Scott Nelson
@esseeohteetee.bsky.social
Assistant Professor @ University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign | computational phonology, phonetics-phonology interface, representations, logic/model theory, philosophy of science. Fan of sound in general (synthesizers, field recordings, natural reverb,…)
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Scott Nelson
@esseeohteetee.bsky.social
· Aug 12
The blueprint model of production | Phonology | Cambridge Core
The blueprint model of production - Volume 42
www.cambridge.org
I’m happy to share that my paper with Jeff Heinz on “the blueprint model of production” is finally published online in Phonology: www.cambridge.org/core/journal...
Really having a nice time in Cambridge for OCP. Tomorrow ends probably the most insane string of presentations I will do in my career: 12/10 (talk + poster); 12/11 (talk); 12/12 (international travel day); 12/13 (talk); 12/14 (talk); 12/15 (poster). The material covered 5 different projects/papers!
January 14, 2026 at 9:35 PM
Really having a nice time in Cambridge for OCP. Tomorrow ends probably the most insane string of presentations I will do in my career: 12/10 (talk + poster); 12/11 (talk); 12/12 (international travel day); 12/13 (talk); 12/14 (talk); 12/15 (poster). The material covered 5 different projects/papers!
Forcing every linguist ever to write on the blackboard like Bart Simpson, “I will not confuse the object language with the meta language.”
January 13, 2026 at 3:45 PM
Forcing every linguist ever to write on the blackboard like Bart Simpson, “I will not confuse the object language with the meta language.”
~One week ago I got to do my favorite thing (play music with friends). Today I get to do my other favorite thing (talk about phonological representations with my friends). Here's a pic of me deciding to wear a winter jacket doing the former during an hour long set of scream-singing (a stupid choice)
January 13, 2026 at 9:07 AM
~One week ago I got to do my favorite thing (play music with friends). Today I get to do my other favorite thing (talk about phonological representations with my friends). Here's a pic of me deciding to wear a winter jacket doing the former during an hour long set of scream-singing (a stupid choice)
Red eye to London for OCP directly after LSA whooooooooo boy. 10 days of conferencing directly before the semester, is my body ready. 🙂
January 12, 2026 at 12:58 AM
Red eye to London for OCP directly after LSA whooooooooo boy. 10 days of conferencing directly before the semester, is my body ready. 🙂
January 12, 2026 at 12:58 AM
Red eye to London for OCP directly after LSA whooooooooo boy. 10 days of conferencing directly before the semester, is my body ready. 🙂
Presenting in the only room at the New Orleans Marriott that doesn’t have working AC
January 10, 2026 at 2:28 PM
Presenting in the only room at the New Orleans Marriott that doesn’t have working AC
Wow! This looks great. Hoping I can find time to dig into it this semester.
📚 Sociophonetics: Implications for Phonological and Phonetic Theory (co-edited by me and @lhlew.bsky.social) is now available online at Oxford Academic! (print copies coming end of January) academic.oup.com/book/61815
January 9, 2026 at 1:27 AM
Wow! This looks great. Hoping I can find time to dig into it this semester.
Heading down to New Orleans tomorrow. If you're at LSA come say hey. We can talk about this stuff or whatever but I probably will end up talking your ear off about Nirvanna the Band the Show because I rewatched the webseries + tv show over break and now won't shut up about it.
See you @ LSA?
Talk (Sat): Phonological Knowledge, Weighted Logic, and the Competence/Performance Distinction
Poster w/ my student Mikhael Hayes (Sat): Poetic Rhyme as a Tier-Based Strictly Local Constraint
Talk w/ Eric Baković (Sun): A BMRS Analysis of Trojan Vowels in Hungarian Vowel Harmony
Talk (Sat): Phonological Knowledge, Weighted Logic, and the Competence/Performance Distinction
Poster w/ my student Mikhael Hayes (Sat): Poetic Rhyme as a Tier-Based Strictly Local Constraint
Talk w/ Eric Baković (Sun): A BMRS Analysis of Trojan Vowels in Hungarian Vowel Harmony
January 7, 2026 at 5:04 PM
Heading down to New Orleans tomorrow. If you're at LSA come say hey. We can talk about this stuff or whatever but I probably will end up talking your ear off about Nirvanna the Band the Show because I rewatched the webseries + tv show over break and now won't shut up about it.
Reposted by Scott Nelson
🔥 well-thought, theoretically grounded models >>>>>>> trendy uninterpretable forest killers
We wrote a thing -- showing you don't need LLMs to model language production dynamics like the tendency for speakers to reduce predictable words. All you have to do is better model how speech rate varies depending on where a word is and how long the utterance is. arxiv.org/abs/2512.23659
Less is more: Probabilistic reduction is best explained by small-scale predictability measures
The primary research questions of this paper center on defining the amount of context that is necessary and/or appropriate when investigating the relationship between language model probabilities and ...
arxiv.org
December 30, 2025 at 2:09 PM
🔥 well-thought, theoretically grounded models >>>>>>> trendy uninterpretable forest killers
Reposted by Scott Nelson
i had to drop what i was doing to make this
December 23, 2025 at 3:59 PM
i had to drop what i was doing to make this
Reposted by Scott Nelson
Just in time for the holidays, my final post is live.
This is a long-read, and likely of interest to anyone interested in the uses and limitations of computational modeling in cognitive science, with attention on less-noticed issues in the field. 🧵
vincentcarchidi.substack.com/p/do-languag...
This is a long-read, and likely of interest to anyone interested in the uses and limitations of computational modeling in cognitive science, with attention on less-noticed issues in the field. 🧵
vincentcarchidi.substack.com/p/do-languag...
Do Language Models Learn Like Human Children?
On a history of unwittingly lifting cognitive weight, with comments on a personal motivation for studying a very unusual topic.
vincentcarchidi.substack.com
December 21, 2025 at 3:09 PM
Just in time for the holidays, my final post is live.
This is a long-read, and likely of interest to anyone interested in the uses and limitations of computational modeling in cognitive science, with attention on less-noticed issues in the field. 🧵
vincentcarchidi.substack.com/p/do-languag...
This is a long-read, and likely of interest to anyone interested in the uses and limitations of computational modeling in cognitive science, with attention on less-noticed issues in the field. 🧵
vincentcarchidi.substack.com/p/do-languag...
Reposted by Scott Nelson
I call this "The Lying Screen"
December 15, 2025 at 5:26 PM
I call this "The Lying Screen"
Reposted by Scott Nelson
Paul McCartney’s ‘Wonderful Christmastime’ is actually a perfectly good Christmas pop song in a vein very much of its time, and it’s my firm belief that the disrespect it receives is unmerited and demonstrates a certain meanness of spirit that infects society at what should be a joyous time of year.
December 13, 2025 at 5:22 PM
Paul McCartney’s ‘Wonderful Christmastime’ is actually a perfectly good Christmas pop song in a vein very much of its time, and it’s my firm belief that the disrespect it receives is unmerited and demonstrates a certain meanness of spirit that infects society at what should be a joyous time of year.
The EGG drama has hit lingbuzz.
December 12, 2025 at 6:37 PM
The EGG drama has hit lingbuzz.
I'm working on finishing up a paper with a student. I noticed they had a different style than what I'm accustomed to when it came to using em dashes. Primarily out of curiosity, I asked them if it was from a certain style guide. Their response? "That's how it's written in Lord of the Rings."
December 10, 2025 at 11:30 PM
I'm working on finishing up a paper with a student. I noticed they had a different style than what I'm accustomed to when it came to using em dashes. Primarily out of curiosity, I asked them if it was from a certain style guide. Their response? "That's how it's written in Lord of the Rings."
Reposted by Scott Nelson
can't stop watching this clip of a tesla Optimus teleoperator taking his headset off before properly logging out the robot
December 8, 2025 at 9:29 AM
can't stop watching this clip of a tesla Optimus teleoperator taking his headset off before properly logging out the robot
1, 4, and 5 indicate that I listen to the good type of 2.
December 3, 2025 at 11:52 PM
1, 4, and 5 indicate that I listen to the good type of 2.
I’m in Florida visiting my parents and we decided to go to Disney’s Hollywood Studios today. I just witnessed a kid run up to a Salacious B. Crumb toy, turn back to his parents, and yell, “It’s a Star Wars monkey!” I’m never gonna stop thinking about this.
November 28, 2025 at 3:45 PM
I’m in Florida visiting my parents and we decided to go to Disney’s Hollywood Studios today. I just witnessed a kid run up to a Salacious B. Crumb toy, turn back to his parents, and yell, “It’s a Star Wars monkey!” I’m never gonna stop thinking about this.
I'm finishing up a chapter that partially reviews all the subregular/model-theoretic phonology work that has been done over the past decade. I'm combing through google scholar right now to make sure I didn't miss anything and I found this funny reference. Would like to meet this A Subregular person!
November 26, 2025 at 4:06 PM
I'm finishing up a chapter that partially reviews all the subregular/model-theoretic phonology work that has been done over the past decade. I'm combing through google scholar right now to make sure I didn't miss anything and I found this funny reference. Would like to meet this A Subregular person!
Reposted by Scott Nelson
"writing code to solve a problem" used to have "understanding the problem" as a prerequisite. but vibecoding allows solution-shaped objects to be produced without any of the hard-won understanding. beware of solution-shaped objects.
November 24, 2025 at 12:16 PM
"writing code to solve a problem" used to have "understanding the problem" as a prerequisite. but vibecoding allows solution-shaped objects to be produced without any of the hard-won understanding. beware of solution-shaped objects.
Reposted by Scott Nelson
“Optionality and the phonetics-phonology interface” by Scott Nelson (Nov. ’25) www.lingref.com/cpp/wccfl/42...
November 22, 2025 at 5:30 AM
“Optionality and the phonetics-phonology interface” by Scott Nelson (Nov. ’25) www.lingref.com/cpp/wccfl/42...
The guy calling the Purdue - Texas Tech basketball game on CBS right now is 27 years old but has a voice and style that sounds like he should be calling an NHL game for a local Canadian radio station in the pre-millennium.
November 22, 2025 at 3:21 AM
The guy calling the Purdue - Texas Tech basketball game on CBS right now is 27 years old but has a voice and style that sounds like he should be calling an NHL game for a local Canadian radio station in the pre-millennium.
Getting crispy at this point.
Overleaf is cooked.
November 18, 2025 at 4:34 PM
Getting crispy at this point.
En route to Rutgers for a weekend full of subregular linguistics. 3 days!!! 19 student presentations!!! What a time to be working at the intersection of FLT + theoretical phonology!!!
rucll.github.io/workshop2025/
rucll.github.io/workshop2025/
The 2025 Rutgers Subregular Morphophonology Workshop
rucll.github.io
November 14, 2025 at 1:55 PM
En route to Rutgers for a weekend full of subregular linguistics. 3 days!!! 19 student presentations!!! What a time to be working at the intersection of FLT + theoretical phonology!!!
rucll.github.io/workshop2025/
rucll.github.io/workshop2025/
Reposted by Scott Nelson
"skin as part of brain?"
This is that great intellect people talk about?
November 13, 2025 at 4:56 AM
"skin as part of brain?"
This is that great intellect people talk about?