‘More than ever before, we need British diplomats, spies and soldiers to speak the language of our adversaries.’

Stark piece from a former diplomat on how loss of language learning hits our defence & geopolitical capabilities
www.timeshighereducation.com/opinion/proc... @timeshighered.bsky.social

ah mea culpa. Either my screen or my eyes are obviously failing!

why no link in the article to the actual research publication though? Sources would be good.

@davidadger.bsky.social's "Mereological Syntax" presents an argument for replacing Chomsky’s set-theoretic Merge view of syntax with a theory of syntax based on mereological objects. Available #OpenAccess: mitpress.mit.edu/978026255327...

There was a cool story (which I discussed a bit in Language Unlimited) about how very primitive bots back in the 2010s ended up shifting their language to something very non-human. The Sun reported that the 'boffins' had to turn them off!

I also learned about autoprompts from your paper, which was new to me and quite fascinating.

No theory of labelling needed, and a way nicer means of modelling long distance dependencies (plus a new theory of islandhood and its exceptions). This is more of a different theory, as opposed to a formalization of the current one (as in the Marcolli et al book)

i think, for me at least, it can also be attributive: "hark at you and all your fancypants words!" I think bizarropants can be used both predicatively and attributively (that's just bizarropants; it was a bizarropants experience) but I kinda don't feel native in it!!!

yeah, my grandmother used to call me fancypants sometimes when I used long words as a kid in the 70s, so def pre-internet!

thanks!!!!