@mandolinguist.bsky.social, Jennifer Culbertson, @simonkirby.bsky.social: Participants in a communication game balance production effort and comprehension accuracy (but not always optimally). See evolangconf.github.io/2026/proceed...

Day 1 of maternity leave: no work means plenty of time to do Advent of Code properly! "properly"...😐 #AdventOfCode

Last day of work before going on maternity leave! 😳 And high on my wishlist for when I return in 2027 is that OSF do another upgrade to fix the previous "upgrade" which has resulted in me being completely unable to access a single page on their website 🙃 sure would be nice to read some preprints...

Today, we published a paper on the strength of language universals (if language has X, it also has Y) given spatial & phylogenetic autocorrelation in @nathumbehav.nature.com ! It is a cool research project, led by the brilliant Annemarie Verkerk at @uni-saarland.de www.nature.com/articles/s41...

Enduring constraints on grammar revealed by Bayesian spatiophylogenetic analyses - Nature Human Behaviour

Despite their great diversity, human languages are shaped by recurring grammatical universals. Verkerk et al. show that about one-third of the proposed universals hold cross-linguistically through ana...

nature.com

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

theconversation.com/how-number-s...

How number systems shape our thinking and what it means for learning, language and culture

A new collection of research papers examines how humans conceptualize numbers and the numeral systems we’ve build around them.

theconversation.com

⚠️ New paper! Why do words sound so similar? In an agent-based model + communication game, we show that production/comprehension pressures trade off to shape lexicon structure. In @cognitionjournal.bsky.social w/ @simonkirby.bsky.social & Jenny Culbertson. www.sciencedirect.com/science/arti...

The lexicon adapts to competing communicative pressures: Explaining patterns of word similarity

Cross-linguistically, lexicons tend to be more phonetically clustered than required by the phonotactics of the language; that is, words within a langu…

sciencedirect.com

Thoughts and prayers please: I have reached the stage of pregnancy where I'm having to pirate e-books of books I already physically own because my belly is in the way of holding up a hardback 😭

Fully-funded 4-year #PhD in Cultural Evolution! Join my @erc.europa.eu project exploring how compression & compositionality drive cultural innovation: hmc-lab.com/ERCPhDCultur... Apply by Nov 12! Maybe of interest to folks from #COSMOS2025 or @eslr.bsky.social? Please feel free to share! 🙏

Walking down a narrow pavement at peak times with an umbrella is antisocial behaviour, change my mind

New paper in @openmindjournal.bsky.social with @simonkirby.bsky.social, @kennysmithed.bsky.social and Fiona Jordan! Kinship terms overwhelmingly exhibit predictive structure - terms in one part of the system help us predict other terms - a pattern which emerges because it helps us generalise better.

Predictive Structure Emerges During the Generalisation of Kin Terms to New Referents

Abstract. Despite cross-linguistic diversity in how kin relations map to terminology, there are constraints on which kin may be categorised together. But what are the constraints on kin term variation...

direct.mit.edu

The count down starts for #CESRabat! Follow @ces2026.bsky.social and join us May 11-13 next year for an exciting meeting in Rabat, Morocco. Massive thanks to the #CESRabat organising committee: Sarah Alami (co-chair) Mathieu Charbonneau (co-chair) Zachary Garfield Edmond Seabright

Durham's Dunagree Lab continues to be the most wonderful workplace. Thank you to @sheinalew.bsky.social, @chimpanzeve.bsky.social, @fhillemann.bsky.social, @amandinevisine.bsky.social and others not on Bluesky for the surprise baby shower today 🥹

@durhampsych.bsky.social current has 5 (FIVE!!) PhD studentships being advertised! 3 to work with me on children as agents of cultural evolution 2 to work with @drboothroyd.bsky.social on examining school-based body image interventions. Please share and apply! www.durham.ac.uk/departments/...

Aislinn Keogh @mandolinguist.bsky.social gave my new book to her mother to help her understand some of Aislinn's research area. Her mother is in a book-crochet group; she loved the book so much that she made a blanket (aka granny) square inspired by the book cover! This is so fantastic and touching!

Oh good, my preprint from nearly a year ago that had still not been post-moderated has now disappeared 🙃

Society for the Improvement of Psychological Science (SIPS)@improvingpsych.org · 12mo ago

Due to a recent influx of problematic submissions, PsyArXiv has switched to pre-moderating its content. If your submitted preprint had not yet been approved, it will be temporarily inaccessible to the public (you can still view your preprint when logged into your OSF account). #PsychSciSky

How does speaking a free word order language influence sentence planning and production? Evidence from Pitjantjatjara (Pama‐Nyungan, Australia). New paper by Evan Kidd & al. with Gabriela Garrido Rodríguez doi.org/10.1111/cogs.70087

How Does Speaking A Free Word Order Language Influence Sentence Planning and Production? Evidence From Pitjantjatjara (Pama‐Nyungan, Australia)

Sentence production is a stage-like process of mapping a conceptual representation to the linear speech signal via grammatical rules. While the typological diversity of languages is vast and thus mus...

doi.org

This was such a fun conversation about childhood, play, and agency across cultures. Thanks for having @sheinalew.bsky.social & I on the show!

Many Minds podcast@manymindspod.bsky.social · last yr.

New episode!! 🎙️📣 A chat w/ @sheinalew.bsky.social & @dorsaamir.bsky.social about childhood across cultures. Humans everywhere go through childhood—a time of learning, growth, and play. But this universal stage of life can look very different in different places. Listen: disi.org/varieties-of...

I am advertising 2 positions in language evolution with my group at ‪‪@dondersinst.bsky.social: 📢 Fully-funded PhD position (Robotics/AI 🤖) www.ru.nl/en/working-a... 📢 Postdoc position (Virtual Reality 🎮) www.ru.nl/en/working-a... Deadline for applications is August 14th. Please RT! :)

Introducing Dr Keogh! 🎓 Very emotional to have finally closed the chapter on my time at the @uoe-cle.bsky.social 😭 but glad to have passed this milestone in the company of my wonderful supervisors @simonkirby.bsky.social and Jenny Culbertson, and my PhD twin Elizabeth Pankratz. We made it! #PhDone

Me and @maisyhallam.bsky.social had fun at the museum yesterday! 😄🐒

Centre for Language Evolution@uoe-cle.bsky.social · last yr.

Join us at the National Museum of Scotland July 19th to learn about animal communication and what makes human communication different from the rest of our primate family! 🐵 www.nms.ac.uk/events/monke...

been a long time coming, there's now a preprint along with Will Hoppitt describing our new R package for creating, fitting and interpreting bayesian NBDA models (STBayes). www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1.... Documentation is here michaelchimento.github.io/STbayes/inde...

The Edinburgh-Durham commute certainly has its advantages 😍

Delighted to announce the publication of a collaborative effort, co-led by @limorraviv.bsky.social @mpi-nl.bsky.social, showcasing the ways in which researchers have made language evolution an empirical issue: A handbook of experimental approaches to the fascinating problem of language evolution 🧪

Very cool to have been involved with this, such a great opportunity to learn about contributing to open source software! ⌨️

jsPsych@jspsych.org · last yr.

That's a wrap on our first ever hackathon! Thanks to all of the wonderful people who attended. Lots of amazing projects and collaborations got started. 🥳

Interested in the evolution of human language and in understanding the pressures that shape languages today? Come do a PhD with me! Fully funded PhD position available in my group @mpi-nl.bsky.social, application deadline June 2nd: www.mpi.nl/career-educa...

Semantic extension in an artificial language experiment: participants conventionalise novel labels, then extend them to convey new meanings (metonymically and metaphorically) based on salient shared associations. 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

Two Fully-Funded PhD positions at Auckland Uni! Come help us understand the past and future of global cultural and linguistic diversity. #linguistics #evolution #academia #phd www.findaphd.com/phds/project...

Probably the best way I could think of to make this announcement: super excited to be joining Durham Uni in June as a postdoc/modeller on @sheinalew.bsky.social's new ERC grant, Children as Agents of Cultural Evolution. Looks like I'm going to fit right in 😍 #DungareeLab @durhamdcerc.bsky.social

Dr Eve Holden (she/her)@chimpanzeve.bsky.social · last yr.

If you were to think up the perfect lab for me to be in, this is the one! #TeamDungarees No memo necessary, all the in-person lab yday arrived in overalls for our newest member's visit @sheinalew.bsky.social @mandolinguist.bsky.social

🐳 UPCOMING BOOK ALERT 🐬 The Evolution of Cetacean Societies Edited by @darrencroft.bsky.social @andrewfoote.bsky.social @stephanielking.bsky.social and myself Preorder available now press.uchicago.edu/ucp/books/bo... #whale #dolphin #animalbehaviour