Thanks, Riccardo! Can you explain a bit more about what you mean?

As well as children's vocabulary, word learning was predicted by an interaction between:

• Lexical alignment by caregivers
• High pitched utterances by caregivers

Our results suggest a limited but specific role for coordination: when caregivers meet children on shared lexical ground.

👇 (4/4)

Caregivers and children coordinated with one other at above-chance levels for all variables considered, but less so for F0 and speaking rate.

But word learning was only predicted by one coordinative variable.

👇 (3/4)

We examined coordination across 3 levels:
• Lexical (e.g., semantic similarity)
• Temporal (e.g., turn-taking time)
• Prosodic (e.g., F0 alignment)

We also considered:
• Verbal behaviours of both caregiver and child
• Children's concurrent vocabulary
• Word properties (number of phonemes)

👇 (2/4)

Does verbal coordination help 3–4 year old children learn new words? In our new preprint (w/ @gabriellavigliocco.bsky.social, @gretagandolfi.bsky.social, @fourtassi.bsky.social, Yan Gu), we explored 20 predictors of word learning. One combination stood out.

👇 (1/4)

papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers....

📣 New paper out in the Proceedings of the Royal Society B in which we investigated whether conversational alignment — the tendency to reuse each other's words, syntactic constructions, topics, sounds and gestures — can be used as a reliable individual trait. It cannot!
🧵 1/4

doi.org/10.1098/rspb...

Really enjoyed presenting at @asifamajid.bsky.social's lab yesterday at the University of Oxford, where I shared some initial ideas for a project exploring pitch processing in speech prosody and musical melody, microtonal versus discrete-tone music, and gesture. Great to get everyone's feedback!

Does verbal (lexical, semantic) alignment btw caregiver and child support learning in 3-4 years old?

Data and analysis scripts are here: osf.io/9z5qn/overview

This one is for comics lovers and language lovers alike!

A fun and inspiring read at the forefront of the multimodal language curve. Even works as intro to linguistics course book as it teaches a lot of core linguistic concepts really well, and in a modality-general manner.

I can highly recommend!

Really enjoyed chatting to everyone yesterday! Looking forward to another day of interesting talks. Link to poster below. (P.S. the children are 3–4 years old.)

Excited to present this poster today (w/ @gabriellavigliocco.bsky.social, @gretagandolfi.bsky.social, @fourtassi.bsky.social, and Yan Gu) at the 3rd International Workshop on Naturalistic Experimentation of Child Development at Birkbeck, University of London. Check out the poster here: osf.io/876ab

My first (physically) published book chapter. It's quite a weighty tome! Almost dropped it when the courier delivered it. Read the chapter here: academic.oup.com/edited-volum...

Experimental approaches to sound symbolism AbstractThis chapter explores the phenomenon of sound symbolism: associations between language sounds and particular perceptual and/or semantic properties.

So excited to see the Oxford Handbook of Iconicity in Language come out!!

Here is my chapter on Experimental approaches to sound symbolism: academic.oup.com/edited-volum...

Really glad you like it, Dave! ☺️

It’s a fantastic chapter. I’ve been giving the preprint to students.

Screenshot of a chapter by Carl Börstell called "Iconic plurality across modalities"

Four years(!) after the chapter was originally written, the official publication is now live (pre-print has been out for some time though):
doi.org/10.1093/oxfo...

How can plurality be expressed with iconic forms across different modalities of human languaging?

#linguistics

Thrilled to announce the 1st Workshop on Computational Developmental Linguistics (CDL) at ACL 2026 🎉 A new venue at the intersection of development linguistics × modern NLP, spearheaded by @fredashi.bsky.social @marstin.bsky.social, and and outstanding team of colleagues!

A thread 🧵

New work from the lab! A full multimodal picture of caregivers behaviours supporting learning in the early years answering the question: what do caregivers say and do to support their children’s word learning?

Wow, glad you like it! Appreciate it!

This is mandatory reading for all my students since it was uploaded to OSF. So glad it is finally out! \o/

Our paper (w/ @bodowinter.bsky.social and @mperlman.bsky.social) is finally out, officially 🥳. In it, we set ourselves the lofty goal of defining iconicity, focusing on its subjectivity, context-dependence, and gradability. Let us know if you agree with our definition? 🤔

doi.org/10.1093/oxfo...

📆 ‼️ Workshop announcement ‼️ 14th Jan 2026
⭐ Metaphorical Framings of Emotions in Mental Health ⭐
Organised by myself with Prof. Jeannette Littlemore

Please see here for the full schedule and to sign up (in-person places are limited):
lnkd.in/dZ57MKwt

New Preprint Alert 🚨

Excited to share our new work: “Caregivers’ multimodal actions scaffold word learning and vocabulary growth in the early years.” with Francesco Cabiddu, @eddonnellan.bsky.social, Yan Gu and @gabriellavigliocco.bsky.social.

doi.org/10.31234/osf...

World Linguistics Day is on the 26th of November because that's de Saussure's birthday. It's a great opportunity to celebrate linguistics.

If you want more linguistics in your feed, here's a linguistics starter pack from @gretchenmcc.bsky.social

bsky.app/starter-pack...

#WorldLinguisticsDay

Pleased to announce that I passed my PhD viva today!

Congrats! 🥳

My research/conference visit to Marseille and Aix is coming to a close and it's been a real adventure. Feel very grateful to be able to do things like this as part of my job. Lots of interesting conversations, great food, sightseeing, and productive collaboration. Hope to see you again soon 👋🏻

THE LINGUISTIC LIFE OF THE KUFR QASSEM DEAF COMMUNITY LANGUAGE EMERGENCE, VARIATION, CHANGE, AND PERSISTENCE by MARAH JARAISI A thesis submitted to the University of Birmingham for the degree of DOCTOR OF PHILOSOPHY Supervised by Professor Adam Schembri and Dr. Marcus Perlman Department of Linguistics and Communication School of English, Drama, and Creative Studies College of Arts and Law University of Birmingham September 2025

Dedication This thesis is dedicated to the resilient Palestinian people. (poem) Because I am not like match sticks, I light up once… and die. but I am like the fires of the Magi: I burn… from my cradle to my grave and from my predecessors to my descendants. Long as the horizon is my breath, and I have mastered the craft of ants, gently for history is written the way we dictate By - Tawfiq Ziad -

Very excited to announce that yesterday I submitted my PhD thesis: The Linguistic Life of the Kufr Qassem Deaf Community: Language Emergence, Variation, Change, and Persistence.

I dedicate this thesis to my people: the resilient Palestinian people

Some of the predictor-specific trends for word learning... The speaking rate finding continues to puzzle us!