Tom McCoy

I need one too!

I could use an emergency reviewer for an ACL submission involving interpretability and syntax. Please DM me if you might be able to provide an emergency review before February 15!

I like it! Each word is a little connect-the-dots puzzle

I like the three consecutive dots in the word "hijinks". They're like an ellipsis telling you that the hijinks will continue.

I'm excited to be speaking at Carnegie Mellon today - it's where I got my start as a researcher (a summer job making a finite-state morphological analyzer for Kinyarwanda), and it's fun to be back! Say hi if you're around! www.lti.cs.cmu.edu/misc-pages/l...

Website: flann.cs.yale.edu/index.html

🚨Calling all fans of analyzing neural networks: There will be a workshop at Yale in the spring that you should come to! (May 11 to May 13)

Announcing the first Workshop on Formal Languages and Neural Networks (FLaNN)!

We invite the submission of abstracts for posters that discuss the formal expressivity, computational properties, and learning behavior of neural network models, including large language models (LLMs).

An image of two snack foods. At the top is Reese's Oreo, which is an Oreo-flavored brand of Reese's. At the bottom is Oreo Reese's, which is a Reese's-flavored brand of Oreo.

These products flagrantly violate the rules of English compounds!

"Reese's Oreo" should be a type of Oreo, not a type of Reese's!

Exciting - congratulations!!

Amazing!!! The NACLO network runs deep

Examples like that drew me into the field, and I haven't looked back

6/6

She then used that example to introduce rule ordering. Two processes are in play: (i) vowel length changes based on what consonant comes next, and (ii) "t" and "d" both become flaps between vowels. To explain the pronunciations of "writer" & "rider", (i) must happen before (ii)!

5/n

Lori has a knack for explaining things in a way that draws you in. An early example that stuck with me: She asked what's different about the pronunciation of "writer" vs "rider". I was stunned to learn it's the "i", not the "t"/"d"!

4/n

A few years later, she, along with Chris Dyer, supervised my first research project (a summer internship building finite-state morphological analyzers).

3/n

In case you’re wondering how she introduced me to the field: In 9th grade, I went to a presentation she gave at a neighboring high school about NACLO (a linguistics contest). I was hooked - spent the next few days puzzling over questions from previous years' contests.

2/n

Congratulations to all of the new ACL fellows!!

I'm delighted to see @lorislevin.bsky.social recognized. She's the person who introduced me to computational linguistics, and my scientific outlook has been deeply shaped by her views on the relationship between linguistics & NLP.

1/n

A fantastic department - highly recommend applying!

Me giving my account number to a customer service rep: "That's 2 as in twenty-three, 7 as in seven hundred six, 1 as in fourteen, 1 as in fourteen, 0 as in...well...uh..."

Still waiting for Google to release Ge (the large version of Gemini)

Come be my colleague!

The Yale Dept of Linguistics is hiring a 3-year Lecturer in Historical Linguistics. There's a great group here working on language change, and you could become part of it!

Application review begins Dec 14. For more info, see apply.interfolio.com/177395

Image of a Laffy Taffy wrapper. The joke asks "What do you deserve and is also a type of bagel?" And the answer is "Everything"

I am partial to Laffy Taffy mainly because of this one (via www.reddit.com/r/wholesomem...)

I need to know what joke prompted this!!

Ooh jackpot!! Thanks Adina!!

Nice, thank you!

Question motivated by a talk by Squid Tamar-Mattis!

Do any languages have different forms of "and" for different phrase types?

English uses "and" no matter what's being joined: "bread and butter" (nouns), "divide and conquer" (verbs), "short and sweet" (adjs). Are there languages that vary the conjunction across these contexts?

I mean, that's basically what doing a postdoc is!

More info about my research: rtmccoy.com/research/

Top: A syntax tree for the sentence "the doctor by the lawyer saw the artist". Bottom: A continuous vector.

🤖🧠I'll be considering applications for PhD students & postdocs to start at Yale in Fall 2026!

If you are interested in the intersection of linguistics, cognitive science, & AI, I encourage you to apply!

PhD link: rtmccoy.com/prospective_...
Postdoc link: rtmccoy.com/prospective_...