List of accepted papers at ETT (Emerging Topics in Typology), Mainz, July 2026: ett-2026.sciencesconf.org/resource/pag...

Cfp: Language, Norm, and Society: The Prague Linguistic Circle (1926-2026) in the Face of Contemporary Challenges Participants at the first phonological conference, organized by the CLP in December 1930 in Prague organised to celebrate the centenary of the Prague Linguistic Circle (1926-2026)by the Europe-Eura…

Call for Papers 🚨

Language, Norm, and Society: The Prague Linguistic Circle (1926-2026) in the Face of Contemporary Challenges

Submission deadline: 1 June 2026
Conference: 10-11 December 2026

🔗 hiphilangsci.net/2026/04/17/c...

#Histlx

Assorted Haiku Haiku #2511   Tourists wait in line to enter Machu Picchu. Oh, look! A high queue. Haiku #564127   how dare you suggest I have a short attention spanish omelette   Limeraiku   There once was a young limerick from Kew who turned into a haiku. The Constraints of Haiku   Tied up all night with a haiku dominatrix and her three-line whip.   Shakespearean Haiku   Shall I compare thee To a summer’s day? Alright – Thou art pretty hot.   How to Write a Haiku   The last line should flow seamlessly from the first two – hippopotamus.    Brian Bilston  

It’s International Haiku Day apparently and so for today’s poetry offering, here are a few assorted haiku.

book cover

Just published "Mood alternations: A synchronic and diachronic study of negated complement clauses in Spanish" by Raquel Montero Estebaranz #orl #openaccess langsci-press.org/catalog/book...

Marconi’s lectures on typology and diachrony - YouTube

William Croft on comparative concepts: www.youtube.com/playlist?lis...

Witnessing the birth of “Cognitive Linguistics” 37 years ago In early April 1989, the international “Cognitive Linguistics” movement was born. Probably not everyone knows that it has a precise birthday, so let me recount the event here from my own perspective –...

How "Cognitive Linguistics" started as an organized enterprise: dlc.hypotheses.org/4252

Family Tree Model The family tree remains the main metaphor for describing the evolutionary history and relationships of languages. Languages, like biological species, evolve following processes such as descent with m...

Our chapter on the tree model (with @thomaspellard.bsky.social and @robinryder.bsky.social ) is at last published online: onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/...

Scientists are respected for their rigorous thinking and consistency. Four years ago, the Max Planck Society issued a statement against an illegal war (www.mpg.de/18354975/sta...). For consistency, I would now like to see an updated statement, because we want to be widely respected.

What if the use of psychoactive substances, particularly alcohol consumption, had been a factor in the rise of socio-political complexity throughout human history?

Addressing this question is not easy, but it is worth trying 👇🏼

www.pnas.org/doi/10.1073/...

Do Great Apes Use Iconic Gestures? Iconicity is increasingly recognized as a core property of language, raising the evolutionary question of whether great apes use iconic gestures. This article challenges current theories of ape gestu...

"Do Great Apes Use Iconic Gestures?"

Insightful, detailed discussion by @mperlman.bsky.social. Great to see a bunch of threads of evidence—including comparison to human children—in one place.

wires.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10....

Summer Schools: CauLaGe Summer Program 2026 Focus: - Field methods & glossing sessions - Team-based work with native speakers of Abkhaz - Hands-on linguistic analysis (morphosyntax, phonology, semantics) Description: The CauLaGe Summer Program is an intensive linguistic expedition. Participants will engage in fieldwork, linguistic analysis, and workshops led by experts in the field. While it is focused on a Caucasian language, the program is open to anyone who wants to gain hands-on experience in language documentation and analys

Summer Schools: CauLaGe Summer Program 2026

​١٠٩٢ - اَلْحَرْبُ غَشُومٌ لِأَنَّهَا تَنَالُ مَنْ لَمْ يَكُنْ لَهُ فِيهَا جِنَايَةٌ ، وَرُبَّمَا سَلِمَ الْجَانِي

No. 1092

"War is a tyrant"

al-ḥarb ghashūm

According to al-Maydānī this is said because "war takes those who have done nothing wrong, while the true wrongdoer passes through it safely."

Behind every medical advance, social study or cultural insight, there is research.

#ICREAcall supports researchers with 20 permanent positions in Catalonia's research system: 

🧑‍🤝‍🧑 Social & Behavioural Sciences 
📚 Humanities 
🔬 Life Sciences & Medicine

https://www.icrea.cat/icrea-call/

The #DGfS2026 was warmly received by mayor of Trier in a very special location tonight! The old Roman Thermen am Viehmarkt is an interesting and impressive place, and even better when mingling with linguists like @lingucat.bsky.social

Kava drinking and its role in cultural evolution Did the consumption of the mind-altering beverage kava facilitate the emergence of complex, hierarchical societies in Oceania?

new research on kava drinking and its role in cultural evolution by @vaclavhrncir.bsky.social, @scottclaessens.bsky.social and colleagues at @mpi-eva-leipzig.bsky.social and partner institutions!! well done!!
www.eva.mpg.de/press/news/a...

Front cover of my book, titled "Comparative musicology: Evolution, universals, and the science of the world's music" (published today by Oxford University Press)

1st of my 4-page essay published in Nature today titled "Music is not a universal language - but it can bring us together when words fail" Picture caption: "Puerto Rican rapper Bad Bunny (centre) performed in Spanish at the half-time show of the 2026 American Football Super Bowl LX."

My book is now published! 🌏🎶🧪

You can download it for free at academic.oup.com/book/62353 - I’d be grateful if you do!
I also published an accessible summary with audio/video today in @nature.com: www.nature.com/articles/d41...
Try reading that first, then give the whole book a read if you like it!

Der CfP für die Vielfaltslinguistik in Kiel (5.-6. Juni) wurde bis zum 28. verlängert. Ich kann leider dieses Jahr nicht dabei sein 😞 Die Vielfaltslinguistik ist eine der cutesten Linguistikkonferenzen, wenn ihr gutes Feedback und Socializing wollt

www.isfas.uni-kiel.de/de/linguisti...

Journal of African Languages and Linguistics Starting 2025, Journal of African Languages and Linguistics will be transferred to Gold Open Access on a year-by-year basis. All articles will thus immediately appear under the Creative Commons licens...

Also, did you know that our wonderful Journal of African Languages and Linguistics is open access?
Via subscribe to open (S2O) anyone has access this year! @degruyterbrill.bsky.social

Matching sounds to shapes: Evidence of the bouba-kiki effect in naïve baby chicks Humans across multiple languages spontaneously associate the nonwords “kiki” and “bouba” with spiky and round shapes, respectively, a phenomenon named the bouba-kiki effect. To explore the origin of t...

Hey linguists -- chickens can distinguish bouba and kiki:

www.science.org/doi/10.1126/...

📣 "Linguistic Knowledge and Language Use" (CUP, 2024) now in Paperback!

The book is Open Access & can be downloaded for free from CUP's website. But if you prefer physical copies, this might interest you as it is 4x cheaper than the Hardback format!

Here: doi.org/10.1017/9781...

Book cover reading: Sara Nović, Mother Tongue, the letters in both Roman capitals and ASL manual alphabet handshapes overlaid

I'm sure I'll have more coherent thoughts later but this is just to say that I'm a third of the way through an advance copy of @novicsara.bsky.social's new book and I already need to tell you to read it

This study was an amazing collaborative experience. I'm really really grateful to all the wonderful people who contributed and made this happen.

It's the closest I have ever come to finding something like a "universal" in human cognition.

Bernd Kortmann's adverbial-subordinator data from his 1997 book are now part of the CrossGram database: all 2063 adverbial subordinators from 52 European languages (crossgram.clld.org/contribution...) plus 32 core meanings treated as language parameters + maps (crossgram.clld.org/contribution...)

Evolution of differential object marking in Macedonian dialects benjamins.com/catalog/dia....

Das Altuigurische spielt für die Turkvölker dieselbe Rolle, wie Latein für die romanischen Sprachen. Ein aktuelles wissenschaftliches Wörterbuch, gibt es jedoch nicht. Das Akademieprojekt „Wörterbuch des Altuigurischen“ um Jens Peter Laut ändert das nun und trägt zum Erhalt dieser Kultur bei.

The Importance of Biological Theory - Biological Theory Biological Theory -

I am happy to share this article, entitled "The importance of Biological Theory". It is my inaugural editorial as the new Editor-in-Chief of @biologicaltheory.bsky.social . In these complex and challenging times, theory is more important now than ever. Enjoy!

doi.org/10.1007/s137...

Bonmann, Riesberg and Himmelmann (2025) on DOM in Western Malayo-Polynesian (www.degruyterbrill.com/document/doi/10.1515/lingty-2024-0002/html) – the dataset is now available in CrossGram: crossgram.clld.org/contribution...

A wonderful new resource: "The Balkan Linguistic Area" (ed. by E. Adamou & A. Sobolev: www.degruyterbrill.com/.../10.../97...) – dozens of linguistic features with areal maps. Inspired by our APiCS database (balcanica.rs/index.php/jo...), and also available as an online database: abla.cnrs.fr

Book cover of the collection entitled "Gender-inclusive language: Findings from 14 languages and open research questions", edited by Falco Pfalzgraf.

💡Learn about the use of gender-inclusive language across 14 European languages in this new book edited by Falco Pfalzgraf: www.degruyterbrill.com/document/doi/10.1515/9783111701608/html#overview

@lhekanaho.bsky.social @sofialampro.bsky.social @genderedform.bsky.social @michael-hornsby.bsky.social

Gašper Beguš on Why Language Doesn’t Make Humans Special Yascha Mounk and Gašper Beguš also talk about what whale communication and the recent progress on AI tell us about the human brain.

I had an awesome conversation with Yascha Mounk. We talked about how our perspective on language, animals, consciousness, AI is changing. Have a listen:

www.persuasion.community/p/gasper-begus