Many years ago @hartmast and I got a paper rejection because we tried to cram too much information on Cognitive Linguistics and Language Evolution into one paper. One of the reviewers ended their review with: “…or the authors should write a book.” It took a while, but we did!

Data on extant species can offer insights for inferring ancient cognition but also faces limitations, theoretical and methodologically, but also in terms of interdisciplinary integration because they operate with different concepts. #OpenAccess Paper here:

In this paper, we assess to what extent experimental insights from extant species such as humans and great apes can be applied to extinct ones. We describe the role of experiments in comparative psychology, cognitive archaeology & experimental semiotics and what they can tell us.

🚨NEW PUBLICATION ALERT🚨 "From extant to extinct: The role of experiments and interdisciplinary inferences in studying cognitive and language evolution." (with Svetlana Kuleshova) Out now in #OpenAccess in Journal of Archaeological Science

Our special issue on ‘Parallelism in the Architecture of Language’ is now published! Huge thanks to all contributing authors, reviewers, Eva, Neil, and the topiCS journal team for their excellent work 📚🗣️🧠🤖🙏🏻 https://t.co/w8PhjaLO6k

Call for Papers here:

The deadline for Evolang 2026 (@EvolangConf), the International Conference on the Evolution of Language, has been extended to November 3rd. Do consider submitting, it's my favourite conference and will take place in Plovdiv, Bulgaria, the age-old "city of the seven hills"!

🧵🎉 Our mega-paper is finally published in TMLR! We're "Getting Aligned on Representational Alignment" - the degree to which internal representations of different (biological & artificial) information processing systems agree. 🧠🤖🔬🔍 #CognitiveScience #Neuroscience #AI

“In this brilliant and original book, Levinson turns our understanding of language inside out, showing it’s not the core of being human but a result of our deeper social drive.” The Interaction Engine by Stephen C. Levinson Explore more at 📚 https://t.co/ffvtovnlTk

Fellow language-evolutionists (other linguists welcome): What do you think is the most exciting thing happening in the field now? #linguistics #language #LanguageEvolution

Advice from having served on faculty search committees: ALWAYS list in cover letter faculty at place you are applying to whose research aligns with yours & that you could work with. At the very least it shows you're interested enough to put minimal effort to visit their webpage.

Amazing article by @MarlenFroehlich and colleagues

Interested in multimodal research? Then join us for this showcase @UofG_MOSAIC later this month!

My attempt to depict the neural architecture of language as motivated in my forthcoming book, Wired for Words. Like colors represent functional connectivity. Main insight: linguistic levels are all organized with a sensorimotor-like architecture, the Linguistic Sensorimotor

I'm recruiting PhD students to join my new lab in Fall 2026! The Shared Minds Lab at @USC will combine deep learning and ecological human neuroscience to better understand how we communicate our thoughts from one brain to another.

Social functions of language may drive faster change and faster diversification in some features. Thanks to growing diversity in variationst sociolinguistics, I gathered studies of 63 languages from 28 families. Here I sketch some potential patterns https://t.co/f7mjkDUvB8

A short read on our new Database - Apemen Faces Database (#ApeFD)! @juanolvido89 and #Wacewicz #cles @CenterImsert #database #ape🤓

June was marked by two more events: we attended the POBudzamy współpracę! science "speed dating" event in which we could listen about projects and research groups from @UMK_Torun. We represented @CenterImsert and #CLES 🤝 https://t.co/Spip3hhyTF ...

A news feature in @Nature reporting on our paper that shows whale vocalizations are analogue to human vowels and diphthongs. The paper accepted for publication as of today!

MOSAIC is back! Our first MOSAIC meeting on 'Social Networks in the Age of Humans and AI' will feature Yaomin Jiang & Alice Xia discussing trustworthy AI and social networks shaping gossip. All welcome! Thur, 18 September, 2pm-3.30pm UK time (contact @jonasnoelle for Zoom link)

I am live-tooting #protolang9 over on the elephant side.🐘You can follow the exact same hashtag there: https://t.co/ydZRXo3of5 Here's a thread of the pre-conf WS: https://t.co/EVcNHnrtVc #languagevolution #linguistics #biology #neuroscience #AI #philosophy #cogsci