easier to learn.
nationalgeographic.com
SO very excited about new paper with @simonkirby.bsky.social and @ellengarland.bsky.social: We used infant-inspired tools to analyze eight years of humpback whale song, finding recurring parts with a Zipfian frequency distribution. www.science.org/doi/10.1126/...
Whale song shows language-like statistical structure
Humpback whale song is a culturally transmitted behavior. Human language, which is also culturally transmitted, has statistically coherent parts whose frequency distribution follows a power law. These...
science.org