New commentary by Jennifer Culbertson, @simonkirby.bsky.social & @kennysmithed.bsky.social in response to @futrell.bsky.social & @kmahowald.bsky.social 2025: #Language models do not yet achieve explanatory adequacy because language is more than incremental prediction. 🔗https://tinyurl.com/3nufv5hp

What are the most pressing scientific and societal issues in #Language and #Communication? Take GESDA's science anticipator survey, designed in consultation with linguists from the CLE ⬇️ tinyurl.com/yv5c9dcs #GESDA

🎓 Congratulations to our @maisyhallam.bsky.social for passing her viva on Tuesday! 🎓

Congrats to Professor Antonella Sorace on receiving Sardinia’s Premio Sa Die! Honoured for her global research and advocacy for bilingualism and linguistic diversity—highlighting the importance of language, culture, and identity. Read more here: ppls.ed.ac.uk/sardinia-hon...

Sardinia Honours PPLS Linguist | School of Philosophy, Psychology & Language Sciences | School of Philosophy, Psychology and language sciences

Congratulations to Professor of Developmental Linguistics, Antonella Sorace who was awarded the "Premio Sa Die" by the Assemblea Nazionale Sarda (ANS) this week.

ppls.ed.ac.uk

🚨🚨🚨 New paper out by @anniesotropic.bsky.social, Jennifer Culbertson and @simonkirby.bsky.social: Category-specific and system-wide preferences in competition: Evidence from noun phrase harmony doi.org/10.5070/G601...

Category-specific and system-wide preferences in competition: Evidence from noun phrase harmony

Author(s): Holtz, Annie; Culbertson, Jennifer; Kirby, Simon | Abstract: Typological data show a tendency for languages to exhibit harmonic (i.e., consistent) ordering between heads and dependents. Pre...

doi.org

One week until #Evolang2026 starts in Plovdiv! Here are some of our talks: 🧵

Silvi, Prasertsom, Culbertson, Dubhashi, Johansson, Smith: Evaluating the relationship between regularity and learnability in recursive numeral systems using Reinforcement Learning https://arxiv.org/abs/2602.21720 https://arxiv.org/pdf/2602.21720 https://arxiv.org/html/2602.21720

Ponrawee Prasertsom, Andrea Silvi, Jennifer Culbertson, Moa Johansson, Devdatt Dubhashi, Kenny Smith: Recursive numeral systems are highly regular and easy to process https://arxiv.org/abs/2510.27049 https://arxiv.org/pdf/2510.27049 https://arxiv.org/html/2510.27049

New paper with @inbalarnon.bsky.social and @simonkirby.bsky.social! Learnability pressures drive the emergence of core statistical properties of language–e.g. Zipf's laws–in an iterated sequence learning experiment, with learners’ RTs indicating sensitivity to the emerging sequence information.

Cultural Transmission Promotes the Emergence of Statistical Properties That Support Language Learning

Language is passed across generations through cultural transmission. Prior experimental work, where participants reproduced sets of non-linguistic sequences in transmission chains, shows that this pr...

doi.org

I'll be presenting this work at the @uoe-cle.bsky.social in Edinburgh on the 22nd January. I look forwards to robust discussion!

The New episode of PPLS Perspectives is available now! Maisy Hallam chats with Prof. Jenny Culbertson about how #technology, #AI, and global change are reshaping the future of language — and why #linguistic diversity matters more than ever. Listen now: edin.ac/4r7axdA

⚠️ 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

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

How will language shape the future of AI, education & society? At the GESDA Global Summit last month, Prof Jennifer Culbertson explored why understanding language structure & evolution is vital in the age of AI. Read more and watch her talk: edin.ac/3X8WDJY #Linguistics #AI

PPLS Linguistics Professor talks of the importance of understanding language structure and evolution in the age of AI | School of Philosophy, Psychology & Language Sciences | School of Philosophy, Psy...

Last month Personal Chair of Experimental Linguistics Prof Jennifer Culbertson spoke at the Geneva Science and Diplomacy Anticipator (GESDA) Summit on Science of Language and Communication and how new...

edin.ac

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

Semi-compositional language like “kick the habit” takes longer for humans to process than both fully-compositional AND fully-idiomatic units! Also, a memory model with sBERT embeddings fails more on the same items. What's so special about these units? (1/2) 👇

Different ML datasets use wildly different definitions of “systematic generalization”. To REALLY tell how well a model generalizes, we must look for systematicity of the model's representations. (1/2) 👇

Less than 3 weeks to go until #CogSci2025! Here is some of the work that members of the CLE will be presenting 🧵(1/)

Really awesome study by ‪@kennysmithed.bsky.social‬‬, Josephine Bowerman & @andrewdmsmith.bsky.social out now in Cognition: Semantic extension in a novel communication system is facilitated by 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

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

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

Language and Communication is on the GESDA science breakthrough radar for the first time! Language evolution, AI, empirical method and multilingualism are the four core topics. Make your views known on how likely breakthroughs are in these areas, and how soon they might happen: tinyurl.com/2r29yep6

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...

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 🧪