Martin Haspelmath

This study was an amazing collaborative experience. I'm really really grateful to all the wonderful people who contributed and made this happen.

It's the closest I have ever come to finding something like a "universal" in human cognition.

Bernd Kortmann's adverbial-subordinator data from his 1997 book are now part of the CrossGram database: all 2063 adverbial subordinators from 52 European languages (crossgram.clld.org/contribution...) plus 32 core meanings treated as language parameters + maps (crossgram.clld.org/contribution...)

Evolution of differential object marking in Macedonian dialects benjamins.com/catalog/dia....

Das Altuigurische spielt für die Turkvölker dieselbe Rolle, wie Latein für die romanischen Sprachen. Ein aktuelles wissenschaftliches Wörterbuch, gibt es jedoch nicht. Das Akademieprojekt „Wörterbuch des Altuigurischen“ um Jens Peter Laut ändert das nun und trägt zum Erhalt dieser Kultur bei.

The Importance of Biological Theory - Biological Theory Biological Theory -

I am happy to share this article, entitled "The importance of Biological Theory". It is my inaugural editorial as the new Editor-in-Chief of @biologicaltheory.bsky.social . In these complex and challenging times, theory is more important now than ever. Enjoy!

doi.org/10.1007/s137...

Bonmann, Riesberg and Himmelmann (2025) on DOM in Western Malayo-Polynesian (www.degruyterbrill.com/document/doi/10.1515/lingty-2024-0002/html) – the dataset is now available in CrossGram: crossgram.clld.org/contribution...

A wonderful new resource: "The Balkan Linguistic Area" (ed. by E. Adamou & A. Sobolev: www.degruyterbrill.com/.../10.../97...) – dozens of linguistic features with areal maps. Inspired by our APiCS database (balcanica.rs/index.php/jo...), and also available as an online database: abla.cnrs.fr

Book cover of the collection entitled "Gender-inclusive language: Findings from 14 languages and open research questions", edited by Falco Pfalzgraf.

💡Learn about the use of gender-inclusive language across 14 European languages in this new book edited by Falco Pfalzgraf: www.degruyterbrill.com/document/doi/10.1515/9783111701608/html#overview

@lhekanaho.bsky.social @sofialampro.bsky.social @genderedform.bsky.social @michael-hornsby.bsky.social

Gašper Beguš on Why Language Doesn’t Make Humans Special Yascha Mounk and Gašper Beguš also talk about what whale communication and the recent progress on AI tell us about the human brain.

I had an awesome conversation with Yascha Mounk. We talked about how our perspective on language, animals, consciousness, AI is changing. Have a listen:

www.persuasion.community/p/gasper-begus

My indefinite-pronoun data from 1997 are now part of the CrossGram database – not the well-known "implicational maps" (as CrossGram does not store images), but all 140 indefinite pronoun markers from the core set of 40 languages (crossgram.clld.org/contribution...), plus all 433 glossed examples.

Edward Gibson's new book has arrived on my desk – 350 pages on cognitively-oriented dependency syntax from MIT Press! mitpress.mit.edu/978026255357... For me, this is an exciting development, as I came to love dependency syntax in the 1980s, through European authors such as Tesnière and Mel'čuk.

I’m going to halve my publication output. You should consider slow science, too If we don’t slow down, the research enterprise is going to crash, argues Adrian Barnett.

Great piece on prioritizing quality over quantity in scientific publication.

For those of us with labs, this necessarily involves shrinking our group size. After I got tenure I started to downsize my lab and have not regretted it one iota. More time for each student & more time to think & write.

New paper (open access): revistes.uab.cat/isogloss/art...

An atlas of endangered languages by Tim Brookes. This title is embedded in a white organic blob shape on a green color field on which light colored letter forms have been arranged

A belated bday present came today: @timbrookes.bsky.social’s wonderful book celebrating human ingenuity and diversity. It’s well designed and well produced, too. A thing to admire. And provocative to boot!

Peer Review is broken because a generation of Editors were trained that peer review is sacrosanct. Thus we have Editors who are clerks, sending and re-sending manuscripts to reviewers until they are happy. That's not the job. Be an Editor, not a clerk. Use your skill and judgement. Make decisions.

Look at my baby! ☺️

I reedited Modole folk stories published 110 years ago

Old journals and archives are full of story collections in underdocumented languages, often difficult or impossible to access for both linguists and the speaker community. Using legacy material is valuable and sustainable 🙌🏻

book cover

Just published "A grammar of Hewramî" by Masoud Mohammadirad #cogl #openaccess langsci-press.org/catalog/book...

Everybody, if you want #Burushaski news gracing your timeline, follow @langoinstitute.bsky.social, who is posting tidbits from our internal reconstruction project, and our friend @charismawafi.bsky.social, who is a Burusin sociolinguist working on ethnography & language-use in her home in Hunza.

Wer glaubt, bei OpenAi und ChatGPT auf der "guten" Seite zu stehen - das Unternehmen kooperiert eng mit den Geheimdiensten, hat sogar den ehem. Chef der NSA im Vorstand.
Toi toi toi!

Is inflectional syncretism ever “systematic”? Some comments on Caha (2019) Since Plank (1991), syncretic patterns in inflectional paradigms have been studied in a sustained way, fuelled also by the increasing popularity of Distributed Morphology (e.g. Siddiqi 2019) and nanos...

In this blogpost (on the occasion of reading Caha 2019), I make some comments on the "accidental vs. systematic syncretism" distinction, which seems to be unnecessary: dlc.hypotheses.org/4188

Hey, did you know that Greek lost the phoneme /h/ because of secularism? You see, /h/ intrinsically symbolises the Creator. And hydrogen.

This journal is published by @springernature.com , and is hosted by @nature.com. How did this incoherent nonsense make it into print?

Biases are everywhere. We really need to work hard to avoid them – not only our political biases, but also our biases toward a particular favoured theory. www.science.org/doi/epdf/10....

These photos on my institute's news page about the study are real value added. Would you like to sit in a precise laser-measured pit all day? Archaeology may be for you! (It's essential work but I would go insane.)

The #DGfS2026 s u u u per awesome programme is awesome!!!11 Check out our AG3, featuring talks by e.g. @stefanhartmann.bsky.social, @theresaheyd.bsky.social, @nordemuriel.bsky.social, as well as @leftyveggie.bsky.social & @alexwillich.bsky.social as co-covenors

👇

www.uni-trier.de/universitaet...

A vertically oriented academic poster on a light beige background. At the very top, a thin horizontal line separates a small header that reads: “NEW ARTICLE | RESEARCH REPORT”. Below it, in large dark gray text, the title fills most of the page: “Cognition and Reading Comprehension: an Analysis on the Influence of Logical Information of Conjunctions for the Resolution of Pronominal Anaphora”. Under the title, two author entries are listed, each preceded by a small pale yellow circular bullet: First: “ANDRÉ LUIZ DA SILVA”, followed by “Universidade Federal da Paraíba”. Second: “JAN EDSON RODRIGUES LEITE”, followed by “Universidade Federal da Paraíba”. The layout is clean and minimalist, with generous white space and no images or charts. In the bottom left corner, there is a small abstract graphic resembling short radiating lines, like a subtle logo or decorative mark.

Two people in a sentence, one “he” later. André Luiz da Silva and Jan Edson Rodrigues Leite show conjunctions can tilt the guess: “but” tends to favor the nearer name, “therefore/so” the earlier one, and conclusive links get faster average responses. #langsky #linguistics doi.org/10.25189/267...

For me, the original trauma was Kosovo in 1999: the first NATO war, Germany‘s first war since 1945 - it was a war of choice, a war of aggression, a war for regime change. The opposite of what we were told when I was drafted. Was our regime really all that different from the GDR?

Mutterinstinkt: Die Lüge vom Mutterinstinkt Der Mutterinstinkt gilt als Naturkraft. Doch Forschung zeigt: Er ist ein Mythos – und macht Eltern das Leben schwerer, als es sein müsste.

The myth of the mother instinct (in German). With me harping on as usual . www.zeit.de/wissen/2025-...

ʔíyəs təńá χeẃs syəĺánəm.
Ног азы хорзӕх уӕ уӕд!
Илъэсыкӏэмкӏэ сышъуфэгушӏо!
გილოცავთ ახალ წელს!
Ⲙⲁⲣⲉⲑⲣⲟⲙⲡⲓ ⲛ̀ⲃⲉⲣⲓ ⲛⲱⲧⲉⲛ ⲥⲙⲁⲣⲱⲟⲩⲧ.
Bliis nei juar!
نوکیں ﺳﺎﻝ ﻣُﺒﺎﺭَﮎ ﺑﺎﺕ!
تھݸݽ دݺن مَمَر مُبارَک مَنِݽ!
সবাইকে নতুন বছরের শুভেচ্ছা।
ಪುದು ವರ್ಷತ್ತೇ ಶುಭಾಶಯಂಗ.

I wish more people posted about linguistics on bsky. Even if I try to follow all linguists, people end up talking about politics all the time. When #bsky is just another ragebait or anxietybait machine, people avoid it.

I care about politics of course, but I try to have boundaries too.

New book! I have written a book, called Syntax: A cognitive approach, published by MIT Press.

This is open access; MIT Press will post a link soon, but until then, the book is available on my website:
tedlab.mit.edu/tedlab_websi...