Talk series and reading groups

Regular meetings to discuss research, books and papers

The Angus McIntosh Centre for Historical Linguistics runs a series of Catchup Sessions, which are informal gatherings for historical linguistics researchers at Edinburgh.

The sessions are meant as an opportunity to find out what other AMC-linked staff and students are working on, to try out new ideas, discuss data, and more generally, to provide a sense of community.

Sessions are usually led by a member of staff or student who tells us a bit about their current research interests and walks us through and idea, data-set or methodology. The group is invited to comment, propose solutions, find links with their own work, and provide an overall ‘sanity-check’ for the contributor’s project.

To emphasise the social side of the catchup sessions, we provide something sweet to share at every session. Attendees are encouraged to bring a hot or cold drink.

The organisers are currently:

To find out about our past and upcoming sessions, visit the AMC’s website:

If you would like to be added to our mailing list or would like to be a contributor to our sessions, email us at: amc@ed.ac.uk.


For information on discussing theoretical and experimental issues in bilingualism and language acquisition please click on the following link Bilingualism and Developmental Linguistics Research Group


Celtic languages from a variety of perspectives. (Reading group on hiatus).

The Celtic Linguistics Reading Group provides a forum for anybody in the University and the wider community who is interested in the Celtic languages from a variety of perspectives. We welcome discussion of papers (or presentation of own work) in any area of theoretical linguistics, applied linguistics, sociolinguistics and language policy, language technology, and any other relevant area.

Mailing list

To be updated about future events and readings, send an email to sympa@mlist.is.ed.ac.uk with the text 'subscribe celtling YOUR NAME' or contact Pavel losad.

Email sympa

Contact

The group is convened by Dr Pavel Losad and Dr William Lamb. Please do not hesitate to get in touch with either of the convenors if you would like to join the group.

Pavel losad

William Lamb

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Tha Buidheann Leughaidh Cànanachais Cheiltich a' tabhann fòram ioma-thaobhach do gach neach anns an Oilthigh agus anns a' choimhearsnachd mun cuairt aig a bheil ùidh anns na cànanan Ceilteach. Cuiridh sinn fàilte air leughaidhean de gach seòrsa (obair nam ball fhèin nam measg) a tha co-ceangailte ri cànanachas teòiridheil, cànanachas gnìomhach, sòisio-chànanachas, poileasaidh cànain, teicneòlas cànain, no raon freagarrach eile.

Tha a' bhuidheann ga stiùireadh leis an Oll. Pavel Losad agus Oll. Pavel losad agus an Oll. Uilleam Lamb. Leig fhaicinn do Phavel no do dh'Uilleam ma tha ùidh agad sa bhuidhinn.

Pavel losad

William Lamb

Tha liosta post-dealain againn; airson fios fhaighinn air tachartasan agus leughaidhean san àm ri teachd, cuir brath thugainn aig sympa@mlist.is.ac.uk leis an teacsa 'subscribe celtling D'AINM', air neo dìreach gu Pavel losad fhèin.

Email sympa

Email Pavel losad


Presentations and discussions on cognition in language and beyond.

The CLRG research seminars are open to everyone with an interest in the cognitive mechanisms underlying language use and its relation with other aspects of human cognition. Our topics include language representation and processing, conceptual organisation, usage-based grammar, metaphor and figurative speech, linguistic creativity, and many more. The meetings feature talks from invited speakers, presentations of work in progress, and discussions of recent publications and open research problems in the field. Interdisciplinary contributions are particularly welcome.

Time and place

Please check the LEL events page or email the listed contact.

Upcoming meetings

Upcoming events are listed on the LEL events page

Contact

If you’d like more information about the events this semester, or if you’d like to present at one of our meetings, please email one of our committee members (see below). To subscribe to our mailing list, please use the following link:

Mailing list


Discussing recent and/or important work in developmental phonology

The developmental phonology (devphon) reading group meets every other week to discuss recent and/or important work related to the learning of sounds and sound patterns across the lifespan. The group is convened by Annie Holtz. Feel free to get in touch if you would like to come (and/or to be added to our mailing list).

Here is a list of our past meetings:

2024-25

  • 31st March 2025: Solá-Llonch, E., & Sundara, M. (2025). Young infants’ sensitivity to precursors of vowel harmony is independent of language experience. Infant Behavior and Development. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.infbeh.2025.102032
  • 17th March 2025: Coetzee, A. W. (2008). Grammaticality and ungrammaticality in phonology. Language, 84(2), 218-257. https://dx.doi.org/10.1353/lan.0.0000
  • 17th February 2025: Yin, S. H., & White, J. (2018). Neutralization and homophony avoidance in phonological learning. Cognition, 179, 89-101. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.cognition.2018.05.023
  • 4th February 2025: Storkel, H. L., Armbrüster, J., & Hogan, T. P. (2006). Differentiating phonotactic probability and neighborhood density in adult word learning. Journal of Speech, Language, and Hearing Research 46(6). https://doi.org/10.1044/1092-4388(2006/085)
  • 6th January 2025: Finley, S. (2022). Generalization to Novel Consonants: Place Versus Voice. Journal of Psycholinguistic Research, 51(6), 1283–1309. https://doi.org/10.1007/s10936-022-09897-1
  • 2nd December 2024: Linzen, T. & Gallagher, G., (2017) Rapid generalization in phonotactic learning, Laboratory Phonology 8: 24. doi: https://doi.org/10.5334/labphon.44
  • 11th November 2024: Chong, A.J. (2021). The effect of phonotactics on alternation learning. Language 97(2), 213-244. https://dx.doi.org/10.1353/lan.2021.0017
  • 28th October: Finley, S. (2017). Locality and harmony: Perspectives from artificial grammar learning. Language and Linguistics Compass, 11(1), e12233. https://doi.org/10.1111/lnc3.12233

2023-24

  • 13th August 2024: Cathcart, C. A. (2024). Multiple evolutionary pressures shape identical consonant avoidance in the world’s languages. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, 121(27), e2316677121. https://doi.org/10.1073/pnas.2316677121
  • 23rd July 2024: Gong, S. & Zhang, J. (preprint, 2024). The Obligatory Contour Principle as a substantive bias in phonological learning. Available at SSRN: https://ssrn.com/abstract=4736206 or http://dx.doi.org/10.2139/ssrn.4736206
  • 25th June 2024: Kehoe, M., & Havy, M. (2019). Bilingual phonological acquisition: the influence of language-internal, language-external, and lexical factors. Journal of Child Language, 46(2), 292–333. https://doi.org/10.1017/S0305000918000478
  • 18th June 2024: Zahner-Ritter, K., Zhao, T., Einfeldt, M., & Braun, B. (2022). How experience with tone in the native language affects the L2 acquisition of pitch accents. Frontiers in Psychology, 13, 903879.
  • 11th June 2024: Laméris, T. J., Llompart, M., & Post, B. (2023). Non-native tone categorization and word learning across a spectrum of L1 tonal statuses. Bilingualism (Cambridge, England), 1–15. https://doi.org/10.1017/S1366728923000871
  • 28th May 2024: Quam, C., Clough, L., Knight, S. & Gerken, L. (2021), Infants' discrimination of consonant contrasts in the presence and absence of talker variability. Infancy, 26, 84-103. https://doi.org/10.1111/infa.12371.
  • 14th May 2024:
  • 23rd April 2023: Raviv, L., Lupyan, G., & Green, S. C. (2022). How variability shapes learning and generalization. Trends in Cognitive Sciences, 26(6), 462–483. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.tics.2022.03.007
  • 16th April 2024: Moore, C., & Bergelson, E. (2024). Wordform variability in infants’ language environment and its effects on early word learning. Cognition, 245, 105694–105694. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.cognition.2023.105694
  • 19th March 2024: Creel, S. C., & Frye, C. I. (2024). Minimal gains for minimal pairs: Difficulty in learning similar-sounding words continues into preschool. Journal of experimental child psychology, 240, 105831. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jecp.2023.105831
  • 5th March 2024: Moulin-Frier, C., & Oudeyer, P.-Y. (2012). Curiosity-driven phonetic learning. 2012 IEEE International Conference on Development and Learning and Epigenetic Robotics (ICDL), 1–8. https://doi.org/10.1109/DevLrn.2012.6400583
  • 20th February 2024: Do, Y., Van Hoey, T., & Yu, B. (in prep). Mitigating the trade-off between verification and speculation in learning vowel harmony. https://doi.org/10.31219/osf.io/x9fct
  • 30th January 2024: Shi, J., Gu, Y., & Vigliocco, G. (2023). Prosodic modulations in child‐directed language and their impact on word learning. Developmental Science, 26(4), e13357-n/a. https://doi.org/10.1111/desc.13357
  • 28th November 2023: Isbilen, E. S., & Christiansen, M. H. (2022). Statistical Learning of Language: A Meta-Analysis Into 25 Years of Research. Cognitive science, 46(9), e13198. https://doi.org/10.1111/cogs.13198
  • 14th November 2023: Tzeng, C.Y., Russell, M.L. & Nygaard, L.C. (2023). Attention modulates perceptual learning of non-native-accented speech. Attention, Perception, & Psychophysics. https://doi.org/10.3758/s13414-023-02790-6
  • 31st October 2023: Nielsen, A. K., & Dingemanse, M. (2021). Iconicity in word learning and beyond: A critical review. Language and Speech, 64(1), 52-72. https://doi.org/10.1177/0023830920914339
  • 3rd October 2023: McMurray, B. (2022). The myth of categorical perception. The Journal of the Acoustical Society of America, 152(6), 3819-3842. https://doi.org/10.1121/10.0016614
  • 12th September 2023: Ter Haar, S. M., Fernandez, A. A., Gratier, M., Knörnschild, M., Levelt, C., Moore, R. K., Vellema, M., Wang, X., & Oller, D. K. (2021). Cross-species parallels in babbling: animals and algorithms. Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society B, 376(1836), 20200239.

2022-23


The Edinburgh Seminar on Morphological Theory (EdinMorph): an interdisciplinary reading and discussion group for morphology and its interfaces.

EdinMorph provides an informal setting to discuss work in morphology, broadly construed: morphophonology, argument structure, lexical semantics, lexical processing, acquisition and computational modelling. Members come from all career levels (undergraduates, MSc students, PhD students, postdocs and academic staff) across PPLS and Informatics.

Time and place

We meet 3-4 times a month - currently on Thursday mornings - for discussion followed by communal BYO lunch.

Upcoming meetings

Meetings are co-ordinated in the dedicated MS Team.

Contact

Get in touch with Itamar Kastner to be added to the Team.

Itamar Kastner


For information on research presentations and discussion on English language and linguistics please click on the following link English language research group meetings


For information on discussing recent and/or important work in historical phonology please click on the following link Historical phonology reading group


Presentations and discussions on the evolution of language, culture and communication.

Presentations of current research in topics relating to the cognitive science of language and language evolution from a mix of local and guest speakers. Typically at 11am on the second Thursday of every month in G32, 7 George Square. Visit the Centre for Language Evolution webpage or contact Simon.Kirby@ed.ac.uk for more information”

Time and place

Typically, Tuesdays 11:30am - 12:30pm in room 1.17, Dugald Stewart Building.

Please note that date and venue may vary - check the Centre for Language Evolution webpage for details of individual talks.

Contact

Seminars are organised by the Centre for Language Evolution

Centre for Language Evolution


Open to anyone at the university who is interested in studying language uses, social interactions and multimodal communication in the digital and social media contexts.

We explore a range of topics, including (but not limited to):

  • Social media discourses and online identities;
  • Discourse, pragmatic and (socio)linguistic approaches to computer-mediated-communication;
  • Methods and methodologies for studying language and other modes of communication (such as voices, gestures, images, etc) online;
  • Linguistic studies using the internet as their main sources of data;
  • Theoretical developments in digital cultural and social media studies.

Time and place

We meet for an hour every fortnight to discuss advanced research articles. Undergraduates, postgraduates, and staff members are all welcome.

Contact

If you’d like more information about the events this semester please email one of our convenors (see below). To subscribe to our mailing list, please use the following link:

Mailing list

The convenor for this group currently is Sumin Zhao:

Upcoming talks

Upcoming events are listed on the LEL events page


For information about interdisciplinary group exploring language variation and change across multiple disciplines please click on the following link Language variation and change seminars


For information on invited talks on a range of Linguistic topics from high-profile speakers please click on the following link Linguistic Circle


For information on presentations and discussion of research into syntax, semantics, pragmatics, morphology please click on the following link Meaning and Grammar Research Group


For information on talks, seminars and discussions on subjects relating to phonetics and phonology (both synchronic and diachronic) and to speech technology please click on the following link Phonetics/phonology workshop


The Phonological Theory Reading Group (PhThRG) is a forum for discussing current and classic work in theoretical phonology, primarily within a synchronic perspective.

We focus both on conceptual issues and on analyses of interesting data, and welcome suggestions for both current research and work from the past.

The group’s convenors are Pavel Iosad, Brandon Kieffer, and Anna Laoide-Kemp. You can subscribe to the mailing list by following the instructions on this page (the list is called phthrg). Alternatively, get in touch with one of the convenors.

Forthcoming

  • Date TBC, 11:10–12:00, DSB 4.01 and Teams. Köhnlein, B. (2018). A morpheme-based approach to subtractive pluralisation in German dialects. Phonology, 35(4), 617-647.

Past meetings

  • 15th October 2024, 11:10–12:00, DSB 4.01 and Teams. Newell, Heather. Phases and phonology. Draft for the Wiley Companion to Phonology, 2nd edition.
  • 27th February 2024, 13:10–14:00, DSB 4.01 and Teams. Raimy, Eric. 2021. Privativity and ternary phonological behavior. In Sabrina Bendjaballah, Ali Tifrit and Laurence Voeltzel (eds.), Perspectives on Element Theory, 65-110. Berlin, Boston: De Gruyter Mouton.
  • 13th February 2024, 14:10–15:00 (NB! different time). Joint meeting with the Meaning and Grammar Research Group. Room G26, Psychology Building, 7 George Square. Kim, Yuni. 2022. Grammatical and lexical sources of allomorphy in Amuzgo inflectional tone. Phonology 39(3). 531-558.
  • 30th January 2024, 13:10–14:00. DSB 7.01 and Teams. Uchihara, Hiroto & Pérez Báez, Gabriela. 2016. Fortis/lenis, glides and vowels in Quiaviní Zapotec. Glossa: a journal of general linguistics 1(1): 27.
  • 24th November 2023, 15:10–16:00, DSB 7.01 and Teams. Blaho, Sylvia & Curt Rice. 2014. Overgeneralization and falsifiability in phonological theory. In Jacques Durand, Gjert Kristoffersen & Bernard Laks (eds.( La phonologie de français: normes, périphéries, modélisation. Paris: Presses universitaires de Paris Ouest. https://ling.auf.net/lingbuzz/002323
  • 10th November 2023, 10:00–10:50. DSB 4.01 (at Teams). Chabot (to appear) continued
  • 27th October 2023, 15:10–16:00, DSB 7.01 (and Teams). Chabot, Alex. To appear. What phonology is and why it should be. Forthcoming in the Oxford Handbook of the Philosophy of Linguistics. https://ling.auf.net/lingbuzz/007518

Contact


The sociolinguistics reading group is open to anyone at the university who is interested in sociolinguistics. Undergraduates, postgraduates, and staff members are all welcome. For more information please click on the following link Sociolinguistics reading group


A reading group for the exchange of knowledge and discussion of ideas relating to Turkic languages and phonological theory between Edinburgh and Uppsala.

The TurkPhon Reading Group comes out of the project “The trajectory and distributional typology of phonological change” on which Stephen Nichols and Pavel Iosad at the University of Edinburgh work together with László Károly and Deepthi Gopal at Uppsala University in Sweden.

Using data from various Turkic languages, the project aims to explore issues relating to sound change and phonological theory, including the life cycle of phonological processes. In this same vein, the reading group aims to expose those of us of a phonological bent to more of the literature on Turkic languages and Turcology and, conversely, to help those of us more well-versed in Turcology to become more familiar with the broader phonological literature.

Time and place

The reading group is run entirely online. It is open to any and all interested staff and postgraduate students from both the University of Edinburgh and Uppsala University.

Readings

Contact

Our mailing list and subscription:

If you would like to take part or have any questions, please e-mail Stephen Nichols:


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