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Consolidating iconicity research
Readers of this blog know that I believe serendipity is a key element of fundamental research. There is something neatly paradoxical about this claim. We might like ‘key elements’ to be plannable so that we can account for them on budgets and balance sheets. But here is an element that I think can make a […]
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At the smallest scale of human interaction, prosocial behavior follows cross-culturally shared principles
We have a new paper out in which we find that people overwhelmingly like to help one another, independent of differences in language, culture or environment. This is a surprising finding from the perspective of anthropological and economic research, which has tended to foreground differences in how people work together and share resources.
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Malinowski (1922) on Large Language Models
It’s easy to forget amidst a rising tide of synthetic text, but language is not actually about strings of words, and language scientists would do well not to chain themselves to models that presume so. For apt and timely commentary we turn to Bronislaw Malinowski
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On Bakhtinians
Perhaps only those who haven’t read Bakhtin can call themselves true Bakhtinians: the ideas have to reach you and influence you through a polyphony of other texts and people.
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Over-reliance on English hinders cognitive science
Been reading this paper by @blasi_lang @JoHenrich @EvangeliaAdamou Kemmerer & @asifa_majid and can recommend it — Figure 1 is likely to end up in many lecture slides http://doi.org/10.1016/j.tics.2022.09.015 Naturally I was interested in what the paper says about conversation. The claim about indirectness in Yoruba and other languages is sourced to a very nice piece […]
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A serendipitous wormhole into the history of Ethnomethodology and Conversation Analysis (EMCA)
A serendipitous wormhole into #EMCA history. I picked up Sudnow’s piano course online and diligently work through the lessons. Guess what he says some time into the audio-recorded version of his 1988 Chicago weekend seminar (see lines 7-11) [Chicago, 1988. Audio recording of David Sudnow’s weekend seminar] We learn too quickly and cannot afford to […]
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Linguistic roots of connectionism
This Lingbuzz preprint by Baroni is a nice read if you’re interested in linguistically oriented deep net analysis. I did feel it’s a bit hampered by the near-exclusive equation of linguistic theory with generative/Chomskyan aps. (I know it makes a point of claiming a “very broad notion of theoretical linguistics”, but it doesn’t really demonstrate […]
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New paper: Interjections (Oxford Handbook of Word Classes)
📣New! “Interjections“, a contribution to the Oxford Handbook on Word Classes. One of its aims: rejuvenate work on interjections by shifting focus from stock examples (ouch, yuck) to real workhorses like mm-hm, huh? and the like. Abstract: No class of words has better claims to universality than interjections. At the same time, no category has […]
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On gatekeeping in general linguistics
An exercise. Take 1️⃣️this paper on ‘Language disintegration under conditions of formal thought disorder‘ and 2️⃣ this Henner and Robinson preprint on ‘Imagining a Crip Linguistics‘. Now tell us in earnest that only one of these contains “theoretical implications that shed light on the nature of language and the language faculty”. (That was the phrasing […]
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Large language models and the unstoppable tide of uninformation
Large language models make it entirely trivial to generate endless amounts of seemingly plausible text. There’s no need to be cynical to see the virtual inevitability of unending waves of algorithmically tuned AI-generated uninformation: the market forces are in place and they will be relentless. I say uninformation against the backdrop of Bateson’s tongue-in-cheek definition […]
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Concrete reasons to be skeptical about an ‘Abstract Wikipedia’
TL;DR Wikidata is an ambitious enterprise, but social ontologies are never language-agnostic — so the project risks perpetuating rather than transcending the worldviews most prevalent in current Wikipedia databases, which means broadly speaking global north, Anglo, western, white cishet male worldviews. I think Wikidata is perhaps promising for brute physical facts like the periodic table […]
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Liminal signs
I have a new paper out as part of a special issue filled to the brim with things on the border of language if not beyond it. There are seven empirical articles on response cries, “moans”, clicks, sighs, sniffs, & whistles, flanked by an intro (by editors Leelo Keevallik and Richard Ogden) and a commentary […]
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Semantic primitives and conceptual decomposition
Thought-provoking discussion on semantic primitives and conceptual decomposition this morning at @in_interaction, led by Guillermo Montero-Melis. We went from Wittgenstein & Osgood via Rosch & Lakoff to Kemp & Tenenbaum and recent work by Mitchell, Binder, and others. The paper that drew most attention was Binder et al. 2016’s ‘Toward a brain-based conceptual semantic representation’ […]
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Rethinking Marginality: panel on interjections & interaction at IPRA
We’re convening a panel at the 16th International Pragmatics Conference in Hong Kong next week. This doubles as the inaugural workshop of my VIDI project Elementary Particles of Conversation. The workshop ties into the overall theme of the conference, which is “Pragmatics at the Margins”. Have a look at the panel programme & abstracts (PDF), […]
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The role of serendipity in shaping fundamental research
After much postponement, writing the final report for my NWO Veni grant (2015-2018) turned out to be an unexpected pleasure. It made me realise a couple of things — key among them the role of serendipity in shaping fundamental research. The project was called “Towards a science of linguistic depiction”. Looking at the publications that […]
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Sign names and theories of naming
Every time I learn new name signs —e.g. during my UCL visit hosted by @gab_hodge— I’m struck by how they call into question Searle’s (spoken English-based) arguments about how proper names work. Many sign names appear to be descriptive (or at least originate as descriptions) Moreover, often one gets the ‘baptismal story’ along with learning […]