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Michele W. Berger
Senior Science News Officer
mwberger@upenn.edu
Linguistics
What fabricated languages can teach us about real ones
What fabricated languages can teach us about real ones
Linguist Gareth Roberts of the School of Arts & Sciences uses “alien” languages and interactive games to show how social pressures shape our communication.
The language of loneliness and depression, revealed in social media
The language of loneliness and depression, revealed in social media
By analyzing Facebook posts, Penn researchers found that words associated with depression are often tied to emotions, whereas those associated with loneliness are linked to cognition.
Singing, speech production, and the brain
Singing, speech production, and the brain
This summer, rising second-years Audrey Keener and Nicholas Eiffert worked in the lab of Penn linguist Jianjing Kuang studying vowel articulation in song, running an in-person experiment and built a corpus of classical recordings by famous singers.
Who, What, Why: Kimeze Teketwe brings Luganda to Penn
Who, What, Why: Kimeze Teketwe brings Luganda to Penn
The GSE master’s student from Uganda taught the first ever course on this language in the spring of 2022. This fall the program continues with another intro class, followed by an advanced class next spring.
New journal focuses on how the mind and brain process language
New journal focuses on how the mind and brain process language
The open-access, online-only Glossa Psycholinguistics recently published its inaugural issue after more than two years of effort from Penn linguist Florian Schwarz and colleagues around the world.
People imitate accent features they expect to hear, even without hearing them
People imitate accent features they expect to hear, even without hearing them
Research from postdoc Lacey Wade confirmed this idea, what she calls expectation-driven convergence, in a controlled experiment for the first time. The work reveals just how much the subconscious factors into the way people speak.
A partnership to preserve Kashaya
A partnership to preserve Kashaya
Since the 1980s, linguist Eugene Buckley has studied this Native American language, now spoken by just a dozen or so people in northern California. In collaboration with members and descendants of the Kashia Band of Pomo Indians, he’s built a database of Kashaya words, sounds, and stories.
In These Times: Fear and loathing and science
In These Times: Fear and loathing and science
Season three of the School of Arts & Sciences podcast explores scientific ideas that get big reactions.
Mapping words to color
Mapping words to color
Researchers led by postdoc Colin Twomey and professor Joshua Plotkin developed an algorithm that can infer the communicative needs different linguistic communities place on colors.
TikTok talk
TikTok talk
Largely characterized as a Gen Z phenomenon, TikTok is a video-sharing app with more than 100 million active users in the U.S. alone—and it’s changing the way that we speak, says sociolinguist Nicole Holliday.
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In the News
The Guardian
Are you a busybody, a hunter, or a dancer? A new book about curiosity reveals all
Dani S. Bassett of the School of Arts & Sciences speaks on their new book, “Curious Minds: The Power of Connection,” co-authored with identical twin Perry Zurn, which investigates the foundations of curiosity.
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Voice of America
The ‘rez accent’: Native Americans are making English their own
William Labov of the School of Arts & Sciences notes that while some Native American accents are fading, others are growing stronger.
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The Conversation
What makes us subconsciously mimic the accents of others in conversation
Lacey Wade of the School of Arts & Sciences writes about a phenomenon called “linguistic convergence” when people copy word choices, mirror sentence structures, or mimic pronunciations.
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Slate.com
Interrupting to show we care
Nicole Holliday of the School of Arts & Sciences interviewed experts about cooperative overlapping, which some cultures perceive as a sign of engagement and others view as a sign of disrespect.
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Slate.com
TikTok language rabbit hole
Nicole Holliday of the School of Arts & Sciences co-hosted a podcast episode about linguistics and TikTok.
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Science
No shared language? No problem! People across cultures understand clues from ‘vocal charades’
Gareth Roberts of the School of Arts & Sciences weighed in on a linguistic study that found that people can use vocal sounds to mimic parts of the idea they’re trying to convey, such using chewing noises to evoke the word “food.”
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