Andrew Smith

#Rome has two new metro stations!

This week, Line C opened the Porta Metronia and Colosseo-Fori Imperiali stations, which double as museums of Imperial Rome. #Roma #transit

Here's an eye-opening plunge into Colosseo-Fori:

The title page

🚨NEW PUBLICATION ALERT!🚨
The 'Design Features' of Language Revisited (w/ @mperlman.bsky.social @glupyan.bsky.social Koen de Reus & @limorraviv.bsky.social)
Feature Review out now in #OpenAccess in @cp-trendscognsci.bsky.social! #language #linguistics
Paper: doi.org/10.1016/j.ti...

Coming soon - Turner & Hoffmann on Creative Construction Grammar. In this, we argue that the domain-general process of Conceptual Blending is the cognitive operation that combines constructions. BTW this will be published open access!

www.cambridge.org/core/element...

Exploiting individual differences to bootstrap communication Author summary A fundamental question in the field of language evolution is how a communication system can emerge in a population that is initially unable to communicate. One theory is that human comm...

Interacting agents can create shared communication systems without ever knowing if signals are successfully received. The conventionalisation process involves a curious interaction between joint attention and individual behavioural differences. doi.org/10.1371/jour.... Work with Casimir Fisch.

Admirable dedication on your part to continue to give them another go.

Abstract painting of two people gesturing

"A compelling and thought-provoking analysis of human sociality and the origins of language."

The Interaction Engine by Stephen C. Levinson (@mpi-nl.bsky.social), Out Now & #OpenAccess

https://cup.org/4nusznG

#OA #Linguistics #LangSky 🐦🐦

Hang it in the Louvre

EXPLORING MEANING IN SUPVEILLANCE DISCOURSESCORPORA BLOOMSBURY ACADEMIC Pre-order now at 35% off: Exploring Meaning in Surveillance Discourses through Corpora Viola Wiegand This book takes a fresh perspective on surveillance, examining how it is defined, discussed, and negotiated in different domains of public discourse Use the following discount code to save 35% on bloomsbury.com/9781350501515: BLOOM-CONF-26 March 2026 Situated at the interface of corpus linguistics, discourse analysis, sociolinguistics, and surveillance studies, this book focuses on how surveillance is defined, discussed, and negotiated in public discourses. It analyses different meaning components of the cultural keyword of surveillance - inherently linked to power relations - in ongoing debates of public discourses. The author looks at the representation of surveillance in different discourse domains through three different studies - the prime academic joural in surveillance studies (Surveillance & Society), The Times newspaper, and the signage of public spaces. The first two studies illustrate implementations of a novel method of 'co-occurrence comparisons' in diachronic analyses of collocation. The final study integrates cutting-edge research on the multimodal representation of surveillance in public spaces. Adopting the sociolinguistic framework of 'surveillant landscapes' from mediated discourses analysis, this analysis reveals how surveillant practices are signalled in public environments. To capture the textual and material representation of surveillance in a collection of photographs from public spaces in multiple cities across Europe, North America, and Asia, the study presents a novel methodology combining corpus and qualitative methods for the analysis of multimodal data. Viola Wiegand is Lecturer in Education (TESOL) at the University of Stirling, UK.

The data is actually part of my forthcoming book, ”Exploring Meaning in Surveillance
Discourses through Corpora“ - available to pre-order now (with a discount code 😉 😇), and coming out in March 2026 (so stay tuned ☺️)

#cl2025 @cl2025.co.uk @bloomsburyacad.bsky.social

Interested in Balkan languages? The definitive reference work has arrived – on 1000 pages, in open access. www.cambridge.org/core/books/b...

A Decade of Lingwiki: An informal history Lingwiki... A Decade of Lingwiki: An informal history Lingwiki is the name used for an informal network of people and events with the aim of improving the representation of linguistics on Wikipedia. Whether it’...

A Decade of Lingwiki: An informal history

2025 marks ten years of lingwik. I like round numbers, documenting informal histories and lingwiki, and so I wanted to celebrate this anniversary by sharing the parts of the lingwiki story I am familiar with.

www.superlinguo.com/post/7870922...

Constructing language: a framework for explaining acquisition Explaining how children build a language system is a central goal of research in language acquisition, with broad implications for language evolution, adult language processing, and artificial intelli...

Children are incredible language learning machines. But how do they do it? Our latest paper, just published in TICS, synthesizes decades of evidence to propose four components that must be built into any theory of how children learn language. 1/
www.cell.com/trends/cogni... @mpi-nl.bsky.social

Some years ago, I started to notice the phrase 'going forward' in the sense 'in the future, from now on'. When @tanjasaily.fi and Turo Vartiainen organised a workshop on constructional creativity and innovation and asked me to join, I decided to take a closer look. Here is the result:

Wow!

I will forever be haunted by this footage.

Trawling has only been filmed underwater a few times in documentary history, and never with such clarity.

What’s so heart-rending about these shots is watching how the animals don’t just get swept up — they swim for their lives.
🌎🦑🧪

Democracy for Sale 1, Dominic Cummings 0 We fought to expose the £800m research agency that Cummings built to escape scrutiny - and we won.

🔴 Remember Aria, the “moonshot" research agency dreamed up by Dominic Cummings?

It's funded by £800m in public money but exempt from FOI laws

We decided to fight for transparency... and we won 🎉

New on Democracy for Sale w/ @lucasamin.bsky.social

democracyforsale.substack.com/p/dominic-cu...

"Words acquire new meanings by creative processes of semantic extension. We studied this experimentally: participants conventionalise novel labels with a partner, then extend labels to convey new meanings. Salient shared associations facilitated figurative semantic extensions."

See link below!

Semantic extension in a novel communication system is facilitated by salient shared associations Creative processes of semantic extension play a key role in language change, grammaticalisation, and (by hypothesis) the early origins and evolution o…

Semantic extension in an artificial language experiment: participants conventionalise novel labels, then extend them to convey new meanings (metonymically and metaphorically) based on salient shared associations.

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

Semantic extension in a novel communication system is facilitated by salient shared associations Creative processes of semantic extension play a key role in language change, grammaticalisation, and (by hypothesis) the early origins and evolution o…

New article in @cognitionjournal.bsky.social
with @kennysmithed.bsky.social and Josie Bowerman.

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

No, I don’t think it is. :-(

Words acquire new meanings by creative processes of semantic extension. We studied this experimentally: participants conventionalise novel labels, then extend them to convey new meanings. Diagram shows diamond label in consecutive experimental rounds being used to express different meanings: red diamond; red; volcano; anger

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

Semantic extension in a novel communication system is facilitated by salient shared associations Creative processes of semantic extension play a key role in language change, grammaticalisation, and (by hypothesis) the early origins and evolution o…

Words acquire new meanings by creative processes of semantic extension. We studied this experimentally: participants conventionalise novel labels, then extend them to convey new meanings. Salient shared associations facilitated figurative semantic extensions.

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

New paper on metonymic and metaphorical semantic extension in a novel communication system with @kennysmithed.bsky.social and Josie Bowerman out in Cognition.

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

This is high art

Quakers condemn police raid on Westminster Meeting House Police broke into a Quaker Meeting House last night (27 March) and arrested six young people holding a meeting over concerns for the climate and Gaza.

You think the arbitrary arrest of political dissenters cannot happen in the UK? It already does. www.quaker.org.uk/news-and-eve...

Five years ago today, most historical UK monthly rainfall observations were not available to scientists.

But the 66,000 pieces of paper containing the data had been scanned.

With covid lockdown approaching we saw an opportunity to transcribe the data.

#RainfallRescue began... 🧵

Are actual medals and a trophy not a formal recognition of their achievement?

Government loses legal battle over Covid ‘VIP Lane’ Exclusive: Judge slams “most unsatisfactory” Cabinet Office and orders release of names of 'VIP' firms to Democracy for Sale reporter - after *four year* wait.

🔴 For *four years* officials refused to release names of all companies linked to Conservative donors and party figures put in the 'VIP' lane for bumper Covid contracts

Now a judge has ordered them to.

Huge win for @jennacorderoy.bsky.social (and DfS)
democracyforsale.substack.com/p/government...

Unpublished 2011 results rescued from oblivion!⏳ osf.io/preprints/ps.... Effects of systematicity and frequency distribution (uniform, skewed) on artificial language learning. With Barbora Skarabela, @andrewdmsmith.bsky.social and @simonkirby.bsky.social

Spain, perhaps? Although only after Franco’s death.

Scrapping the Council Tax is Straightforward - Land Matters Today, the STUC has published an open letter to Scotland’s political parties urging them to revalue Scotland’s domestic property in order to provide an accurate tax base for the Council Tax which is s...

With yet more going round the houses in council tax - here is the secondary legislation I actually drafted that could reform it tomorrow andywightman.scot/2024/02/scra...