David Adger

I wish I didn’t have to share this. But the BBC has decided to censor my first Reith Lecture.

They deleted the line in which I describe Donald Trump as “the most openly corrupt president in American history.” /1

Just complained to the BBC about their censoring of @rutgerbregman.com's Reith Lecture, where they removed a line about Trump being the most openly corrupt president in US history. I know they are in a difficult spot, but this is pure cowardice. www.bbc.co.uk/contact/comp...

ah mea culpa. Either my screen or my eyes are obviously failing!

why no link in the article to the actual research publication though? Sources would be good.

A copy of "Mereological Syntax: Phrase Structure, Cyclicity, and Islands" by David Adger.

@davidadger.bsky.social's "Mereological Syntax" presents an argument for replacing Chomsky’s set-theoretic Merge view of syntax with a theory of syntax based on mereological objects. Available #OpenAccess: mitpress.mit.edu/978026255327...

Did you ever racially abuse fellow pupils?

It was years ago.

Did you ever racially abuse fellow pupils?

Not in a hurtful way.

Did you ever racially abuse fellow pupils?

Not with intent.

Did you ever racially abuse fellow pupils?

Not genuine abuse.

😮🫣😬😱 ~AA

University teaching income ‘£6.4 billon less’ than 10 years ago UUK says shortfall in teaching money is ‘baked in’ to higher education funding system as institutions brace for new tax in upcoming budget

'Ahead of the autumn budget on 26 November, Universities UK (UUK) has calculated that funding per student for teaching in 2025-26 is at 64 per cent of the level it was in 2015-16.' 1/3

There was a cool story (which I discussed a bit in Language Unlimited) about how very primitive bots back in the 2010s ended up shifting their language to something very non-human. The Sun reported that the 'boffins' had to turn them off!

I also learned about autoprompts from your paper, which was new to me and quite fascinating.

No theory of labelling needed, and a way nicer means of modelling long distance dependencies (plus a new theory of islandhood and its exceptions). This is more of a different theory, as opposed to a formalization of the current one (as in the Marcolli et al book)

really interesting and novel point by @ryannefdt.bsky.social and Emmanuel Chemla: current LLMs have been specialized via evaluation and selection, so are by no means 'off the shelf' learners: their biases have been specifically tailored for language processing. arxiv.org/pdf/2408.09544

Replace Merge?

Can’t wait to start reading this!

#linguistics #minimalist #syntax

i think, for me at least, it can also be attributive: "hark at you and all your fancypants words!" I think bizarropants can be used both predicatively and attributively (that's just bizarropants; it was a bizarropants experience) but I kinda don't feel native in it!!!

yeah, my grandmother used to call me fancypants sometimes when I used long words as a kid in the 70s, so def pre-internet!

thanks!!!!

street art reads, "If graffiti changed anything -- it would be illegal"

Banksy social commentary brought to you by conditional (counterfactual!) strengthening

Oops. Ooooooooooooops.

I do hope that nobody has been given or denied a job/promotion based on their SpringerNature citation counts in the past 15 years.

arxiv.org/pdf/2511.01675

h/t @nathlarigaldie.bsky.social

it's almost Merge. Just, instead of making a new thing by putting 2 things together, you modify one thing by making another (external or internal to it) a part of it. Solves all that labelling trauma, and makes the syntax waaaay more elegant. Go on, you know you want to ...

well you were the one who had to put up with me writing it, so I'm equally proud of you 😘

I mean, the semanticists have been all over it for decades for plurals and aspect. And it must be said, I play a bit fast and loose here with it!

Mereological Syntax: Phrase Structure, Cyclicity, and Islands An argument for replacing Chomsky’s set-theoretic Merge view of syntax with a theory of syntax based on mereological objects.Mereology is the study of part

At last! Open Access version of the book on MIT's site. One for the syntax nerds. I argue we need to replace Merge, that there are no Phases, and that we need to rethink the basic theoretical typology of Islands. Feel free to download with abandon! 🐦🐦 #syntax direct.mit.edu/books/oa-mon...

Reform UK and Russian bribes: a Nathan Gill timeline As Reform’s former leader in Wales is sentenced to ten and a half years for taking bribes from a pro-Russian actor, here's a chronology of his actions and the wider context of Putin, Ukraine and Brexi...

NEW: If you have *any* interest in the Nathan Gill story, you need to look at this.

We’ve put all the dates into a timeline & it’s incredibly revealing.
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www.thenerve.news/p/nathan-gil...

“If you went back a million minutes, you would be back to January 2024. If you go back a billion minutes, you are in the Roman empire. That’s the difference between a million and a billion.”

I don't use the word lightly, but this is really just evil isn't it. "Your identity makes us uncomfortable so be gone from public spaces." Fuck off.

very understandable, but thus dies the present tense 😞

need to get yourself a waterproof phone so you can tell us 'swimming'!

Genomic Investigations of Spoken and Written Language Abilities: A Guide to Advances in Approaches, Technologies, and Discovery Purpose: The aim of this tutorial is to show how the rise of molecular technologies and analytical methods in human genetics yields exciting new ...

Advances in genomics are giving exciting new perspectives on biology of speech, language & reading. My latest peer-reviewed paper is a tutorial, guiding readers from different backgrounds through the history of the field, current state-of-the-art, & where we’re heading. A taster in this thread.🧪
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Referring the Home Office to Prevent as it's clearly a radicalising group with an extremist far-right agenda.

Coverage of the refugee proposals demonstrates why we have such a broken political system. Endless focus on left-wing anger and right-wing support. Basically nothing on whether the reforms will work. They will not, which is why we'll still be here having the same debate in three years.

This is a spot on analysis of the government's increasingly crazed approach to comms