Into Julian Barnes lately

I played for the French Softball Team in the 90’s. Now that was comedic! Even then, the Italians were among the stronger teams in Europe.

Not The Onion: Woman Found Innocent After 22 Years in Prison Will Not Be Deported (NYTimes).

Now that Bruce has written his ode to Minneapolis, the man from Minnesota should do one too.

Depending on how you count, this announcement has been two plus or 25 years in the making.

How Donald Trump Took Down Bonwit Teller, A Fifth Avenue Landmark When a young Donald Trump wanted to locate his Trump Tower on Fifth Avenue, he targeted and purchased the famous Bonwit Teller apparel store. But the store's demolition drew controversy as several pie...

Remember this? www.forbes.com/sites/michae...

And is there a way to determine whether there is support for that claim?

The cat’s out of the bag! New research on idioms reveals hidden messages behind the words. Check out the #psynomMC paper by Nicholas Griffen and Ira Noveck irastamon.bsky.social. Post by @brettrmyers. buff.ly/otvD0qH

Kimmel canceled

So, questions about whether scalar implicatures are scalar or implicatures have not really surfaced. That might be changing though….

But I think the main reason you get that impression is because investigations into scalar implicature phenomena took on a life of their own (e.g. developmental and processing effects).

It’s read and it’s cited. On the other hand, it has been impossible (for me at least) to get it disentangled from our other joint publications (e.g. to be seen as an independent entry on Google Scholar).

These people will never be satisfied

I find Researchgate superior to Academia, including creating permanent links.

Happy In Theory This is the short story of my long, 20 year search for a stable academic home. There is a lot of success and a lot of pain here, and no happy ending.

New Substack post

It's very personal: my story of a 20-year academic career, and the many challenges of theoretical and cross-disciplinary work

As I put it in the subtitle: There is a lot of success and a lot of pain here, and no happy ending

thomscottphillips.substack.com/p/happy-in-t...

Arghh… just to watch the Mets lose 😕

From York to New York

What norming reveals about idioms: Making the case for a presuppositional account - Memory & Cognition While early accounts of idiomatic expressions proposed that they are compositional or else directly retrievable from memory, the multi-determined view posited that idiom comprehension depends on obser...

In other news (they came in threes), Nick Griffen and I have a paper that just came out providing some support for our Presuppositional Account of idioms. Here’s the link. link.springer.com/article/10.3...

Isolating the extra-logical features of but and so by comparing their processing to and's: An investigation with thematically neutral content Author(s): Larralde, Cecile; Moyer, Morgan; Pouscoulous, Nausicaa; Noveck, Ira | Abstract: Connectives such as and, but, and so conjoin two elements of discourse in characteristic ways. While highligh...

Just out: escholarship.org/uc/item/8fc3...

Deciphering the electrophysiological signature of discourse connectives The discourse connectives but and so trigger specific kinds of inferences, which are characterizable as contrastive and causal, respectively. Inspired…

www.sciencedirect.com/science/arti...

Deciphering the electrophysiological signature of discourse connectives The discourse connectives but and so trigger specific kinds of inferences, which are characterizable as contrastive and causal, respectively. Inspired…

www.sciencedirect.com/science/arti...

Isolating the extra-logical features of but and so by comparing their processing to and's: An investigation with thematically neutral content Author(s): Larralde, Cecile; Moyer, Morgan; Pouscoulous, Nausicaa; Noveck, Ira | Abstract: Connectives such as and, but, and so conjoin two elements of discourse in characteristic ways. While highligh...

Just out: escholarship.org/uc/item/8fc3...

Two articles from our lab on discourse connectives (specifically “and”, “but” & “so”). Both papers form just part of Cecile Larralde’s dissertation that took place last November. The work shows, in detail, how such words, from the moment they appear, generate specific procedures among participants.

Trump Says Recession Unfortunate But Necessary Step To Get To Depression WASHINGTON—Warning that Americans should brace themselves for an economic “period of transition,” President Donald Trump told reporters Monday that a recession would be an unfortunate but necessary st...

Trump Says Recession Unfortunate But Necessary Step To Get To Depression

This is a really nice paper that tries to fill the gap between grammar and Intention, and in a productive way!

New paper:
Communication & grammar: A synthesis

Now in press at Psychological Review (cc @apajournals.bsky.social)

In which I describe how contextualist approaches to communication fit especially well with constructionist approaches to grammar

osf.io/preprints/ps...

Or an undergraduate

Looking for a motivated Masters Student to help us run a study on discourse connectives.

Good idea

Opinion | The Hard Reality American Expats Quickly Learn Expatriation was nonetheless the making of me: liberated me, humbled me, revealed to me who I was and what I wanted my life to be.

Paul Theroux describes nicely what it’s like to live abroad. www.nytimes.com/2025/01/05/o...