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Reposted by Balthasar Bickel

NCCR Evolving Language @nccrlanguage.bsky.social · Aug 29

With @chiarabarbieri.bsky.social @annagraff.bsky.social
@balthasarbickel.bsky.social @kkshimizu1.bsky.social Damián E. Blasi, Erik J. Ringen, Vladimir Bajić, Daphné Bavelier, and Brigitte Pakendorf.

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Anna Graff @annagraff.bsky.social · Aug 30

Our paper is out! We linked genetic and linguistic data to study how contact changes language and found consistent patterns of borrowing across contact situations
@balthasarbickel.bsky.social @chiarabarbieri.bsky.social @nccrlanguage.bsky.social @isle-uzh.bsky.social
doi.org/10.1126/sciadv.adv7521

Patterns of genetic admixture reveal similar rates of borrowing across diverse scenarios of language contact

Human population contact leads to consistently similar rates of linguistic borrowing, but effects vary across linguistic features.

www.science.org

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Balthasar Bickel @balthasarbickel.bsky.social · Jul 18

Exciting new opening @nccrlanguage.bsky.social with the option of permanent extension. If you work in cutting-edge stats and are interested in joining a highly inter-disciplinary, vibrant community, don't hesitate to apply at tinyurl.com/3fxwjk8e

UZH: Statistician

Within the National Center of Competence in Research (NCCR) Evolving Language and its 46 different research groups from a large variety of disciplines across Switzerland, and the University of Zurich ...

tinyurl.com

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NCCR Evolving Language @nccrlanguage.bsky.social · Jul 15

📰 A team of researchers from the University of Neuchâtel studied the ability to associate a new sound with an object. This cognitive faculty of rapid association was already attested in humans, but what about apes, our closest relatives?

evolvinglanguage.ch/associating-...

Associating a sound with the object it refers to - NCCR Evolving Language

A team of researchers from the University of Neuchâtel studied the ability to associate a new sound with an object, amidst a noisy but familiar environment. This cognitive faculty of rapid association...

evolvinglanguage.ch

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NCCR Evolving Language @nccrlanguage.bsky.social · Jul 3

📢 Registrations are now open for the X-PPL Workshop 2025!

Held by the @isle-uzh.bsky.social in Zurich on the 1st and 2nd of September.

Inst. for the Interdisciplinary Study of Language Evolution UZ @isle-uzh.bsky.social · Jul 3

🎉 Registration is open for the Crosslinguistic Perspectives on Processing & Learning Workshop 2025!

Join us in Zurich (01–02.09.) for keynotes by Sudha Arunachalam & Lars Meyer, plus other exciting talks & posters.

Register: www.ema.uzh.ch/R7EPE

#XPPL2025 #LanguageDiversity #CogSci #UZH

Crosslinguistic Perspectives on Processing and Learning (X-PPL 2025)

September 1, 8:30 AM - September 2, 6:00 PM | University of Zurich, AFL building

www.ema.uzh.ch

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Cedric Boeckx @cedricboeckx.bsky.social · Jun 23

Very interesting @ecoevorxiv.bsky.social study by @sabinestoll.bsky.social @balthasarbickel.bsky.social & colleagues @nccrlanguage.bsky.social arguing that increased vocal accommodation (as a sign of homophily) facilitated the evolution
of vocal production learning in the hominin lineage 🧪

From vocal homophily to vocal repertoire flexibility: Unravelling the socioecological drivers of language evolution

ecoevorxiv.org

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Inst. for the Interdisciplinary Study of Language Evolution UZ @isle-uzh.bsky.social · Jul 3

🎉 Registration is open for the Crosslinguistic Perspectives on Processing & Learning Workshop 2025!

Join us in Zurich (01–02.09.) for keynotes by Sudha Arunachalam & Lars Meyer, plus other exciting talks & posters.

Register: www.ema.uzh.ch/R7EPE

#XPPL2025 #LanguageDiversity #CogSci #UZH

Crosslinguistic Perspectives on Processing and Learning (X-PPL 2025)

September 1, 8:30 AM - September 2, 6:00 PM | University of Zurich, AFL building

www.ema.uzh.ch

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Balthasar Bickel @balthasarbickel.bsky.social · Jun 26

Brilliant case of the @nccrlanguage.bsky.social spirit of team science. Congratulations on a major achievement!

Sabine Stoll @sabinestoll.bsky.social · Jun 26

New paper by our @nccrlanguage.bsky.social team w @franziswegdell.bsky.social, @carolinefryns.bsky.social , J Schick , @zuberbuehler.bsky.social, C v Schaik, S Townsend, and myself. Child-directed communication is a driver of language evolution.
shorturl.at/eAfjW

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Sabine Stoll @sabinestoll.bsky.social · Jun 20

How do children learn to negate with diverse linguistic and cultural background? journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/...

The road to negation: A comparative study of five typologically and culturally diverse languages - Sakine Çabuk-Ballı, Aylin C Küntay, Paul Widmer, Sabine Stoll, 2025

The acquisition of negation is a key milestone in early language development that enables children to express rejection, non-existence, and deny propositions. I...

journals.sagepub.com

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Sabine Stoll @sabinestoll.bsky.social · Jun 20

New paper on the role of peers in language acquisition: direct.mit.edu/opmi/article...

Children Learn Best From Their Peers: The Crucial Role of Input From Other Children in Language Development

direct.mit.edu

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Cedric Boeckx @cedricboeckx.bsky.social · Jun 2

Very happy to share a new preprint, written with people I have learned a lot from: Paola Cerrito, Carel van Schaik, Judith Burkart, Anne-Lise Giraud (@neurospeech.bsky.social), Daphne Baverlier, @balthasarbickel.bsky.social: how the communication system of neanderthals may have differed from ours
🧪🧵

Pleistocene origins of cultural and linguistic diversification: how Homo sapiens and Neanderthals differed

ecoevorxiv.org

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Cedric Boeckx @cedricboeckx.bsky.social · May 27

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 🧪

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Sebastian Sauppe @sebastiansauppe.bsky.social · May 21

Submit an abstract 📝 on your work on cross-linguistic aspects of language processing and (first) language acquisition to ⭐️Crosslinguistic Perspectives on Processing and Learning (X-PPL) 2025⭐️ (Sept 1&2 @ U Zurich)! It’s a fantastic venue to present work on how ling diversity 🌏 & the mind/🧠 interact!

Inst. for the Interdisciplinary Study of Language Evolution UZ @isle-uzh.bsky.social · Feb 24

📢 Join us at the Crosslinguistic Perspectives on Processing and Learning Workshop 2025 (Sept 1–2, University of #Zurich) to explore how language structure, processing, and learning interact across languages!

Learn more: tinyurl.com/bdf5jhnb
Deadline: May 31
@nccrlanguage.bsky.social

The LINGUIST List

The LINGUIST List, International Linguistics Community Online.

tinyurl.com

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Sandra Oliveira @sandra-oliveira.bsky.social · May 20

Happy to share a PhD opportunity in my new lab at the University of Zurich! Application deadline: June 30. Do not hesitate to contact me for any questions!

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NCCR Evolving Language @nccrlanguage.bsky.social · Mar 12

Sind Sie deutschsprachig mit wenigen Französischkenntnisse? Dann nehmen Sie an einer wissenschaftlichen Online-Studie über Sprache von @nocelab.bsky.social teil und helfen Sie dabei, den Einfluss der Sprache auf die Kognition zu verstehen.

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NCCR Evolving Language @nccrlanguage.bsky.social · May 14

📰 In the current issue of Open Mind @mitpress.bsky.social, you can find two #articles from NCCR members on #hominin #cognition and perception of events, and #language #acquisition in children 👇

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Balthasar Bickel @balthasarbickel.bsky.social · May 20

Great to see this out! Congratulations to lead author Aitor Egurtzegi and the whole team!

Caroline Andrews @candrewsvl.bsky.social · May 6

Our new paper on animacy effects in Basque comprehension is out! It's been fun shepherding this paper for the last couple years. Congratulations to all the authors, but especially Aitor Ergurtzegi on publishing the last paper of his PhD! link.springer.com/article/10.3...

The effect of animacy on the agent preference: Self-paced reading evidence from Basque - Memory & Cognition

Language processing shows a tendency to prefer agents over other roles. For instance, when initial unmarked noun phrases (NPs) are ambiguous between agent and patient roles, there is a preference to i...

link.springer.com

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Balthasar Bickel @balthasarbickel.bsky.social · May 20

And yet another piece of evidence for the primate roots of human event role cognition! Congratulations to lead author @sarahbrocard.bsky.social

sarahbrocard.bsky.social @sarahbrocard.bsky.social · May 8

🧠🦍 Did you know? Like humans, chimpanzees automatically process 'who did what to whom' – a potential precursor for language.
👇 Check what we found in our new paper published in @openmindjournal.bsky.social
doi.org/10.1162/opmi...

Spontaneous Encoding of Event Roles in Hominids

ABSTRACT. When observing social interactions, humans rapidly and spontaneously encode events in terms of agents, patients and causal relations. This propensity can be made visible empirically with the...

doi.org

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Balthasar Bickel @balthasarbickel.bsky.social · May 20

‼️ PhD opportunity: join a vibrant community working on language evolution @nccrlanguage.bsky.social @isle-uzh.bsky.social please spread widely www.isle.uzh.ch/en/jobs/phd-...

www.isle.uzh.ch

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Inst. for the Interdisciplinary Study of Language Evolution UZ @isle-uzh.bsky.social · Apr 28

Our next ISLE Colloquium will be from Anna Graff (Uni Zurich), on "What population genetics can tell us about the impact of contact and isolation on structural linguistic diversity"
Tues 29 April 4:15pm
UZH Oerlikon, room AFL-F-121
www.isle.uzh.ch/en/staff/gra...

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NCCR Evolving Language @nccrlanguage.bsky.social · Apr 28

📢 Submissions are open for the Crosslinguistic Perspectives on Processing and Learning Workshop 2025!

@isle-uzh.bsky.social

Inst. for the Interdisciplinary Study of Language Evolution UZ @isle-uzh.bsky.social · Feb 24

📢 Join us at the Crosslinguistic Perspectives on Processing and Learning Workshop 2025 (Sept 1–2, University of #Zurich) to explore how language structure, processing, and learning interact across languages!

Learn more: tinyurl.com/bdf5jhnb
Deadline: May 31
@nccrlanguage.bsky.social

The LINGUIST List

The LINGUIST List, International Linguistics Community Online.

tinyurl.com

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Cedric Boeckx @cedricboeckx.bsky.social · Apr 9

Paola Cerrito, who is starting her own Hominin Evolution Group at the University of Zürich, has just opened a great PhD position. Fantastic opportunity for someone interested in human life history evolution. I am lucky to collaborate with Paola. She is a terrific scholar
@nccrlanguage.bsky.social

Department of Evolutionary Anthropology | Department of Evolutionary Anthropology | UZH

www.aim.uzh.ch

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John Mansfield @johnbasil.bsky.social · Apr 7

I'm hiring! 2 x PhDs and 1 x PostDoc, to work with me at Uni Zurich on a project investigating how semantic patterns differ by geographic region.
Linguistic typology, data science, spatial analysis, phylogenetic methods, potential fieldwork... REPOST 🙏
www.comparativelinguistics.uzh.ch/en/jobs.html

Open Positions

www.comparativelinguistics.uzh.ch

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Mélissa Berthet @berthetmelissa.bsky.social · Apr 4

We also wrote a lay article in @theconversation.com about our latest research on bonobo vocal communication!

theconversation.com/bonobos-crea...

Bonobos create phrases in similar ways to humans, new study suggests

Human language is not as unique as we think.

theconversation.com

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Mélissa Berthet @berthetmelissa.bsky.social · Apr 4

🚨New in @science.org🚨
With Simon Townsend (@nccrlanguage.bsky.social) and Martin Surbeck, we have investigated whether wild bonobos can combine calls in complex combinations, similar to how humans combine words into sentences 🧪
www.science.org/doi/10.1126/...

#ScienceResearch #AnimalCommunication

Extensive compositionality in the vocal system of bonobos

Compositionality, the capacity to combine meaningful elements into larger meaningful structures, is a hallmark of human language. Compositionality can be trivial (the combination’s meaning is the sum ...

www.science.org

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