Fabienne Martin

Matching sounds to shapes: Evidence of the bouba-kiki effect in naïve baby chicks Maria Loconsole1*, Silvia Benavides-Varela2,3, Lucia Regolin1 Humans across multiple languages spontaneously associate the nonwords “kiki” and “bouba” with spiky and round shapes, respectively, a phenomenon named the bouba-kiki effect. To explore the origin of this association, and whether it is unique to humans, we tested the bouba-kiki effect in baby domestic chickens (Gallus gallus). as a precocial species, chicks can be tested shortly after hatching, allowing us to control their pretest experiences. Similar to humans, both 3-day-old [experiment 1 (exp. 1)] and 1-day-old (exp. 2) chicks spontaneously choose a spiky shape when hearing the “kiki” sound and a round shape when hearing the “bouba” sound. results from naïve young animals suggest a predisposed mechanism for matching the dimensions of shape and sound, which may be widespread across species.

main fig from the paper showing the association between bouba/round and kiki/spiky in newborn chicks

the new paper on bouba/kiki in chicks is utterly compelling

canonical, elegant method from comparative cogsci & its partner in developmental science, ultra-simple design, ultra-clear effects, no need for fancy analyses, machine learning, or AI

it appeared in an appropriately badass venue (Science)

Animacy restrictions without animacy features: The case of strong pronouns in French and Spanish When used as complements in prepositional phrases, French (and to a certain extent also Spanish) strong and null pronouns seem to differ in animacy: Typically, strong pronouns have human antecedents a...

da Cunha, Yanis & Heidinger, Steffen. 2025. Animacy restrictions without animacy features: The case of strong pronouns in French and Spanish. Glossa: a journal of general linguistics 11(1), 1–40.
DOI: doi.org/10.16995/glo...
#linguistics

Thanks for this awesome list! Isogloss also has a latex template available on overleaf

This is awesome! I have been curating a list of #linguistics journals, with information on their publishing model (and also on whether they admit submissions created by LaTeX, a high-quality, professional Open Source way to produce scientific documents).

uni-duesseldorf.sciebo.de/s/BvRY0u3rDY...

MapLE online course on epistemicity now open (and free) for everyone! 🤩
If you want to learn more about the speaker’s and addressee’s knowledge in grammar, send an email to maple@hum.leidenuniv.nl and you’ll be invited to the learning platform.

Latest ChatGPT model uses Elon Musk’s Grokipedia as source, tests reveal Guardian found OpenAI’s platform cited Grokipedia on topics including Iran and Holocaust deniers The latest model of ChatGPT has begun to cite Elon Musk’s Grokipedia as a source on a wide range of queries, including on Iranian conglomerates and Holocaust deniers, raising concerns about misinformation on the platform. In tests done by the Guardian, GPT-5.2 cited Grokipedia nine times in response to more than a dozen different questions. These included queries on political structures in Iran, such as salaries of the Basij paramilitary force and the ownership of the Mostazafan Foundation, and questions on the biography of Sir Richard Evans, a British historian and expert witness against Holocaust denier David Irving in his libel trial. Continue reading...

Latest ChatGPT model uses Elon Musk’s Grokipedia as source, tests reveal

Removing adverbs like ‘strikingly’ and ‘interestingly’ from the manuscript

New little paper “The times are a-changin’: présent vs passé simple in French novels (1811–2024)”👉 hal.science/hal-04984105
With Simon Gabay and @floriancafiero.bsky.social
#dhbenelux2025
In french fiction, use of past tenses (especially the passé simple) collapsed over the last 150 years.. so why?

Quelle tristesse

Florent Moncomble’s corpus tools A collection of tools for collecting and analysing corpora of online media discourse

One more in digital corpus building news: all the web apps on corpustools.prendrelangue.fr can now output XML files ready for import into @sketchengine.eu.

#linguistics

8 A snapshot of the emerging because-X construction 8 A snapshot of the emerging because-X construction was published in English Sociosyntax on page 227.

Years ago, 957 people from Twitter contributed to my research on 'because X' and I promised I'd share the results with them. I can't, because twitter, but please share it with people here anyway: www.degruyterbrill.com/document/doi...
Non-paywalled pre-print: kar.kent.ac.uk/105654/
#linguistics

This looks so cool, looking forward to reading it ling.auf.net/lingbuzz/009...

Künstliche Intelligenz in der Begutachtung

DFG erlaubt Einsatz von KI in der Begutachtung.

Wenn wir jetzt noch die AI dazu kriegen, die komplette Forschung zu machen, haben wir den Menschen komplett von der Last des Forschungsprozzeses befreit und er kann sich komplett auf wichtige Dinge wie Reisekostenerstattungsanträge konzentrieren.

Une affichettes de rue qui évoque un chat qui vole et rapporte des lunettes de piscine. Photo en noir et blanc.

« Mon chat vole des lunettes de piscine. » ♡

»Germany is famous for its Erinnerungskultur, or memory culture, in which the horrors of the Holocaust and the Nazi regime are commemorated in monuments, museums and national days of remembrance. However, reflecting on what one’s own family may have done during this period has long been more taboo.«

Voici un lien vers mes deux sélections 2025 :
- 150 reissues/archives in 2025
- 150 albums in 2025

1drv.ms/f/c/dadeb561...

Et ce matin: "pourquoi tu prends mon l'eau?"

Juste entendu à la maison: "je re-t'appelle" 😍

Speakers of languages that have formal/informal ways of addressing others (e.g. French vous/tu) and a culture of progressing through familiarity from the former to the latter:

Does it ever go backwards? Could someone revert to formal 'you' as a signal of an ended friendship?

Yes! This is perhaps one of the reasons I find Dutch supermarkets so depressing (the ones I know never have the same people each time I go)

On peut aussi trouver le pronom avant et après, "je m'en suis en allé" (en wallon mais pas seulement)

Linguistics/philosophy of language folks: do you have any favorite readings on the semantics/pragmatics of reminding?

We're excited to re-launch the journal "Innovations in Linguistics Education", a forum for evidence-based research in the scholarship of teaching and learning (SoTL) in linguistics! We open for submissions in January 2026.
journals.ed.ac.uk/innovations/

SynTeach Focus Group Interest Form SynTeach is a project researching peoples' experiences teaching and learning syntax in higher education. We have conducted surveys of the field including syntax instructors and students, and we are pl...

SynTeach is a project looking at how syntax is taught in higher ed. Our next stage is FOCUS GROUPS—whether you loved or hated syntax, we'd love to talk to you! Sign up to be contacted as we're recruiting now: forms.gle/PiBYpVPr1yg2... #linguistics

There’s a deep difference between sentences like:

(1) Jane caused the glass to break.

vs.

(2) Jane broke the glass.

A surge of experimental philosophy research has led to some surprising discoveries about sentences like (2)

[Thread]

The average success rate for horizon 2020 isn't that low though, it's around 12%, see p. 19 of www.eu.dk/samling/2024...

this probably has to make the news: the train from Amsterdam to berlin is arriving 10 minutes TOO EARLY

A Street For Every Date Different cultures have their own conventions for naming locations, for example in the United Kingdom there are plenty of places named for monarchs, while in many other countries there are not. An aspect of this fascinated [Ben Ashforth], who decided to find all the streets in Europe named after auspicious dates, and then visit enough to make a calendar. He gave a lightning talk about it at last year’s EMF Camp, which we’ve embedded below. Starting with an aborted attempt to query Google Maps, he then moved on to the OpenStreetMap database. From there he was able to construct a list of date-related street name across the whole of Europe, and reveal a few surprising things about their distribution. He came up with a routing algorithm to devise the best progression in which to see them, and with a few tweaks to account for roads whose names had changed, arrived at an epic-but-efficient traversal of the continent. The result is a full year’s calendar of street names, which you can download from his website. Being used to significant Interrail travel where this is written, we approve of an algorithmically generated Euro trip. We’re indebted to [Barney Livingstone] for the tip, and we agree with him that 150 slides in a 5 minute talk is impressive indeed.

https://hackaday.com/2025/01/08/a-street-for-every-date/
(The guy who made a calendar out of street signs). The linked video is also highly recommended: only 5 minutes but 150 slides

Couverture du NME, 22 mai 1982

Décès de Véronique Vincent (68 ans, emportée, comme on dit, par un cancer). Chanteuse des Honeymoon Killers puis d'Aksak Maboul, elle est une des rares musiciennes francophones à avoir falt la "une" du New Musical Express (avec une photo d'Anton Corbijn).

Véronique Vincent (1957-2025)

(Photo : Anton Corbijn, 1982)