I'll be presenting this work at the @uoe-cle.bsky.social in Edinburgh on the 22nd January. I look forwards to robust discussion!

Late bilinguals whose L1 allows subject omission tend to be more explicit in reference: they use more overt pronouns and full NPs than null pronouns? Why is that? We test two hypotheses (a desire to avoid ambiguity or ease processing) using online eye-tracking. (16/)

Yajun Liu, Antonella Sorace, @kennysmithed.bsky.social: Do bilinguals avoid ambiguity? An experimental study of lexical ambiguity in spoken Mandarin (Poster Session 2, P2-L-114, 1 August @ 10:30). Poster here: tinyurl.com/mr288rn8 blurb below 👇 (15/)

Bilingual experience may influence native speakers’ choice of referring expressions. We explore the impact of Crosslinguistic influence on reference production when both languages permit subject drop yet differ typologically. (14/)

Yajun Liu, Antonella Sorace, @kennysmithed.bsky.social: Beyond Crosslinguistic Influence: Mandarin Speakers with Exposure to Null-subject Languages Nonetheless Use Fewer Null Pronouns in Mandarin (Talk 12: Lang 2, 31 Jul @ 14:59). Blurb below 👇 (13/)

Find out more from @psydelle.bsky.social & @ivegner.bsky.social's poster: July 31 @conll-conf.bsky.social Paper: edin.ac/4kdIzYP (2/2)

Learn more at @marthaflinders.bsky.social @psydelle.bsky.social @ivegner.bsky.social's talk+panel @aclmeeting.bsky.social Jul 30, 9am Hall A! tinyurl.com/3bb3umhc (2/2)

🧠 Check out our #CogSci2025 poster examining why languages avoid words like “peeb” or “gok”?
Our study found that people struggle to recognise words where consonants share the same place of articulation. This processing cost could contribute to why such words are rare across languages 🌏 (12/)

Annie Holtz @anniesotropic.bsky.social, @kennysmithed.bsky.social, Mitsuhiko Ota: The Impact of Similar Place Avoidance on Novel Word Learning in Adults (Virtual Poster Session 1, V1-H-87, 31 Jul @ 12:00). Poster here: tinyurl.com/bdf9zrsc blurb below 👇 (11/)

RSA succeeds in explaining phenomena in language use, but it oddly predicts a preference for ambiguous costly words in learning. We test this surprising prediction using artificial word learning and lexicon rating tasks. (10/)

Ponrawee Prasertsom, @kennysmithed.bsky.social, Jennifer Culbertson: Testing counterintuitive predictions about cost-based inferences in learning from the Rational Speech Act model (Poster Session 1; P1-P-159, 31 July @ 14:15). Poster here: tinyurl.com/3uxd7krp blurb below 👇 (9/)

Languages differ dramatically in how they categorise family members - what drives this semantic variation? For 1215 languages, our computational model reveals a hierarchy of semantic features for kinship, suggesting that kin term semantics are optimised for efficient communication. (8/)

@maisyhallam.bsky.social, Fiona Jordan, @simonkirby.bsky.social, @kennysmithed.bsky.social: Efficient communication drives the semantic structure of kinship terminology (Poster session 3, P3-H-71, 2 Aug @ 13:00) poster here: tinyurl.com/42fup6cm blurb below 👇 (7/)

Using Artificial language learning, we test whether people of different neurotypes accommodate differently to each other, and whether this impacts long-term regularisation. (6/)

Lauren Fletcher @leffletcher.bsky.social, Jennifer Culbertson, Hugh Rabagliati: Neuro-identity mixing impacts linguistic accommodation and regularisation: evidence from autistic and allistic interactions (Talks 3: Language 1, 31 Jul @ 10:52) blurb below 👇 (5/)

Shira Tal, Benedek Bartha, Jennifer Culbertson: Developmental evidence for sensitivity to hierarchical structure in the noun phrase (Talks 13: Language and Development 1, 31 July @ 14:37): Do children show a preference for typologically common NP order? We use 'iconic ALL' to find out... (4/)

Previous CLE research shows that learning AND communication are necessary for evolving efficient languages...but IB models suggest that efficient systems may emerge in IL experiments without both! (3/)

Nathaniel Imel, Jennifer Culbertson, @simonkirby.bsky.social & @nogazs.bsky.social:
Iterated language learning is shaped by a drive for optimizing lossy compression (Talks 37: Language and Computation 3, 1 August @ 16:22; blurb below) (2/)