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Mal Shah

@compositiomality.bsky.social
373 followers 247 following 126 posts

Linguistics grad student (UMD). Ellipsis, quantifiers, degree constructions. Dissertating imminently in syntax/semantics/etc. Philosophy & Linguistics BA (Oxford). College radio DJ, runner, TTRPG fan, vegan 🟥🟪🟦 he/him, 25 malshah.com

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Reposted by Mal Shah
Tibor Tauzin @tibortauzin.bsky.social · 13h
The current non-replication of Marcus et al. (1999) may reflect this confound. DOI:10.1111/desc.70259 We have empirical data on infants' ability to differentiate between repetition of the same sound sequence vs variable sequences. It induces different oculomotor and brain responses in them.
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Mal Shah @compositiomality.bsky.social · 21h
Accepted to Linguistic Inquiry! I argue on syntactic grounds “some of the apples” is really “some apples of the apples” with NP-ellipsis. This explains which quantifiers and which modifiers (adjectives, prepositional phrases, relative clauses) can’t appear. Preprint: ling.auf.net/lingbuzz/009...
ling.auf.net
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noam @noamchompers.bsky.social · 23/09/2026
‘Sure Ironman, your suit has always worked… before’—Metainducer, the main Phase 5 villain
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Aidan McGlynn @aidanmcglynn.bsky.social · 20/09/2026
A portrait of J.L. Austin in black and white, with a speech bubble extending down to the bottom of the image, towards the embedded post
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noam @noamchompers.bsky.social · 19/09/2026
sometimes i give people feedback on job market materials, and thought it might be useful to do a thread of some common feedback i find myself giving. just one guy's opinion (and one thing that can be frustrating about producing and getting feedback on these documents is that informed people *will*
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Alex von Tunzelmann @alexvont.bsky.social · 18/09/2026
Well done to the picture editor who captioned this delightful snap of a black pig swimming off the west coast of Greece “swine-dark sea” www.theguardian.com/environment/...
Swine-dark sea ... Mediterranean black pigs swim at a beach on the private island of Atokos, in the lonian Sea off the west coast of Greece. The island, which is uninhabited by humans, is owned by a shipping magnate
Photograph: Aris Messinis/AFP/Getty Images
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Mal Shah @compositiomality.bsky.social · 17/09/2026
Word that’s like “yearning” but describes the relationship you have to a syllabus you write for a course you are unlikely to ever teach
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Mal Shah @compositiomality.bsky.social · 09/09/2026
Blog post: On "Scope" I got curious about the history of the term in semantics/logic, and found some surprising things about talk of the scope of quantifiers vs. the scope of variables. It's brief, and I'm no historian of logic, so if anyone knows more, please share! www.malshah.com/blog/on-scope
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Mal Shah @compositiomality.bsky.social · 30/08/2026
PJ Harvey Pulp Garbage Sleater-Kinney Slowdive Mogwai Keane Heavenly The Swirlies The Killers
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Schnitza Fars @schnitzafars.bsky.social · 19/08/2026
not dyslexic, but also every time Kayne is cited I think it's Kanye
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Jake Quilty-Dunn @quiltydunn.bsky.social · 19/08/2026
nominative determinism is bullsh-
Problems of Vision by Gerald Vision
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Nvidie @dervine7.bsky.social · 18/08/2026
can confirm, as an academic I read* hella books** per year *download **PDFs
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David Poeppel @davidpoeppel.bsky.social · 18/08/2026
Conceptual Form: The Hidden Structure of Commonsense Concepts is out @mitpress.bsky.social This is just great cognitive science! If you like concepts, words, AI, neuroscience (like me)...Sandeep has a nuanced theory. Finally I know what DOG is all about :-) Congrats mitpress.mit.edu/978026205313...
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Sam Gershman @gershbrain.bsky.social · 18/08/2026
@arthurpr4t.bsky.social has a new preprint with important results on a famous psychophysical law (Weber's law). It isn't, in fact, a law, because it can be broken. A more fundamental principle (efficient coding) shows when and why Weber's law holds true. www.biorxiv.org/content/10.6...
biorxiv.org
Efficient coding makes and breaks Weber's law
Weber's law is a rare quantitative regularity in psychology, yet its origins remain debated. Here we provide causal evidence that it arises from the more fundamental principle of efficient coding. Thi...
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Mirjam Knörnschild @berlinbatlab.bsky.social · 18/08/2026
What would it take for AI to decode animal communication? In our new opinion piece, we argue that animal signals should not be understood only by how similar they sound, but by how the receiver perceives them. 🔗 doi.org/10.1016/j.cu...
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Tomer Ullman @tomerullman.bsky.social · 12/08/2026
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Mal Shah @compositiomality.bsky.social · 12/08/2026
Philosopher friends, any good references on incommensurability per se? Lots of stuff on incommensurability of goods (life as a clarinetist vs lawyer etc) and incommensurability of theories, but like what makes comparisons of two properties weird? (eg ! “Lee is richer than Bo is tall”)
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Mal Shah @compositiomality.bsky.social · 11/08/2026
Having friends in academia has you saying to yourself stuff like “I need to read that paper before we call to catch up tomorrow”
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Nvidie @dervine7.bsky.social · 08/08/2026
man, it’s crazy that someone who was probably lying about obviously implausible claims and faked data was able to succeed in the social sciences, really shows how unrigorous the field is, you’d never see something like that in physics or biology
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Mal Shah @compositiomality.bsky.social · 29/07/2026
Quantifiers could be associated with different algorithms/hyperintensions from person to person, even if they all agree on truth conditions. Are they, in fact, variant in that way? We find evidence for “no! Everyone represents them the same!” Preprint here: ssrn.com/abstract=719...
ssrn.com
Individual differences reveal underlying similarities in meaning: quantifier-dependent choices in verification procedure are consistent across individuals
Previous literature has investigated how quantificational sentences like 'Most of the dots are blue' are understood, using visual tasks which force pa
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Mal Shah @compositiomality.bsky.social · 29/07/2026
Doing my yearly check in to ask, “is this website funny yet” Initial reports more promising than earlier tests
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Mal Shah @compositiomality.bsky.social · 28/05/2025
Type Logical Semantics? Well, yeah, I like to think of myself as a logical type of semanticist
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grice pudding @evpok.love · 25/05/2025
glad to be done with work and finally have some free time to work
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Mal Shah @compositiomality.bsky.social · 22/05/2025
I had a dream that I attended a lecture about linear logics that made me understand them but I woke up and now I'm back to not understanding
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Mal Shah @compositiomality.bsky.social · 22/05/2025
Is it bad or is it just funny to submit to a syntax conference citing nothing written after 2000 (I swear i'm not *that* out of touch)
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Mal Shah @compositiomality.bsky.social · 20/05/2025
does anyone know anything about the syntax of british english "do you want your car cleaning?" i have some takes but couldn't find previous literature
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Brett Karlan @oldjerryfodor.bsky.social · 19/05/2025
The cover of every OUP volume collecting Davidson's papers be like
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Foz Meadows @fozmeadows.bsky.social · 16/05/2025
decades of cyberpunk fiction, and I don't believe a single writer fully predicted how embarrassingly stupid so much of AI was going to be
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Michelle Liu @michelleybliu.bsky.social · 14/05/2025
My new article 'Polysemy and Philosophy' is out in Philosophy Compass. It explores the signicance of polysemy in four strands of discussion in philosophy dx.doi.org/10.1111/phc3...
dx.doi.org
Polysemy and Philosophy
Polysemy is the linguistic phenomenon where a word has more than one sense. Polysemy is important to philosophy. This article considers four related strands of discussion in philosophy in which polys....
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Martin Haspelmath @haspelmath.bsky.social · 14/05/2025
RIP linguist Haj Ross (1938-2025) en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_R....
en.wikipedia.org
John R. Ross - Wikipedia
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Nvidie @dervine7.bsky.social · 11/05/2025
absence makes the sartre go ponder
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Katie Tightpussy, Editor-In-Chief @katie.bzky.team · 03/05/2025
ENOUGH IS ENOUGH
the "stop doing math" meme except it says "STOP DRIVING CARS". the meme reads:
* PEOPLE WERE NOT SUPPOSED TO BE ISOLATED IN CAGES
* YEARS OF CONSTRUCTION yet NO REAL-WORLD USE FOUND for building ONE MORE LANE
* Wanted to travel large distances anyway for a laugh? We had a tool for that: It was called "TRAINS"
* "Yes please give me NO GREENERY. Please give me INFINITE PAVEMENT" - Statements dreamed up by the utterly Deranged

LOOK at what Civil Engineers have been demanding your Respect for all this time, with all the concrete and asphalt we built for them
(This is REAL Civil Infrastructure, done by REAL Civil Engineers):
? [Image of the infamously hideous Breezewood truck stop]
?? [Image of a gigantic mega parking lot with thousands of cars]
??? [Image of the infamous I-405 gridlock photo with tens of thousands of cars not moving]

"Hello I would like [Image of a graph of global surface temperatures] climate please"
They have played us for absolute fools
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Brian Weatherson @bweatherson.bsky.social · 03/05/2025
This is good advice for readers. But also, academics, put up a website! Put drafts of papers as submitted on it! If you don't feel like doing that, at least post drafts to PhilPapers, or SSRN, or arXiv, or somewhere. You're getting paid to provide a public good, not support commercial publishers.
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grice pudding @evpok.love · 03/05/2025
joining the linguistic wars on the side of linguistics
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Jeremy Pober @jpober.bsky.social · 02/05/2025
New bit Eric and I wrote up on superficial versus deep theories, a topic that's become an interest of both of ours. Potentially of particular interest to @quiltydunn.bsky.social @ericman.bsky.social @devinsanchezcurry.com @jplennon630.bsky.social
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Mal Shah @compositiomality.bsky.social · 28/04/2025
WCCFL may have left me feeling, for the first time in my life, syntaxed out
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Mal Shah @compositiomality.bsky.social · 27/04/2025
chomsky (1995 et seq)
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Mal Shah @compositiomality.bsky.social · 24/04/2025
Wow I got out ahead of the Philosophy Twitter exodus and now everyone I used to know is here :D
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Mal Shah @compositiomality.bsky.social · 24/04/2025
Never really jived with BlueSky when I was last on here because it was a bit more LinkedIn-esque, let's say, than the soapboxing-at-the-bar-in-the-middle-of-a-conference vibe Ling Twitter had when it was at its best. Has that changed over the last year?
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Mal Shah @compositiomality.bsky.social · 24/04/2025
Logging in for the first time in a year to say I'll be at WCCFL in Seattle! Come say hi
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Mal Shah @compositiomality.bsky.social · 25/05/2024
Why is overt Ā-movement of a silent operator like overt Ā-movement of a pronounced lexical item, and not like covert Ā-movement of a pronounced lexical item? It could have been different. I feel like the answer we give tells us a lot about how to think of PF and the overt/covert distinction.
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Nick Fleisher @nickfleisher.bsky.social · 23/05/2024
1957 1965 1981 1995
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Mal Shah @compositiomality.bsky.social · 09/05/2024
Me when an article is printed in a two column format: 😤🤢🤮 Me setting a one column paper to display in spreads: 🥰😍☺️
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Mal Shah @compositiomality.bsky.social · 30/04/2024
Yes I like antisymmetry I just choose to not be weird about it
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Mal Shah @compositiomality.bsky.social · 27/04/2024
Threw a 3-page speculative note about vehicle change and movement-based binding (à la Lidz & Idsardi 1998; Hornstein 2001, i.a.) onto lingbuzz: ling.auf.net/lingbuzz/008...
ling.auf.net
Moving Vehicle Violations: Binding via Movement and Vehicle Change effects - lingbuzz/008095
A not-at-all-worked-out proposal/speculation about why vehicle change effects occur. Specifically, if binding phenomena are really the result of PF-rules like 'reflexivize' and 'pronominalize', as has...
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Schnitza Fars @schnitzafars.bsky.social · 22/04/2024
me: I love your socks! her: Thanks! They came in a pair, and the other pair was pink... me: *disassociates in semanticist*
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Mal Shah @compositiomality.bsky.social · 18/04/2024
Anyone know of a language that allows subjectless sentences but only allows anaphors in object position when the subject is overt?
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Mal Shah @compositiomality.bsky.social · 17/04/2024
This summer I will actually write stuff. This summer I will actually write stuff. This summer I will actually write stuff. This summer I will actually write stuff. This summer I will actually write stuff. This summer I will actually write stuff. This summer I will actually write stuff. This summe
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Mal Shah @compositiomality.bsky.social · 02/04/2024
Who's all gonna be at FASAL? Heading up there tomorrow! Come say hi at the poster session :)
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David Adger @davidadger.bsky.social · 13/03/2024
First actual paper on the Mereological Syntax stuff: how to get successive cyclicity without phases - plus some cool Gaelic data. Book revisions still underway ... lingbuzz.net/lingbuzz/007... #linguistics
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