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John Mansfield @johnbasil.bsky.social · 19h

Last night I dreamt that our students started forming these radical political groups called „Noun Phrases“ and the uni management was really angry

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Reposted by John Mansfield

The Associated Press @apnews.com · 4d

Over 2 million people across Italy have rallied in more than 100 cities for a one-day general strike.

2 million rally in Italy for Gaza as general strike halts key services

Over 2 million people across Italy have rallied in more than 100 cities for a one-day general strike.

bit.ly

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John Mansfield @johnbasil.bsky.social · 9d

Social functions of language may drive faster change and faster diversification in some features.
Thanks to growing diversity in variationst sociolinguistics, I gathered studies of 63 languages from 28 families. Here I sketch some potential patterns
compass.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/...

Linguistic Diversification and Rates of Change: Insights From a Diverse Sample of Sociolinguistic Studies

Language diversification and change can be studied using phylogenetic modelling of families over thousands of years, or by close observation of changes unfolding over a few decades at the community l....

compass.onlinelibrary.wiley.com

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John Mansfield @johnbasil.bsky.social · 17d

Im being pushed over the edge by Zurich restaurants that charge extra to make it spicy

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John Mansfield @johnbasil.bsky.social · Sep 4

ok I got curious and tried vibe coding for processing some cross-linguistic data... hilariously bad 😭 ... maybe a special case because I was dealing with GRAMMATICAL GENDER (AI was triggered), but it sure did produce some garbage

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andrea e. martin @andreaeyleen.bsky.social · Sep 3

Interested in doing a PhD with me and lacns.github.io? Or with any of the incredible fellows in the IMPRS School of Cognition www.maxplanckschools.org/cognition-en - apply before Dec 1st at cognition.maxplanckschools.org/en/application

Language and Computation in Neural Systems

We are an international group of scientists consisting of linguists, cognitive scientists, cognitive neuroscientists, computational neuroscientists, computational modellers, computational scientists, ...

lacns.github.io

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John Mansfield @johnbasil.bsky.social · Sep 1

Just reading this tweet was a rollercoaster

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Michael Pleyer @symbolicstorage.bsky.social · Aug 29

Congratulations to Alexandra Bosshard for winning the #SLE2025 award for best presentation by a post-doctoral researcher with her excellent talk on processing perspectives in animal compositionality!

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Quanta Magazine @quantamagazine.bsky.social · Aug 28

Punctuated equilibrium, a concept introduced by paleontologists in 1972, reimagines evolution’s tempo as a stochastic burst rather than a steady beat. A new model finds support for their theory in both molecular and fossil data. @jakebuehler.bsky.social reports www.quantamagazine.org/the-sudden-s...

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Mondoweiss @mondoweiss.net · Aug 21

The Guardian just revealed Israel’s own military data: 83% of those killed in Gaza are civilians. That’s not war, that’s genocide.

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John Mansfield @johnbasil.bsky.social · Aug 21

"Evolutionary dynamics of language: Insights from a diverse sample of sociolinguistic studies" forthcoming article comparing findings from phylogenetic and sociolinguistic studies
ling.auf.net/lingbuzz/008...

Evolutionary dynamics of language: Insights from a diverse sample of sociolinguistic studies - lingbuzz/008948

The evolutionary dynamics of language can be studied using phylogenetic modelling of changes over thousands of years, or by close observation of changes unfolding over a few decades at the community l...

ling.auf.net

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John Mansfield @johnbasil.bsky.social · Aug 21

I'm gonna start using the word "hereby" more often
seems powerful

Reposted by John Mansfield

Laura C. Dees @lauradees.bsky.social · Aug 5

So happy that this paper lead by Joseph Mine is finally out! Was cool to be part of this project on the social learning of multi-modal communication in chimpanzees, which is slightly outside of my usual scope (and it’s my first co-authored paper too, yay!) :) journals.plos.org/plosbiology/...

Chimpanzee mothers, but not fathers, influence offspring vocal–visual communicative behavior

The influence of social versus genetic factors on communication in non-human hominids is not well understood. This study shows that, in line with their central caretaking role, chimpanzees exhibit pre...

journals.plos.org

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Ruwa Romman @ruwaromman.bsky.social · Aug 10

The Israeli army just murdered Anas Al-Sharif a Palestinian journalist who covered Israel’s war crimes in hopes of one day ending the killings. His last post was from about a half hour ago reporting on the intensified bombings in Gaza City.

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John Mansfield @johnbasil.bsky.social · Aug 9

auf

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Seth Cotlar @sethcotlar.bsky.social · Aug 9

Can’t say why exactly, but the phrase “once again refused a pierogi” made me laugh out loud.

NEWSMAX * • Follow
NEWSMAX
2d •
Harvard Law School professor emeritus Alan
Dershowitz was once again refused a pierogi from an unwilling vendor at a Martha's Vineyard market, the latest in his controversies over pierogis in the celebrity hot spot.
newsmax.com
Dershowitz Again Denied Pierogi, Told to Leave Farmer's Market
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750 comments 66 shares

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European Society for Cognitive Psychology @escop.bsky.social · Aug 7

Postdoc (80%) in the Cognition Lab at University of Zurich, Switzerland

We are looking for a postdoc to work with us on the capacity limits of cognition (working memory, attention, long-term memory, ...).

Application deadline: 10 September 2025

ESCOP - Postdoc (80%) in the Cognition Lab at University of Zurich, Switzerland

ESCOP is a dynamic scientific society that provides a venue within which current research in cognitive psychology and neighboring disciplines can be presented, discussed and encouraged.

www.escop.eu

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John Mansfield @johnbasil.bsky.social · Aug 8

schools and companies seem to be like points, but towns, hospitals and prisons are like containers

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MIT Press @mitpress.bsky.social · Aug 5

In "Mathematical Structure of Syntactic Merge," Matilde Marcolli, Noam Chomsky, & Robert C. Berwick present a complete, precise mathematical formalization of Chomsky's most recent theory of Merge. #OpenAccess: mitpress.mit.edu/9780262552523

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John Mansfield @johnbasil.bsky.social · Aug 1

PhD position to study conversational coordination with Prof Adrian Bangerter at Uni Neuchatel www.unine.ch/ipto/wp-cont...

www.unine.ch

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John Mansfield @johnbasil.bsky.social · Jul 27

Piss weak, genocide complicit, Australian government
www.theguardian.com/australia-ne...

Albanese accuses Israel of ‘clearly’ breaching international law but resists push to recognise Palestinian state

‘Quite clearly it is a breach of international law to stop food being delivered,’ PM tells ABC’s Insiders

www.theguardian.com

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John Mansfield @johnbasil.bsky.social · Jul 25

automated message from hotel booking:
"We're counting down the days until your arrival, eagerly anticipating the opportunity to provide you with a truly memorable stay. "

Reposted by John Mansfield

Melbourne School of Psychological Sciences @psychunimelb.bsky.social · Jul 18

Growing up in an unconventional country town, PhD candidate @manikyaalister.bsky.social has always been fascinated by how people learn and make decisions.

“We are social creatures that learn from each other every day.”

Read more: go.unimelb.edu.au/wn7p

‘We are social creatures that learn from each other every day’: Manikya Alister explores social learning and decision-making

psychologicalsciences.unimelb.edu.au

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Chiara Barbieri @chiarabarbieri.bsky.social · Jul 23

New volume on the interface between languages, human history, anthropology, archaeology and (a bit of) genetics, curated by M. Robbeets and M. Hudson. A very rich table of content for everyone interested in these multidisciplinary studies of the human past. I contributed two chapters:

The Oxford Handbook of Archaeology and Language

Abstract. Linguists have long described their findings in an archaeological context, while archaeologists have been interested in what language can tell th

academic.oup.com

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Max Planck Institute for Psycholinguistics @mpi-nl.bsky.social · Jul 21

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

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