Larry Zhou

Calls: 33rd International Conference on Head-Driven Phrase Structure Grammar Call for Papers: The 33rd International Conference on Head-Driven Phrase Structure Grammar will be held on August 03-04 August 2026 at the Western Norway University of Applied Sciences (Bergen, Norway). The HPSG 2026 conference will be a two-day main conference (03-04 August). It will be co-located with the DELPH-IN meeting held over the preceding week (27-31 July). Anonymous abstracts are invited that address linguistic, foundational, or computational issues relating to or in the spirit

Calls: 33rd International Conference on Head-Driven Phrase Structure Grammar

Confs: Exclamation: Form(s) and Function(s) This conference seeks to refine our understanding of the relationship between form and meaning in exclamative structures. It aims to provide as comprehensive an account as possible of form-meaning correspondences in exclamative structures by bringing together scholarly contributions on a broad range of languages and corpora. A key challenge lies in the terminological ambiguity of the term exclamation as it applies to different levels of language and to a variety of meanings. This issue, which

Confs: Exclamation: Form(s) and Function(s)

Hi, there are still people out there believing in parameters being in our genes? Is there a recent paper setting that straight for non-biologists?

I have the following:

Elman, Jeffrey L., Elizabeth A. Bates, Mark H. Johnson, Annette Karmiloff-Smith, Domenico Parisi & Kim
Plunkett. 1996 […]

Analysis in HPSG of reduplicaiton

Paper by Yanru Lu and me about #reduplication in #MandarinChinese is now (pre-)published:

https://doi.org/10.1017/S0022226725101047

#Linguistics #HPSG #Grammar #Morphology #fun

'Acquiring a human language: The mystery of relativization', a new blog by Barbara Lust, Claire Foley and Suzanne Flynn, authors of THE ACQUISITION OF RELATIVIZATION
📚 https://cup.org/451LfEg

Confs: 33rd International Conference on Head-Driven Phrase Structure Grammar The 33rd International Conference on Head-Driven Phrase Structure Grammar will be held on August 03 - August 04, 2026 at the Western Norway University of Applied Sciences (Bergen, Norway). The HPSG 2026 conference will be a two-day main conference (3rd - 4th of August). It will be co-located with the DELPH-IN meeting held over the preceding week (27th - 31st of July). Anonymous abstracts are invited that address linguistic, foundational, or computational issues relating to or in the spiri

Confs: 33rd International Conference on Head-Driven Phrase Structure Grammar

Linguists explain why people often say 'is is' even though we'd never write it that way ​This is very clear and actually helpful.

This is fun

www.upworthy.com/linguist-exp...

History of Ideas in the Science of AI

Excited to share that our book "History of Ideas in the Science of AI" (co-authored with Luc Steels and Ann Dooms) is now freely available as #OpenAccess!
#OpenScience, #AIResearch, #HistoryOfAI
doi.org/10.5281/zeno...

George K. Zipf (1902–1950)

#OTD 124 years ago, George K. Zipf (1902–1950)was born 🎂 Based on his corpus analyses, he formulated the so-called Zipf’s law and showed that the most frequent word is twice as frequent as the second, three times as frequent as the third, and so on.

#LinguisticBirthdays #Histlx

So happy to see this book published - a great collaboration with Luc Steels and Ann Dooms. Open Access version is coming soon, but if you happen to be in Brussels this Thursday, you're welcome to join us for the book's official launch: lnkd.in/e_envZx9 #ArtificialIntelligence #HistoryOfScience

Some very brief comments on this new book from a recent talk — dependency grammar is not a viable candidate theory of natural language syntax (1/2).

At 49 mins: youtu.be/pqDnfNUlvRo?...

New book! I have written a book, called Syntax: A cognitive approach, published by MIT Press.

This is open access; MIT Press will post a link soon, but until then, the book is available on my website:
tedlab.mit.edu/tedlab_websi...

These conundrums are addressed by Sign-Based Construction Grammar (SBCG; Sag 2012; Michaelis 2012, 2015; Sag et al 2012), an extension of BCG that embodies lexicalist commitments common to HPSG (Miiller and Wechsler 2014). SBCG expands the canon of

„Sign-Based Construction Grammar is an extension of Berkeley Construction Grammar.“ But can there be an extension of something inconsistent?

Logically you can infer everything from inconsistent stuff. If you add things it does not get better. Or worse.

I would […]

[Original post on lingo.lol]

A conversation on Chomsky & Large Language Models ~ Murphy & Piantadosi

www.youtube.com/watch?v=EEyV...

In particular, we eschew the traditional terms direct object and indirect object, which we take to reflect a thematic distinction (i.e., one based upon semantic role), not one of relative obliqueness.

Working on a conference paper. A reviewer asked for the term "primary object". I wanted to add a footnote and did not remember the exact publication this term was defined in. But what I did remember was that the word "eschew" was used. I learned the word back then and liked it. =:-)

New paper just published with @evelinaleivada.bsky.social @garymarcus.bsky.social, Vittoria Dentella, Raquel Montero and Fritz Günther

Fundamental Principles of Linguistic Structure Are Not Represented by ChatGPT

bioling.psychopen.eu/index.php/bi...

Today I hosted a Zoom meeting inviting Ray Hickey to promote The New Cambridge History of the English Language to students and scholars in Japan. His presentation slides are uploaded on his website for those interested. @cambup-linguistics.cambridge.org #NewCHEL
www.raymondhickey.com/New_Cambridg...

I really can't believe this volume is finally approaching the light of day with @oupphilosophy.bsky.social! What a journey, what amazing partners, and what a truly excellent cast. Here's a teaser trailer for what's in the book. Get excited!

Describing English Constructions: An Introduction Article Describing English Constructions: An Introduction was published on September 1, 2025 in the journal Zeitschrift für Anglistik und Amerikanistik (volume 73, issue 3).

Many thanks to Barthe Bloom and Thomas Herbst for putting this special issue together! You can read their introduction here

doi.org/10.1515/zaa-...

Moving Past Slot-Fillers: Balancing English Argument Structure with Fluid Construction Grammar Constructional approaches view argument structure constructions as grammatical templates with open slots to be filled by verbs and their arguments, organized in an inheritance network. This paper argu...

I believe #ConstructionGrammar has outgrown some of its founding metaphors (slot-fillers; inheritance networks). In this #OpenAccess paper I propose two frame shifts in constructional thought:
doi.org/10.1515/zaa-...

ling.auf.net/lingbuzz/009...

'Wilhelm von Humboldt and Early American Linguistics: An Introduction', a new blog by Emanuel J. Drechsel, author of WILHELM VON HUMBOLDT AND EARLY AMERICAN LINGUISTICS
📚 https://cup.org/4inNrLQ

Mereological Syntax: Phrase Structure, Cyclicity, and Islands An argument for replacing Chomsky’s set-theoretic Merge view of syntax with a theory of syntax based on mereological objects.Mereology is the study of part

At last! Open Access version of the book on MIT's site. One for the syntax nerds. I argue we need to replace Merge, that there are no Phases, and that we need to rethink the basic theoretical typology of Islands. Feel free to download with abandon! 🐦🐦 #syntax direct.mit.edu/books/oa-mon...

Books: Genes, Brains, Evolution and Language: Van der Hulst (2025) Half a century ago, Noam Chomsky posited that humans have specific innate mental abilities to learn and use language, distinct from other animals. This book, a follow-up to the author's previous textbook, A Mind for Language, continues to critically examine the development of this central aspect of linguistics: the innateness debate. It expands upon key themes in the debate - discussing arguments that come from other disciplines, such as psychology, anthropology, sociology, criminology, computer

Books: Genes, Brains, Evolution and Language: Van der Hulst (2025)

dlc.hypotheses.org/on-numerativ...

Confs: 31st International Lexical-Functional Grammar Conference LFG26 welcomes work within the formal architecture of Lexical-Functional Grammar as well as typological, formal, and computational work within the 'spirit of LFG' as a lexicalist approach to language employing a parallel, constraint-based framework. The conference aims to promote interaction and collaboration among researchers interested in non-derivational approaches to grammar, where grammar is seen as the interaction of (perhaps violable) constraints from multiple levels of structuring, inclu

Confs: 31st International Lexical-Functional Grammar Conference

This is an article about reduplication in Madarin Chinese. By Yanru Lu and me. It grew out of Ynaru Lu's masther thesis and will appear in 2027 in the Journal of Linguistics.

Have fun.

https://lingbuzz.net/lingbuzz/009505

#linguistics #language #Chinese #syntax #morphology #semantics #HPSG

Cover of Genes, Brains, Evolution and Language

Examines the 'nature/nurture' debate in language, while also asking how language came to be part of our human nature in the course of evolution.

'Genes, Brains, Evolution and Language' by Harry van der Hulst, Out Now

#LangSky #Linguistics 🐦🐦 #Cognition

https://cup.org/49Na2iq

Less than 3 weeks to submit an abstract for ICCG14! please pass it on: iccg14.oa-event.com June 4-7, 2026

Books: Mathematical Modelling in Linguistics and Text Analysis: Pawłowski, Embleton, Mačutek, and Xanthos (eds.) (2025) This book is a panorama of contemporary quantitative linguistics, as developed over decades. It highlights the main topics of QL: statistical laws of language, taxonomy of linguistic phenomena, authorial attribution, quantitative analysis of syntax (e.g., dependency grammar), measurement of text difficulty, and other phenomena at the intersection of linguistics, literary studies, semiotics, and information science. It also reflects on the relevance of these time-honoured approaches in our new re

Books: Mathematical Modelling in Linguistics and Text Analysis: Pawłowski, Embleton, Mačutek, and Xanthos (eds.) (2025)