Rob Malouf

Huh, I haven't really considered keyness et al. But you could think of chi sq as a binomial regression where you want to know about the interaction term. Bayesianizing it isn't going to change the point estimate but might give you a different view of its uncertainty.

✋As it happens, I am at this very moment writing up an argument that only Bayesian stats make any sense for historical corpus linguistics (there's no population!)

I wonder how many papers in 2020 (and 1990) had at least one citation error.

Here's more recent project -- it includes Cherokee and gets Swahili right. No doubt there are still errors and omissions, they're unavoidable. They accept updates, though, so if you catch any you can let them know.

Not rare exactly, but definitely less common:

A rare derivational suffix that emerged from a frequent inflection is odd from a grammaticalization perspective. But it's a very natural development if seen in the context of the whole system.

It's a typologically unusual construction and a small corner of the Hungarian grammar, but it reflects large systemic changes in verbal inflection post-1600's: the shift away from periphrastic perfective marking and the loss the -ik paradigm.

Timeline (1500–2000) showing the development of Hungarian -hAtnék: from potential conditional verbs (1500), through divergence and reanalysis of hAt-n-ék → hAtnék (1600–1700), to first nominal uses (1800) and increased productivity (2000). Two bars note concurrent obsolescence of complex tenses and the ik paradigm.

link.springer.com/epdf/10.1007...

New paper out today in Morphology! Morphological change as systemically motivated bricolage: Hungarian impulsative constructions. We trace the development of Hungarian potential conditional verb forms (sírhatnék 'I could cry') to impulsative nouns (sírhatnék 'the urge to cry'). #linguistics

Definitely. But if AI makes it possible for people to make tools that scratch their own personal itches, "deployment" isn't as much of an issue. They're their only customers.

I mean.....I use the word enshittification and I also use claude code to build my own alternatives. As I'm convinced the tools I build actually work I'll release them. Don't really want people to use them though. I'd rather they build their own stuff. Anyway, maybe I'm unique? Don't think so, but...

Studying the Evolution of Abstract Thought - NCCR Evolving Language In the new ERC-funded project, “Conceptual Diversity and the Evolution of Abstract Thought” (CONCEVO), Mansfield will lead a team of researchers to develop a method for reconstructing the evolution of...

I'm hiring! 2 x PhD positions to work at Uni Zurich with me on "Evolutionary Semantics" for an ERC-funded project. semantically curious MA grads from linguistics, cog psych, anthro encouraged to apply
evolvinglanguage.ch/studying-the...

a chicken behind the desk of an enormously outfitted computer station

don't worry guys I'm sure everything will be fine

This is my experience too - LLMs are often wrong, but thinking through their wrongness can be very clarifying

I've completed "Christmas Tree Farm" - Day 12 - Advent of Code 2025 #AdventOfCode adventofcode.com/2025/day/12

I've found it really helpful for TikZ diagrams

Don't forget Sinclair! Everyone forgets Sinclair. He's the one that put Firth's ideas into practice.

Dinsdag verschijnt mijn boek 'Woord voor woord: de verleden tijd van taal'. Daarin vind je onder andere 70 grote infographics.

Vandaag is het tijd voor preview nr. 2: 'Een suikerreis':

"What's the part number for the plastic plug thing on the thermostat housing of a 3.2l VR6 (Audi 8p)". It instantly came back WITH THE RIGHT ANSWER.

I, for one, welcome our new part-number-knowing overlords.

Now I'm convinced. I'm replacing the thermostat housing on my ancient Audi. Of course, a little plastic doohickey broke off when I took it apart. And of course I can't find it on any parts diagrams. I have no idea what it's called so I can't look it up in the usual way. So I asked chatgpt. 1/2

Really? I was still chalk+blackboard back then. i1.wp.com/www.lisarive...

Before you scrape and before you train… - UC Berkeley Library Update Using AI and Text Mining with Library Resources: What Every UC Berkeley Researcher Needs to Know Planning to scrape a website or database? Train an AI tool? Before you scrape and before you train, the...

great resource here from @ucbscholcomm.bsky.social: "Before you scrape and before you train…" update.lib.berkeley.edu/2025/09/02/b...

What is emergence? This is one of the most central ingredients of complexity, and a challenging one to formalize. Here's a paper by @seanmcarroll.bsky.social & Achyth Parola that attempts to classify different forms of emergence. @manlius.bsky.social @sfiscience.bsky.social arxiv.org/pdf/2410.15468

I can cover matrix-vector notation in a week, with implementations in plain python and numpy (we get to pytorch later in term). It's not hard,. No reason for students to think they need a whole semester of linalg to do a comp ling class.

60,000+!

"Criminal federal search warrant"? I don't think that's a thing.

YouTube video by Declan Fleming ICE raid at Buona Forchetta in South Park

In my neighborhood yesterday #FuckICE

I warned about the Homework Apocalypse in 2023.

It happened roughly as expected. There is a world where AI & traditional education get along very well (mixes of active in-class learning, AI-assisted assignments & tutors, blue books), but it needs to be built. www.oneusefulthing.org/p/the-homewo...

It's not even really true that the LLMs people interact with now are just reproducing statistical distributions. It's all the stuff around the next-word-predicting component that makes them so useful.