Dan Dediu
ddediu.bsky.social
Dan Dediu
@ddediu.bsky.social
Language, its evolution, diversity and biological foundations.
ICREA & University of Barcelona.
Reposted by Dan Dediu
Rosa's excellent @cp-trendsgenetics.bsky.social piece on genome-wide association studies (GWAS) of speech, language & reading traits offers a nice opportunity to (re)post a selection of the research articles she covers. (And we are only just getting started!) .... 🧪1/n
Highly recommend this superb forum article on genomics of human communication traits, free to read in @cp-trendsgenetics.bsky.social. Beautifully succinct & accessible overview by @rosagisladottir.bsky.social on where the field is now & where it's heading. 🗣️💬🧠🧬🧪
www.sciencedirect.com/science/arti...
June 22, 2025 at 2:17 PM
Like other 53 million+ people in Spain & Portugal, we've been affected by the blackout yesterday, but I just wanted to say that I am impressed by what I saw: how well people handled it on the roads, on the streets, waiting for the busses, in shops... Chapeau! 👏 (context.reverso.net/translation/...)
chapeau - Translation into English - examples Dutch | Reverso Context
Translations in context of "chapeau" in Dutch-English from Reverso Context: Maar eerst en vooral chapeau voor Jorge Lorenzo.
context.reverso.net
April 29, 2025 at 8:18 AM
Remember the cool finding by @bodowinter.bsky.social et al. that the "trilled r" [r] is associated with roughness? Well, Rémi Anselme, François Pellegrino (@laboratoireddl.bsky.social) & myself show in www.nature.com/articles/s41... that this seems more general and applies to all "r-like" sounds.
Not just the alveolar trill, but all “r-like” sounds are associated with roughness across languages, pointing to a more general link between sound and touch - Scientific Reports
Scientific Reports - Not just the alveolar trill, but all “r-like” sounds are associated with roughness across languages, pointing to a more general link between sound and touch
www.nature.com
April 15, 2025 at 11:22 AM
I believe you already know, but Ian Maddieson (en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ian_Mad...) passed away this Sunday ☹️. He was an amazing person, typologist and phonetician and we will miss him a lot. Personally, he was one of the few who in 2007 didn't laugh at the idea that genes might affect linguistic tone.
Ian Maddieson - Wikipedia
en.wikipedia.org
February 5, 2025 at 12:18 PM
Reposted by Dan Dediu
Hey, this! Thanks to everyone who have pre-ordered.

It really, really matters for the book, for books, for people who can benefit from what’s in this one.
February 1, 2025 at 11:01 AM
Not newsworthy at all, but just to say that today I finally deactivated my Twitter (yes, I still call it Twitter!) account -- what can I say? RIP...
January 21, 2025 at 9:11 AM
I guess you might have already seen this, but there's three very interesting job openings at Turku University in the BEDLAN group bedlan.net/news/three-p... in "Evolutionary Language Sciences", "Archaeogenomics" and "Evolutionary Health" -- deadline 31/01/2025
Three postdoctoral positions open in Human Diversity consortium – BEDLAN
bedlan.net
January 5, 2025 at 10:21 AM
Reposted by Dan Dediu
AI and data centers may impose a $20 billion public health bill on the US by 2030 - with associated emissions and air pollution causing an estimated 600,000 asthma cases annually.

A new study also estimates current public health costs from existing data centers.
www.newscientist.com/article/2459...
Energy-hungry AI is already harming health – and it's getting worse
The electricity required to support Silicon Valley’s AI ambitions could contribute to approximately 600,000 asthma cases and create a $20 billion public health burden by 2030
www.newscientist.com
December 10, 2024 at 9:13 PM
Reposted by Dan Dediu
Beethoven, one of the most celebrated musicians in history, scored unremarkably on the musicality-related polygenic index, ranking between the 9th & 11th percentile based on modern samples. In our paper we explain why this is no surprise & how it offers a nice example for teaching complex genetics.
December 5, 2024 at 9:05 PM
Reposted by Dan Dediu
Sisena sessió del SeRIAL! 🪢🗣️ Mireia Farrús
@mireiafarrus.bsky.social presentarà SCRIBAL, el transcriptor automàtic per a docència universitària que ha desenvolupat el grup #CLiC 💻👩‍🏫
‼️ Atenció al canvi d'aula (1.3)

📅 Dijous 12/12
🕓 16 h
📌Aula 1.3 (Edifici Josep Carner, @filcomub.bsky.social)
December 5, 2024 at 10:23 AM
My first post on 🦋 is (predictably 😜) about our new paper in JASA pubs.aip.org/asa/jasa/art... connecting the alveolar trill [r] with a jagged line (and [l] with a smooth line) across 28 languages from 12 families. (Interestingly, this is even stronger than the classic bouba/kiki effect!)
The alveolar trill is perceived as jagged/rough by speakers of different languages
Typological research shows that across languages, trilled [r] sounds are more common in adjectives describing rough as opposed to smooth surfaces. In this study
pubs.aip.org
November 27, 2024 at 10:59 AM