Article in NewScientist, "Rude Awakenings: How Swearing Made us Human," mentioning work on VN compounds used as insults and their potential relevance to the evolution of syntax.
Video, Humanities Center Marylin Williamson Fellowship talk, “Language Evolution, Self-Domestication, and Verbal Aggression,” Wayne State University, October 19, 2021
2021. “Language evolution and management of aggression: What were the first grammars like, and how did they make us human?” Invited lecture, virtual, University of Belgrade, Serbia, sponsored by the US-Serbia Cultural Exchange Program. November 1, 2021.
2021. “Self-domestication might have tied together (taming of) aggression with cross-modality, facilitating the evolution of languages. Annual Meeting of ProtoLang 7 Conference. With Antonio Benítez-Burraco. Virtual. Düsseldorf, Germany.
2021. “Correlating declarative/procedural memory with language variation.” With Antonio Benítez-Burraco, David Gil, Candy Cahuana and Tatiana Tatarinova. Annual Meeting of ProtoLang 7 Conference. Virtual. Düsseldorf, Germany.
2021. “Cognitive bases of semantic compositionality: the case of esoteric vs. exoteric languages.” Joint talk with Antonio Benítez-Burraco, Candy Cahuana, and David Gil. 12th Dubrovnik Conference on Cognitive Science (DUCOG). Virtual. May 2021.
2021. “The evolution of pragmatics under the effects of self-domestication forces.” Joint talk with Antonio Benítez-Burraco and Francesco Ferretti. Evolutionary Pragmatics Forum, featuring virtual monthly presentations. May 30, 2021.
2021. “A four-stage model for language evolution under self-domestication.” Joint talk with Antonio Benítez-Burraco. Virtual. EHBEA (European Human Behaviour and Evolution Association), Krakow, Poland. March 2021.
2021. “What use is half a sentence? Grammar caught in the act of natural/sexual selection.” Invited talk, virtual, Workshop on Language Evolution, Acquisition, and Processing (LEAP). University of Chicago, February 5, 2021.
2020. “Evolution of syntax: Genes and grammar caught in the act of sexual selection.” Invited Colloquium Talk, virtual, Dept. of Linguistics, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. October 28, 2020.
2020. “The case of missing subjects in early grammars: Absolutive-like stage in language acquisition.” Slavic Linguistic Society (SLS) Meeting, virtual. Joint paper with Natalia Rakhlin as first author.
2020. “The First Argument: Deconstructing predication to its evolutionary size.” Plenary talk. FASL 29 (Formal Approaches to Slavic Linguistics), University of Washington, Seattle, May 8-10, 2020. Virtual conference.
2020. “Aggression and linguistic interactions: A human self-domestication approach.” Joint talk with Antonio Benítez-Burraco as first author. 9th International Symposium on Intercultural, Cognitive and Social Pragmatics, Seville, Spain. November 6, 2020. Virtual symposium.
2019. Workshop co-organizer, together with Antonio Benítez-Burraco. Prehistoric languages beyond the limits of comparative linguistics. Annual Meeting of the Societas Linguistica Europaea (SLE), Leipzig, Germany. August 2019.
2019. “From physical aggression to verbal behavior: Language evolution and self-domestication feedback loop.” Co-authored paper with Antonio Benítez-Burraco. Workshop on Prehistoric Languages Beyond the Limits of Comparative Linguistics. Annual Meeting of the Societas Linguistica Europaea (SLE), Leipzig, Germany. August 2019.
2019. “Macro variation in typology attributable to micro tinkering in evolution.” Poster session. Co-authored paper with Antonio Benítez-Burraco. Annual ProtoLang Conference, Lisbon, Portugal, September 2019.
2019. “What use is half a sentence: Grammar caught in the act of natural/sexual selection.” Invited presentation at the Workshop on Human Language in Evolution: Some Key Perspectives, at the 2019 Crete Summer School of Linguistics, Crete, Greece, July 2019.
2019. “What kind of (non)person is se, and how might it be related to -je and -mbo?” Person and Perspective Workshop in honor of Maria Luisa Zubizarreta. University of Southern California, Los Angeles. May 2019.
2019. “Gradual evolution of some key postulates of syntax: Making sense of small clauses, middles, islands, exocentrics, and other syntactic shortcomings.” Invited lecture at the eve of the Spring School on EvoLinguistics, University of Tokyo, Japan, March 10, 2019.
2019. “What use is half a sentence: Grammar caught in the act of natural/sexual selection.” Keynote presentation at the Spring School on EvoLinguistics, University of Tokyo, Japan, March 12, 2019.
2019. “Syntax in the light of evolution: Intermediate stepping stones toward hierarchy, Move, and recursion.” Invited lecture. Kyoto University, Japan, March 2019.
2019. “Gradual evolution of some key postulates of syntax: Making sense of small clauses, middles, islands, exocentrics, and other syntactic shortcomings.” Harvard Circle Talk. March 1, 2019, Harvard University, Cambridge, MA.
2019. “Syntax in the shadow of evolution: Stepping stones into hierarchy, Move, recursion, coordination.” MIT Syntax Square presentation, February 26, 2019, Cambridge, MA.
2018. “What use is half a clause? The Five Problems facing language evolution research.” MIT Department of Linguistics Lunch presentation, October 2018, Cambridge, MA.
2018. “The absolutive vP-less basis of se “middles” in Serbian: A split-accusative language?” MIT Syntax Square presentation, September 2018, Cambridge, MA.
2018. “Transitivity as a derived phenomenon: Reconstruction to an intransitive absolutive grammar.” Workshop on STASL (The Shaping of Transitivity and Argument Structure). October 2018, Pavia, Italy.
2018. “Natural/Sexual Selection: What’s language (evolution) got to do with it?” Keynote presentation at the 48th Poznań Linguistic Meeting, September 2018, Poznań, Poland.
2018. “What use is half a clause? The Five Problems facing language evolution research.” Department of Linguistics Lunch presentation, October 2018, MIT, Cambridge, MA.
2018. “The absolutive vP-less basis of se “middles” in Serbian: A split-accusative language?” Syntax Square presentation, September 2018, MIT, Cambridge, MA.
2017. “Simple syntax in Slavic, evolution, neuroimaging: Middles and absolutives.” Keynote presentation at the Slavic Linguistic Society (SLS). Ljubljana, Slovenia, September 21-23.
2017. “Acquisition of clausal structure: The ‘Weakest Continuity’ view.” Joint paper with Natalia Rakhlin as first author. The 19th Annual International Conference of the Japanese Society for Language Sciences (JSLS). Kyoto Women’s University, Kyoto, Japan. July 1-2.
2016. “Proto-syntactic foundation: Argument omission at the two-word stage.” Invited joint paper with Natalia Rakhlin. University of Ghent Workshop on ‘A Probe into the multilingual mind. How languages evolve.’ Ghent, Belgium, October 19-20.
2016. “A reconstruction of early human (and Neandertal) grammars.” CIEL (International Conference on Evolutionary Linguistics) 8. Indiana University, Bloomington, IN, August 8-10, 2016.
2016. “What kind of grammar did early humans (and Neanderthals) command? A linguistic reconstruction.” Keynote presentation, 11th International Conference on the Evolution of Language (New Orleans, March 21-24, 2016).
2015. “Expressive language in the evolution of grammar: More than nature needs.” Invited presentation. ECOM Workshop on Expressive Language, University of Connecticut, Storrs. November 2015.
2014. “The absolutive basis of ‘middles’ and the status of vP and UTAH.” FASL 23 (Formal Approaches to Slavic Linguistics 23), University of California, Berkeley, May 2-4.
2014. “Topics from A Program for Evolutionary Syntax.” Workshop on The Evolution of Syntax, University of Connecticut, Storrs. Keynote lecture, March 28.
2013. “Tinkering with Structure: Stages of Syntax and Language Representation in the Brain.” Invited talk for the symposium Transcending the Boundaries: Making Meaning: Origins of Communication.Duke Institute for Brain Sciences, Duke University, April 2013.