Martin Haspelmath

I had a great time at the PROLINCA conference at UNA in Heredia, Costa Rica – thanks to René Zúñiga and colleagues for inviting me! My talk handout is here: zenodo.org/records/2359...

It was a great pleasure to talk to students and colleagues at INALCO Paris and in Villejuif about "predication" and "predicates" in general grammar. zenodo.org/records/2343...

📖🧠 Lesen verändert das #Gehirn – weit über #Sprache hinaus: Gedächtnis, Aufmerksamkeit, visuelle Verarbeitung. @falkhuettig.bsky.social erklärt in „Forschung & Lehre“, warum #Lesekompetenz mehr ist als Textverständnis. #Kognitionswissenschaft #PISA2025 www.forschung-und-lehre.de/forschung/le...

Confs: Workshop at SLE 2027 - Reassessing Impersonality: Definitions, Diagnostics, and Cross-Linguistic Comparison

Cool: Interindividual vocal tract diversity influences the phonetic diversification of spoken languages journals.plos.org/plosbiology/...

"Theoretical and descriptive"?This sounds as if description could be atheoretical, or as if theories could be description-free. Isn't the true contrast between theoretical and practical/applied? (See dlc.hypotheses.org/2561) listserv.linguistlist.org/pipermail/li...

Enjoying "Grammaticalization" in Montpellier: grmzion-dc-xg26.sciencesconf.org My presentation handout is here: zenodo.org/records/2309...

Good to see that the GOLD Ontology is online again – but how stable are the URLs? Does it make sense to link from the Grammaticon to the GOLD Ontology? static.vocabs.clariah.nl/docs/gold/20...

Can typological grammar-surveying be automatized? Four years ago, I was at a workshop in Uppsala, where a "grammar-reading machine" was discussed (spraakbanken.gu.se/en/projects/...). Now it seems that LLMs can do the job (arxiv.org/abs/2609.07791), so what is left for human typologists?

Version 1.1. of the Grammaticon is now online. I keep working on it, but finding good definitions is often hard. For 138 of the 516 concepts, the definition is still preliminary (indicated by [[...]]). Suggestions are welcome! grammaticon.clld.org/concepts

Nach der Wahl in Sachsen-Anhalt wird ein „überparteilicher Ministerpräsident“ ins Spiel gebracht. Eine realistische Möglichkeit oder gar ein gutes Experiment für zukünftige Politik auch im Bund? Ein Text zur Sache von Jörg Phil Friedrich. texte-zur-sache.de/joerg-phil-f...

The Equal Earth projection is nice. But the UN rejected an alternative proposal from the New Zealand delegation, the Middle-earth projection:

Demokratie braucht Gemeinschaft. Sie braucht Orte, an denen Menschen mit ihren verschiedenen Einstellungen und Lebensformen aufeinandertreffen. Worauf kommt es dabei an? Lust auf eine konstruktive Perspektive nach der Sachsen-Anhalt-Wahl? Live dabei am 07.09. 🗣️ oder auch 🎧 1/3

The physical copy of the book has arrived (www.degruyterbrill.com/de/document/... – congratulations to the editors, Piotr Sobotka and Dominika Skrzypek, on a great volume following the wonderful 2024 SLE workshop in Helsinki. (My paper is here: zenodo.org/records/2125...)

The third meeting of the Applicatives Alternations Across Languages network is in full swing in Göttingen! @andraas.mastodon.social.ap.brid.gy, Jozina Vander Klok and Jens Hopperdietzel thanks for organising us! aaal.uni-koeln.de

100 years of the "morph(eme)" – Bloomfield's foundational article came out in September 1926. dlc.hypotheses.org/4485

FYI: Metagram Seminar Series on Grammar Writing

LINGUISTICS INSTITUTE 2027 back at U of Oregon!

Looking forward to the LSA Institute at the University of Oregon (Eugene) next summer: center.uoregon.edu/LSA/2027/

Thanks for this very insightful comment. I am looking forward to following up on the discussion in future posts.

What exactly is "colexification"? This was recently asked by List et al. (calc.hypotheses.org/9547) Here is my blogpost addressing this point: dlc.hypotheses.org/4439

Grammaticalization and DCxG" in Montpellier (October 2026): The conference programme is now available: grmzion-dc-xg26.sciencesconf.org/%22

"Extravagance" in language change has made it into the New York Times, and John McWhorter even includes a link to my 1999 article on the irreversibility of grammaticalization (www.nytimes.com/.../gen-z-sp...). The basic idea ("Talk in such a way that you are noticed") comes from Keller's 1994 book.

Happy birthday!

Maybe I have misunderstood the role of functional heads in mainstream generative syntax, but if they are intended as hypotheses, or together as a theory, then this theory should be empirically verifiable – as I discuss in this forthcoming paper: ling.auf.net/lingbuzz/010....

It's hard to believe that OECS has now published 200 articles!🎉 A huge thank you to everyone who has contributed to OECS—our authors, reviewers, readers, and fantastic section editors, and especially @mcxfrank.bsky.social frank.bsky.social and @hbaum.bsky.social Excited for the next chapter!

Strauß, Silvie. 2026. Structural and semantic factors in the belief-intent alternation in Basque. Glossa: a journal of general linguistics 11(1), 1–47. DOI: doi.org/10.16995/glo... #linguistics #DiamondOpenAccess

ufal.mff.cuni.cz/grants/cross...

We have been influenced! "The purpose of our speech is ever to influence the will or the understanding of our interlocutor in such a way as the speaker deems desirable." (1885: 67, translation hiphilangsci) #Histlx #EveryoneShouldReadWegener #LinguisticQuotes

In this interview, Verkerk and Gray answer some of my questions about their amazing 2026 paper, in which they show that many of the Greenbergian universals are robustly supported by the Grambank data. Thanks to Russell and Annemarie! dlc.hypotheses.org/4383

In September 2024, Gilles Authier organized a great workshop on the diachrony of flagging at the Collège de France in Paris. My contribution is now available on Lingbuzz: ling.auf.net/lingbuzz/010...

"Reconciling the Saussure brothers" – plenary talk at IMM 22 in Budapest (nytud.hu/esemeny/22nd...). The presentation is here: zenodo.org/records/2076...

At #ICCG14 in Princeton (huge thanks to @adelegoldberg.bsky.social & team for a brilliant conference!) we announced our plans for the International #ConstructionGrammar Association (ICGA), to be officially founded at #ICCG15 in Kiel in 2028. See here for more information: construction-grammar.org

"CLDF Meta" (meta.clld.org) links to data from over 800 CLDF datasets that have been released on Zenodo (e.g. WALS, APiCS and Grambank). There are links to data on over 9000 languoids, e.g. 98 entries on Ambulas (to take a random language). Great work by my colleague Johannes Englisch!

we ran the numbers-- they are bad

direct.mit.edu/books/oa-edi...

Thanks to Ryan Nefdt for inviting me to contribute to this work on "philosophy of linguistics"! global.oup.com/academic/pro... In this paper, I note that in generative as well as in other work, most of the progress seems to have been made by adding breadth, not depth: ling.auf.net/lingbuzz/008...

This is a clear tendency: While the 1990s saw the peak of generative comparative syntax (or g-syntax), the last two decades have been dominated by analyses of particular phenomena in individual languages (p-syntax) – with limited repercussions on general theories. sites.google.com/view/salzbur...

Maybe one of the biggest obstacles for progress in science comes from entrenched stereotypes? In linguistics, we have, for example, (1) the word stereotype, (2) the grammar/dictionary stereotype, (3) the building-block stereotype, and (4) the speaker directionality stereotype dlc.hypotheses.org/4343

Excellent piece from Tom that gave us a lot to think about in our response!

Human hands have partnered with tools for millions of years, allowing us to do things we otherwise could not. Is this a case of brain "plasticity"? Or perhaps "motor abstraction"? Just one of the topics discussed in our latest episode, w/ @mattlongo.bsky.social! Listen: disi.org/the-inner-li...

I'm not sure if I like this militaristic design, but the OLH's cause is a just one, I think. There's no reason why academic publishing should work like commercial publishing. www.openlibhums.org/news/932/

Just published "Apprehensional constructions in a cross-linguistic perspective" edited by Martina Faller, Marine Vuillermet & Eva Schultze-Berndt #openaccess #rcg langsci-press.org/catalog/book...

Languagehat.com is an interesting blog with much discussion worth looking at. They recently discussed my "Grammaticon", and Eddyshaw's question is a good one: languagehat.com/the-grammati... The answer is that comparative-concept definitions must be sharp, but descriptive categories are different.

Episode 60 of our podcast is out 🤩 In this instalment, James McElvenny (@jamesmcelvenny.bsky.social) talks to Penny Lee (University of Western Australia) about her research on Benjamin Lee Whorf and, more generally, linguistic relativity. 🎙️ hiphilangsci.net/2026/05/01/p... #Histlx

Diana Forker talks about linguistic diversity in the Caucasus www.youtube.com/watch?v=r3Qo...

Podcast interview with Anna Wierzbicka (*1938), where she talks about her view of semantics, and how it all began: In Moscow in 1964, where she met Igor Mel'čuk and Yuri Apresjan. hiphilangsci.net/2026/04/15/p...

A new version (2.0) of Frank Seifart's Affix Borrowing database, now co-authored with Francesco Gardani: afbo.info

Version 1.0 of the Grammaticon is now online! This has been in the making for over eight years. Quite a few of the entries are still preliminary, but I hope to expand and improve it over the coming months and years. Comments are welcome! An intro text is here: dlc.hypotheses.org/4316