Dan Dediu

Rosa's excellent @cp-trendsgenetics.bsky.social piece on genome-wide association studies (GWAS) of speech, language & reading traits offers a nice opportunity to (re)post a selection of the research articles she covers. (And we are only just getting started!) .... 🧪1/n

Like other 53 million+ people in Spain & Portugal, we've been affected by the blackout yesterday, but I just wanted to say that I am impressed by what I saw: how well people handled it on the roads, on the streets, waiting for the busses, in shops... Chapeau! 👏 (context.reverso.net/translation/...)

Indeed: as this sort of scientific exchanges (paper → comment → response) go, this was one of the best I've been involved in. And, again, it makes it clear that sharing the data and code, and being clear about what was done and why (as Bodo, Márton, Marcus & Mark did) are essential for science.

Very interesting! (I won't be there but would be nice to see the poster/paper in some form :))

Not just the alveolar trill, but all “r-like” sounds are associated with roughness across languages, pointing to a more general link between sound and touch - Scientific Reports Scientific Reports - Not just the alveolar trill, but all “r-like” sounds are associated with roughness across languages, pointing to a more general link between sound and touch

Remember the cool finding by @bodowinter.bsky.social et al. that the "trilled r" [r] is associated with roughness? Well, Rémi Anselme, François Pellegrino (@laboratoireddl.bsky.social) & myself show in www.nature.com/articles/s41... that this seems more general and applies to all "r-like" sounds.

I believe you already know, but Ian Maddieson (en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ian_Mad...) passed away this Sunday ☹️. He was an amazing person, typologist and phonetician and we will miss him a lot. Personally, he was one of the few who in 2007 didn't laugh at the idea that genes might affect linguistic tone.

An Amazon kindle page for Bye Bye I Love You that lists it as a “top new release in linguistics.”

Hey, this! Thanks to everyone who have pre-ordered.

It really, really matters for the book, for books, for people who can benefit from what’s in this one.

Not newsworthy at all, but just to say that today I finally deactivated my Twitter (yes, I still call it Twitter!) account -- what can I say? RIP...

I guess you might have already seen this, but there's three very interesting job openings at Turku University in the BEDLAN group bedlan.net/news/three-p... in "Evolutionary Language Sciences", "Archaeogenomics" and "Evolutionary Health" -- deadline 31/01/2025

Energy-hungry AI is already harming health – and it's getting worse The electricity required to support Silicon Valley’s AI ambitions could contribute to approximately 600,000 asthma cases and create a $20 billion public health burden by 2030

AI and data centers may impose a $20 billion public health bill on the US by 2030 - with associated emissions and air pollution causing an estimated 600,000 asthma cases annually.

A new study also estimates current public health costs from existing data centers.
www.newscientist.com/article/2459...

Beethoven, one of the most celebrated musicians in history, scored unremarkably on the musicality-related polygenic index, ranking between the 9th & 11th percentile based on modern samples. In our paper we explain why this is no surprise & how it offers a nice example for teaching complex genetics.

Sisena sessió del SeRIAL! 🪢🗣️ Mireia Farrús
@mireiafarrus.bsky.social presentarà SCRIBAL, el transcriptor automàtic per a docència universitària que ha desenvolupat el grup #CLiC 💻👩‍🏫
‼️ Atenció al canvi d'aula (1.3)

📅 Dijous 12/12
🕓 16 h
📌Aula 1.3 (Edifici Josep Carner, @filcomub.bsky.social)

The alveolar trill is perceived as jagged/rough by speakers of different languages Typological research shows that across languages, trilled [r] sounds are more common in adjectives describing rough as opposed to smooth surfaces. In this study

My first post on 🦋 is (predictably 😜) about our new paper in JASA pubs.aip.org/asa/jasa/art... connecting the alveolar trill [r] with a jagged line (and [l] with a smooth line) across 28 languages from 12 families. (Interestingly, this is even stronger than the classic bouba/kiki effect!)