#evolang — Public Fediverse posts

"In the beginning was the word, and the word is lost."

Francis Gooding on the origins of language, specifically of arbitrary words: https://www.lrb.co.uk/the-paper/v48/n07/francis-gooding/rocket-science-for-monkeys

#language #linguistics #evolution #EvoLang

Out now: The full proceedings volume of this year's #Evolang conference - 575 pages full of interdisciplinary research on the origins and evolution of language! https://doi.org/10.17617/2.3696655

There are many theories about the origins of language. I like Jane Wagner's: "I personally think we developed language because of our deep inner need to complain."

#language #evolution #evolang #humour #JaneWagner #GivingOut

SAVE THE DATE: The next International Conference on he Evolution of Language #Evolang will take place 7-10 April 2026 in Plovdiv, Bulgaria! The organizers have prepared a video to whet your appetite: http://tinyurl.com/evolang2026

About to take off to fly to Evolang 2024 in Madison! We're doing a workshop on Saturday on big language data & LLMs - stream link posted soon too, starts at 9AM CDT.
https://www.changeiskey.org/event/2024-evolang-workshop/
#Evolang #EvolangXV #Evolang2024

Been following the Bentz et al line of #language #complexity research since the 2018 #evolang workshop, great to see this paper out now: https://www.degruyter.com/document/doi/10.1515/lingvan-2021-0054/html?lang=en

But also cool, more thinking in #ensembles!
Us in https://arxiv.org/abs/2205.10271: "instead [of a single metric of visual complexity] use an array of estimates that captures complimentary aspects of complexity"
Bentz et al: "capture the complexity of a language by a vector of measurements, rather than a single value"