Scientists must push back against the threat of rising white nationalism and the dangerous and pseudoscientific ideas of eugenics
https://go.nature.com/4jGqiUc
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
So lucky and proud to have someone as dedicated to his students as Christian as a colleague.
⚠️ 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...
Nature
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 🧪
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...
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.
Centre for Language Evolution
Centre for Language Evolution
Maisy Hallam
My first ever book cover! Made with maths, pencil, drawing robot, and photographic negative. Thank you @limorraviv.bsky.social and @cedricboeckx.bsky.social for asking me to do it, and for the lovely handwritten dedication inside 😊
Simon Kirby
Aislinn Keogh
Cedric Boeckx
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
Earlier this month, @nerdpro.bsky.social and I collaborated on an Atmosphere screening of my favourite film, Arrival. It was a lot of fun projecting animated Heptapod writing and quotations from Chiang’s original. We also wrote an essay you might like: www.mediascot.org/atmosphere/a...
Simon Kirby
Aislinn Keogh
Simon Kirby
www.sciencedirect.com
Cross-linguistically, lexicons tend to be more phonetically clustered than required by the phonotactics of the language; that is, words within a langu…