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Kanishka Misra

@kanishka.bsky.social
2.6K followers 337 following 432 posts

Assistant Professor of Linguistics at UT Austin. Works on computational understanding of language, concepts, and generalization. Aspiring wugologist! 🕸️👁️: kanishka.website

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Reposted by Kanishka Misra
Ryan @ryanlepic.bsky.social · 01/10/2026
one of my own favorite papers is my 2019 article in Glossa. it uses cognitive linguistic principles to explain the gradient nature of collocations, fingerspelling, and complex words in ASL. you’d be surprised how often these come up and how tricky they can be... #linguistics doi.org/10.5334/gjgl...
doi.org
A usage-based alternative to “lexicalization” in sign language linguistics
The usage-based framework considers linguistic structure to be emergent from how human languages are used, and shaped by domain-general cognitive processes. This paper appeals to the cognitive process...
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Mike Frank @mcxfrank.bsky.social · 25/09/2026
We've just released a new version of childes-db, my lab's interface to the CHILDES database of child language transcripts. It lets you work with CHILDES data from R through a versioned, reproducible API. A few updates 🧵 childes-db.stanford.edu/
Screenshot of the childes-db website: 'A flexible and reproducible interface to CHILDES.' childes-db 2026.1 contains 56,579 transcripts from 9,151 children across 437 corpora, with panels for an R API tutorial and interactive visualizations of mean length of utterance by child age.
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Kanishka Misra @kanishka.bsky.social · 25/09/2026
Come be my colleague and teach meaning at UT Austin Linguistics!
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Martin Zettersten @mzettersten.bsky.social · 22/09/2026
Our department at UC San Diego is hiring a new tenure-track Assistant Professor. Open area, research addressing foundational issues in cogsci using modern computational methods. I love my department, and you will too. Apply!! apol-recruit.ucsd.edu/JPF04633 #cogscisci #cogsci #DevPsyc #PsychSciSky
apol-recruit.ucsd.edu
Assistant Professor in Cognitive Science
University of California, San Diego is hiring. Apply now!
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Kanishka Misra @kanishka.bsky.social · 22/09/2026
Information bottleneck is so cool -- if I did my phd again id do it in cogsci and work on IB! (maybe counterfactual Kanishka did do this!)
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Tomer Ullman @tomerullman.bsky.social · 22/09/2026
new preprint: "Directing large language models to follow the letter or spirit of the law" arxiv.org/pdf/2609.23083 (by Qian , Li, Chen, Murthy @soniakmurthy.bsky.social , Belinkov, and me) this is particularly cool/important, and I'm allowed to say it because it was headed by @pqian.bsky.social
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Lukas Edman @lukasnlp.bsky.social · 17/09/2026
Ever feel like it's too hard to keep track of what LLMs cannot do as well as humans? We're making your life easier over at: what-llms-can-not-do.github.io We're compiling a list of papers testing the abilities of LLMs against humans. Check it out! And you can help contribute too!
what-llms-can-not-do.github.io
What LLMs Can(not) Do
A living survey of benchmarks that compare large language models with humans.
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Kanishka Misra @kanishka.bsky.social · 21/09/2026
I quite liked this ARR cycle's new phased author-response period! But maybe instead of 2k chars per review we could have a pool of 6k chars for all, because some reviews are short and sweet and dont need much responding to, while others may raise a lot of response-worthy points!
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Jane Li 🦖 @janeli.bsky.social · 17/09/2026
🦀New preprint! (w/ @najoung.bsky.social)🦞 Is grammaticality a major organizing principle of NLM representations? We show that many NLMs exhibit abstract rep. separation for grammaticality. We believe this work addresses debates about confounds in measuring model gram. knowledge. [1/10]
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Aaron Steven White @aaronstevenwhite.io · 12/09/2026
If you are looking for an NSF Linguistics solicitation, you can stop looking. @juliangrove.bsky.social, @h-a-t.bsky.social, and I got confirmation from SBE that Linguistics has no active solicitation.
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Kanishka Misra @kanishka.bsky.social · 12/09/2026
Real controlled rearing!
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Kanishka Misra @kanishka.bsky.social · 11/09/2026
I always wanted to do this! Cool idea and interesting analyses:
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Kanishka Misra @kanishka.bsky.social · 09/09/2026
Understanding how learners conclude “X laughed Y” is incorrect is an age-old question, with several hypotheses, some of which have been ~impossible to disentangle! @tomyxw.bsky.social, @fredashi.bsky.social, and I use controlled rearing to shed light on this in our new EMNLP paper: 1/n
Title slide for “Disentangling Statistical Preemption from Entrenchment in Language Models’ Avoidance of Overgeneralization,” by Yixuan Wang, Freda Shi, and Kanishka Misra. Includes the main results plot and experimental design.
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Kanishka Misra @kanishka.bsky.social · 08/09/2026
I am looking for two emergency reviewers on standby for ARR August. Topics include theory of mind interp in LMs and grammar induction! Please DM/email
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Kanishka Misra @kanishka.bsky.social · 08/09/2026
Do ARR reviewers not realize that the ACs/SACs see their names, even when they use AI to generate their reviews and yet declare that they haven't used any (in the form)?
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Sasha Boguraev @sashaboguraev.bsky.social · 04/09/2026
Linguistic theory has long recognized cross-linguistic syntactic regularities, leading to claims that these similar structures are processed by similar mechanisms. We test this hypothesis in modern multilingual LMs. New work with Toshiki Nakai, @kmahowald.bsky.social , and @telufinwe.bsky.social!🧵👇
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Kanishka Misra @kanishka.bsky.social · 02/09/2026
My current opinion on semantic cognition x LMs will appear in Current Opinion in Behavioral Sciences' Special issue on AI and Psychology, edited by the incredible @neuranna.bsky.social and @stepalminteri.bsky.social Catch the updated version: osf.io/preprints/ps... Grateful to both reviewers!
Title page of “Semantic Cognition for and from Language Models” by me and an arrow pointing downwards to the fact that it will appear in Current Opinion in Behavioral Sciences!
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Tom McCoy @rtommccoy.bsky.social · 01/09/2026
🤖🧠NEW PAPER🧠🤖 (The result of an 8-year project!) LLMs seem very different from symbolic systems. Yet LLMs excel in symbolic domains (e.g., language/code/math). How do they do it? Our finding: LLM representations have implicit symbolic structure! Link in thread ⬇️ 1/n
Overview of the paper. 
Title: The Emergent Symbolic Structure of Artificial Neural Networks
Authors: Tom McCoy, Paul Soulos, Tal Linzen, Paul Smolensky
Left: Neural networks encode information in vectors (there is then an image of a vector), yet they excel at tasks long thought to require symbolic structure (there is then an image of a symbolic representation, specifically a syntax tree). How do LLMs do it?
Right: We find that LLM representations can be closely approximated with symbolic structures. This approximation lets us edit the structure of an LLM’s output by editing the structure of its internal representations, as shown. There is then an image of two edits to LLMs. In the first one, the original input is 3 + 6 * 8, with an answer of 51. But if we swap the positions of the 3 and the 6, the output becomes 30. In the second one, the original input is a Python command repeating the list [Z, U] three times, producing [Z, U, Z, U, Z, U]. But if we edit the input in a way that adds a Q at the end of the input, the output becomes [Z, U, Q, Z, U, Q, Z, U, Q].
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Kanishka Misra @kanishka.bsky.social · 01/09/2026
Saffran et al. (1996) were so close to coining labubu way before its time!
slide showing sequences of sounds from Saffran et al.:

tu pi ro go la bu bi da ku pa do ti go la bu tu pi ro pa do ti bi da ku go la bu

with labubi ~ labubu
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Sean Trott @seantrott.bsky.social · 31/08/2026
New paper out in @openmindjournal.bsky.social! "Large Language Models as Distributional Baselines for Language Tasks". With @jamichaelov.bsky.social , @camrobjones.bsky.social , Tyler Chang, and Ben Bergen. direct.mit.edu/opmi/article...
direct.mit.edu
Large Language Models as Distributional Baselines for Language Tasks
Abstract. In order to ask questions about the mechanisms underpinning human cognition, researchers must control for properties of stimuli that could confound detected effects. In experiments involving...
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Gary Lupyan @glupyan.bsky.social · 29/08/2026
Yes, exactly. Platonic representations are one of the many erroneous conclusions reached under the assumption that intelligence is a one-dimensional scalar.
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Tal Linzen @tallinzen.bsky.social · 26/08/2026
Thanks to the National Science Foundation for featuring our new @pnas.org paper, and for the continued support for basic science projects like this one!
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Sam Nastase @samnastase.bsky.social · 21/08/2026
We’re recruiting a full-time lab manager to join the Shared Minds Lab at USC! This will be a great opportunity for someone who wants to get hands-on experience with research before starting a PhD program in psychology or neuroscience. More below:
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Tom McCoy @rtommccoy.bsky.social · 20/08/2026
Since many are starting grad school soon, let me re-share my One Big Tip™️ for research! Research involves many skills - collaborating, writing, presenting, etc. But many of these skills can be unified under a single overarching ability: theory of mind Blog post link in reply
Illustration of the blog post's main argument, summarized as: "Theory of Mind as a Central Skill for Researchers: Research involves many skills.If each skill is viewed separately, each one takes a long time to learn. These skills can instead be connected via theory of mind – the ability to reason about the mental states of others. This allows you to transfer your abilities across areas, making it easier to gain new skills."
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Caroline Rowland @carorowland.bsky.social · 20/08/2026
Two lectures down, three to go in this week's Analytical Connectionism summer school. Today we tackle the sometimes feisty subject of how children acquire grammar. So many myths & misconceptions out there, I'm gonna start with theories &frameworks www.analytical-connectionism.net/school/2026/
"Modern theoretical divisions (with fuzzy boundaries!). A 2x2 grid crossing Formalist/Functionalist (rows) with Nativist/Constructivist (columns). Formalist-Nativist: grammar is an autonomous formal system independent of meaning; innate grammatical knowledge is present at birth. Formalist-Constructivist: grammar is an autonomous formal system independent of meaning; grammatical knowledge is built from experience over time. Functionalist-Nativist: grammar is shaped by and explicable in terms of the communicative function it serves; innate grammatical knowledge is present at birth. Functionalist-Constructivist: grammar is shaped by and explicable in terms of the communicative function it serves; grammatical knowledge is built from experience over time.
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Kanishka Misra @kanishka.bsky.social · 20/08/2026
Tomorrow, I head to beautiful Gothenburg, Sweden, to lecture at Analytical Connectionism (www.analytical-connectionism.net/school/2026/). In a shocking turn of events, I will talk about controlled rearing -- a topic I have never before presented!
Title slide for the talk "The Role of Input in Shaping Linguistic Generalization: Insights from Controlled Rearing of Language Models"
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bastian bunzeck @bbunzeck.bsky.social · 17/08/2026
I did not bring a poster to the Analytical Connectionism summer school, but at least I can do some live reporting 🙂‍↕️
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Robbie Kubala @rkubala.bsky.social · 10/08/2026
It was really fun working with Guy to defend our views about practice-based aesthetic normativity! This whole co-authorship thing turns out to be pretty great.
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Kanishka Misra @kanishka.bsky.social · 13/08/2026
What an amazing resource! Idan continues to produce amazing pedagogical material 🙏
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Ebru Evcen @ebruevcen.bsky.social · 05/08/2026
I'm very happy to share that I'll be joining @bergelsonlab.bsky.social at Harvard as a postdoc in September!! We'll work on how babies learn word meanings, and tons more!
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grushaprasad.bsky.social @grushaprasad.bsky.social · 05/08/2026
Excited to share a preprint of work done in collaboration with @emilynguist.bsky.social ! osf.io/preprints/ps... TLDR: some effect sizes are larger in lab than on web-based platforms. So when evaluating quantitative predictions, considering the testing platform can be important! 1/n
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Andrew Lampinen @lampinen.bsky.social · 27/07/2026
What should we make of recent language model advancements in mathematics? In my new post, I reflect on long-standing cognitive debates about symbols and neural networks in light of this progress. infinitefaculty.substack.com/p/symbols-ne...
infinitefaculty.substack.com
Symbols, neural networks, and mathematical intelligence
Some reflections on connectionism and the basis of higher-level cognition
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Iban Dlank (b↔︎d) @ibandlank.bsky.social · 16/07/2026
Do language models know who did what to whom? Led by grad student @josephdenning.bsky.social, and Hannah Guo (when she was the first undergrad RA in the lab!)
direct.mit.edu
Do Language Models Know Who Did What to Whom?
Abstract. Language models (LMs) are commonly criticized for not “understanding” language. However, many critiques focus on cognitive abilities that, in humans, are distinct from language processing. H...
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Tomer Ullman @tomerullman.bsky.social · 28/07/2026
was listening to "Riptide" by Vance Joy and my brain inflicted this on me so now you have to see it too
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Cognitive Science Society @cogscisociety.bsky.social · 23/07/2026
Kyle Mahowald @kmahowald.bsky.social concludes the symposium with ‘Linguistic Efficiency and Linguistic Interpretability’, connecting efficient linguistic representations with the internal mechanisms learned by large language models. #CogSci2026
Kyle Mahowald stands beside a clear lectern while presenting during CogSci 2026. Behind him, a large slide titled “Spatial words: how languages carve up space” explains how different languages encode spatial relationships, with examples from English, Finnish, and Nahuatl-like languages alongside colorful comparison diagrams. The slide cites research by Chen, Futrell, and Mahowald (2023) and displays the University of Texas logo in the lower-right corner.
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Kanishka Misra @kanishka.bsky.social · 21/07/2026
Sasha will be in Rio or Rio, or Rio or Rio! Chat with him — he’s been working on a lot of cool stuff!
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Khuyen Le @knle.bsky.social · 16/07/2026
How do children learn new words? Do they simply track word-object co-occurrences across contexts, or do they also use information about what speakers know and intend? With @mzettersten.bsky.social and @drbarner.bsky.social, I tackled this question in our new preprint! 1/🧵👇 osf.io/preprints/ps...
osf.io
OSF
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Kanishka Misra @kanishka.bsky.social · 15/07/2026
Excited that our paper on minimal translation pairs for ASL was recognized with a best paper award at the Workshop on Generative AI for Sign Language @ CVPR 2026! Congrats to my co-authors @skarabuklu.bsky.social, Shester, Diane, Greg, and Karen! Paper: arxiv.org/abs/2604.27232
Certificate for best paper award from Generative AI for Sign Language workshop!
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Kanishka Misra @kanishka.bsky.social · 12/07/2026
“Whoever loses this is going to be dejected and absolutely irate” — amazing commentary 🙏
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Kanishka Misra @kanishka.bsky.social · 10/07/2026
clauding my way to a functional minicons documentation website!
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Kanishka Misra @kanishka.bsky.social · 07/07/2026
How does knowledge learned from language alone interact with that learned from extra-linguistic modalities? Come find out our case study on cross modal generalization of semantic categories @ Coronado, poster C2, 11-12:30!! #ACL2026
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Kanishka Misra @kanishka.bsky.social · 04/07/2026
Adele is too kind to attribute this to me but this really comes from her own 1995 constructions book, as well as John Beavers’ work and Beth Levin’s papers!
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Kanishka Misra @kanishka.bsky.social · 04/07/2026
Doing my first ever conf-workshop keynote at the computational developmental linguistics workshop (comp-dev-ling.github.io)! Come one, come all!
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Kyle Mahowald @kmahowald.bsky.social · 02/07/2026
The full BBS treatment from me and @futrell.bsky.social on "How linguistics learned to stop worrying and love the LMs" is now out, with all the commentaries and our response. If you "Save PDF", it will give you the whole target article + commentary + response pdf: www.cambridge.org/core/journal...
cambridge.org
How linguistics learned to stop worrying and love the language models | Behavioral and Brain Sciences | Cambridge Core
How linguistics learned to stop worrying and love the language models - Volume 49
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Dota Tianai Dong @dotadotadota.bsky.social · 02/07/2026
Check out our #ACL2026 Oral paper 🗣️🤖 How do MLMs ground word usage through interactions with the physical and social world? Taking a classical human communication paradigm, we compare 7 MLMs with humans. doi.org/10.18653/v1/2026.acl-long.84
doi.org
Using Perspectival Words Is Harder Than Vocabulary Words for Humans —and Even More So for Multimodal Language Models
Dota Tianai Dong, Yifan Luo, Po-Ya Angela Wang, Asli Ozyurek, Paula Rubio-Fernandez. Proceedings of the 64th Annual Meeting of the Association for Computational Linguistics (Volume 1: Long Papers). 20...
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Kanishka Misra @kanishka.bsky.social · 02/07/2026
First the US has to play two teams in the same game, then they drop to 10 men! Terrible!
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Najoung Kim @najoung.bsky.social · 01/07/2026
🐸 New position paper on compositionality! 🐸 I synthesize my thoughts about the proper role/interpretation of behavior and mechanism in asking the question "Is this system (mind or machine) exhibiting compositionality?"
No Escape from Behavior in Evaluating Compositionality by Najoung Kim
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Kanishka Misra @kanishka.bsky.social · 30/06/2026
Come join @lindiatjuatja.bsky.social, @kmahowald.bsky.social, @jessyjli.bsky.social, and me at UT Linguistics! Lindia and I will be around at ACL in SD, and Kyle and Jessy will be with us in spirit!🤘 My lab: kanishka.website/lab/
kanishka.website
KOALAB | Kanishka Misra
KOALAB — a community of linguists, computer scientists, and cognitive scientists studying how abstractions emerge in language learners.
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Kanishka Misra @kanishka.bsky.social · 29/06/2026
I will be at #ACL2026 from July 2--7! I will be giving a keynote at CDL workshop on controlled rearing and hypothesis generation from language models! Tianyang Xu (first author) and I will present work on cross-modal generalization in VLMs on July 7! Paper: aclanthology.org/2026.acl-lon...
low effort slide on my activities during ACL.

Keynote at computational developmental linguistics workship (July 4, 3pm)

Poster w/ Tianyang Xu during Poster session G (July 7, 11-12)

Recruiting for my lab @ full conference!
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