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wmblathers.bsky.social @wmblathers.bsky.social · Jun 6

A new typology database: Areal Typology of Languages of the Americas (ATLAs).

atlas.evolvinglanguage.ch

Take a look at the article on apprehensional morphology for an example: atlas.evolvinglanguage.ch/contribution...

#linguistics #typology

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language science @priap.bsky.social · Jun 13

Entirely too common

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Gerald Roche @geraldroche.bsky.social · Mar 1

Official English in the US will have life and death consequences. This is not an exaggeration.
www.annualreviews.org/content/jour...

Screen capture of an academic article. Black text on white and beige background.

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language science @priap.bsky.social · Feb 26

I'd be tempted to clip the second to "ereyester"

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Endangered Languages Project @e-l-p.bsky.social · Feb 24

A great new resource for language revitalization and promotion! 🤩

Bridget Chase @bchasemadethis.bsky.social · Feb 21

Happy #MotherLanguageDay, a celebration of linguistic diversity championed by @unesco.org! Since today's a fun day to launch a new #language project:

languagestarbook.com

"You Are a Language Star" is a free children's book where you can fill in the blanks with words in any language 📖 1/11 #langsky

The cover of "You Are a Language Star", which shows a bear looking through a telescope into a sky full of stars that have different letters / alphabet characters in them. The subtitle says "A 'fill in the blanks' book about YOUR language", "Written by Bridget Chase"

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Linguischick @cocchino.bsky.social · Feb 23

🚨 🚨 Last call for abstracts: Usage-based Approaches to Phonology welcomes papers using diverse methods to explore the emergence of phonological patterns from language use. Plenary by Joan Bybee (U of New Mexico). Come hang with us at U. of Oregon, July 12 & 13. sites.google.com/view/usage-b... 🐦🐦

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language science @priap.bsky.social · Feb 24

Leaving typos as proof of my humanity

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Prof. Eliot Jacobson @climatecasino.net · Feb 20

Humans, and sadly most other species on the planet, are totally f&%ked.

There. I said it.

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Prof. Eliot Jacobson @climatecasino.net · Feb 20

A quick reminder that we are witnessing the beginning of simultaneous cascading global catastrophes.

It's a good day for a long walk.

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language science @priap.bsky.social · Feb 24

We must resist the allure of abstract methods, fixed positions, or other forms of intellectual comfort to avoid the dangers of such complacency.

To quote Fanon 1952:12), "I shall be derelict. I leave methods to the botanists and mathematicians. There is a point at which methods devour themselves."

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language science @priap.bsky.social · Feb 24

Paraphrasing the follow abstract:

Science must be systematic or methodological in order to be rational. But equally, we must recognise our inherent tendency to lose our object if out work becomes excessively instrumental. Hence, we must constantly radicalise our methods.

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Jessie Slater PhD @subbasegirl.bsky.social · Jan 2

'Curators should closely study animal remains for any links with Indigenous nations or communities, and researchers should involve those groups when remains are culturally significant' 🧪🏺🦴

Better care urged for animal remains tied to Indigenous peoples

New recommendations stress tracing and respecting links between communities and animal bones, pelts and other remains

www.science.org

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language science @priap.bsky.social · Dec 22

Gracias a ti por la respuesta! Sí, lingüista investigando toponomia, onomástica, lingüística histórica de la region 😃

language science @priap.bsky.social · Dec 22

'Forms, Mechanisms & Roles of Iconicity in Spoken Language (review)'

Argues:

— Multimodal bihemispheric comm. system has phylogenetic + ontogenetic advantages

— Aids lang learning + processing

— Iconicity as integral, not a marginal phenomenon

(Open access: doi.org/10.1177/00332941241310119) 🐦🐦

(a) Three images (mouse drinking, human drinking, water buffalo drinking water) with labels (críit-críit, cróot-cróot, crúut-crúut, respectively).

The use of vowel variation to indicate size differences in Khmu ideophones (Svantesson, 2017).

(b) Two shapes, one spiky and one rounded. The takete/maluma or bouba/kiki effect - when prompted most subjects call the angular shape (left) takete/kiki and the rounded (right) shape maluma/bouba.

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Christian DiCanio @cdicanio.bsky.social · Dec 21

I think we can state clearly what our theoretical perspective is, what hypotheses we're testing, and what the data/results demonstrate. We can speculate about what the results mean for all of "language" I suppose, but linguists almost uniformly ignore language sampling bias.

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language science @priap.bsky.social · Dec 21

I think Damián Blasi also suggested that the contemporary sample of langs we see worldwide is likely to be genealogically & typologically impoverished, based on population structure change in the Holocene, so some of these Qs may be the wrong questions or unanswerable, but I might be misremembering.

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language science @priap.bsky.social · Dec 21

Yes, I rarely ever see theoretical perspectives stated explicitly.

Timo Roettger's 'preregistration' is one important solution for non-descriptive work, but he also suggests most claims are too quantitatively underspecified to be tested and we need more exploratory research.

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bhadrasub @bhadrasub.bsky.social · Dec 13

the primary purpose of all social media is to amass data. if BlueSky isn’t taking down what’s supposed to be horrifying or offensive content such as revenge porn, then it’s because they see collecting related user data and interaction metrics as useful to whatever they’re building

Bluesky Safety @safety.bsky.app · Dec 13

We do not currently take action on accounts that share Bluesky screenshots with commentary, unless that commentary violates our Guidelines. We will take action when someone's private information is shared without their consent, but only when it is personally identifiable and verifiable in-app.

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language science @priap.bsky.social · Dec 21

A great quote for the linguistic anthropologists among us:

"We anthropologists [...] must re-examine basic premises and realize that English language patterns of thought are not a necessary model for the whole of human society."

— Leach, E. R. (1961). Rethinking Anthropology. p. 27. 🐦🐦

language science @priap.bsky.social · Dec 4

Overreliance on English hinders cognitive science

– premature claims of universality (due to over-sampling of English speakers)

– limited cognitive constructs being examined (due to the use of English as a meta-language)

(doi.org/10.1016/j.tics.2022.09.015) 🐦🐦

Illustrative examples of biases due to English use

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Martin Haspelmath @haspelmath.bsky.social · Dec 21

LSA president Tony Woodbury on Sapir's idea that each language has its own "genius", and that each language should be described with its own framework, rather than through a general ("theoretical") framework. muse.jhu.edu/article/948426

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language science @priap.bsky.social · Dec 21

Shared widely elsewhere:

"I have resisted the term 'sociolinguistics' for many years, since it implies that there can be a successful linguistic theory or practice which is not social.”

— William Labov, 1927-2024 🐦🐦

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Christian DiCanio @cdicanio.bsky.social · Dec 21

One thing that has stuck with me from my reading this fall is a point that Jeff Mielke makes in his 2008 book: "linguists often confuse their shared assumptions with linguistic universals." Since I care about features, I thought I should read Jeff's book in more detail. A thread.

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#linguistics

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language science @priap.bsky.social · Dec 21

Yes, great point. Thank you for sharing these important thoughts.

I often find myself thinking "I know nothing about prosodic / suprasegmental phonology".

In fact, I recall faculty berating me for not using more deterministic lang. Coming from the biological sciences, I found that disturbing.

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language science @priap.bsky.social · Dec 14

One nontrivial measure of a given framework is its direct utility or benefit to language description.

We should consider more gravely the pros and cons of precision contra jargon.

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language science @priap.bsky.social · Dec 14

I've heard so many faculty blithely make statements to the effect of "X isn't linguistics". Yet inevitably, it is.