iiinova — where your digital self keeps evolving

Daniel Duran @simphon.bsky.social · 01/10/2026

Marie-Anne Morand started this year's P&P conference in a wonderful industrial environment in TRAFO Jena with a great keynote talk on phonetic variability in a migration context. www.gw.uni-jena.de/98626/2026-p-p #phonetics

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Daniel Duran @simphon.bsky.social · 28/09/2026

Not at Interspeech in Sydney? So, see you in Jena at my very creative poster on a layer-wise analysis of speech LLMs: “Wer (er)kennt Schünni-Günni?” at this year’s P&P. I will present joint work with Bastian Bunzeck, Sina Zarrieß & Petra Wagner from #CRC1646 #LINCC www.gw.uni-jena.de/98626/2026-p-p

An illustration of an artificial neural network which takes audio as input and generates text output through a number of layers.
AI generated image. Manually edited.

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Daniel Duran @simphon.bsky.social · 24/09/2026

Be sure to see our poster at #Interspeech2026 on Sep 29: Leonie Schade will present joint work with Daniel Duran, Florian Kankowski, Joana Cholin, Petra Wagner & Christine Mooshammer on “Naming Heroes and Villains – The Influence of Phonaesthetics”. #BielefeldUniversity #Phonetics #LINCC #CRC1646

AI generated images of heroes and villains

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Daniel Duran @simphon.bsky.social · 06/09/2026

Solé, R., et al. (2026). Large-Language Models as a Cognitive Virus. arXiv preprint: doi.org/10.48550/arX... Interesting idea: the *use* of LLMs as a virus. 👀 Note that the analogy is nuanced. Do not fall for rage baiting AI apocalypticism which may pop up around this paper elsewhere!

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Daniel Duran @simphon.bsky.social · 31/08/2026

Bastian Bunzeck presenting Universal Dependencies annotations of constructions in child-caretaker dialogues at the 11th International Conference of the German Cognitive Linguistics Association #DGKL in Bielefeld. @bbunzeck.bsky.social‬ #LINCC #CRC1646

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Daniel Duran @simphon.bsky.social · 31/08/2026

Great start of the week with a plenary talk by Joana Cholin from our #LINCC #CRC1646 A02 project at the 11th International Conference of the German Cognitive Linguistics Association #DGKL in Bielefeld

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Daniel Duran @simphon.bsky.social · 31/08/2026

Another great event at home: Looking forward to 3 exciting days at the 11th International Conference of the German Cognitive Linguistics Association #DGKL in Bielefeld.

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Daniel Duran @simphon.bsky.social · 27/08/2026

🤓 Neue Publikation: Duran, D., Happes, J., & Schumacher, D. (2026). Antisemitismus als popkulturelles Phänomen. In T. Krieger & S. Mikelskis-Seifert (Hrsg.), Professionsorientierte Fachwissenschaft: Interdisziplinäre Einblicke und Ansichten verschiedener Lehramtsfächer aus Freiburg (S.75–99). Nomos.

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Daniel Duran @simphon.bsky.social · 18/08/2026

Do you want to teach, they asked. Uhm, sure. Like what? Oh, something on sociophonetics? OK, say no more… 😎

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Daniel Duran @simphon.bsky.social · 17/08/2026

I’m so excited. And I just can't hide it. It's week 2 of the #DGfS #LINCC summer school and my class on sociophonetics, multiethnolects and German Rap starts today. It's gonna be a wild ride 😎 Place your bets in the comments on which day I'll get the first complaints to turn down the music 😂

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Daniel Duran @simphon.bsky.social · 20/07/2026

@lingucat.bsky.social Zum Wochenbeginn hier ein historischer Beleg ohne #Tristaben Mumpitz aus meinem privaten Archiv. 🤓

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Daniel Duran @simphon.bsky.social · 01/06/2026

They forgot to report the standard deviation on this shoebox 🧐 ― useless #statistics

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Daniel Duran @simphon.bsky.social · 29/05/2026

It's always exciting for a scientist to discover records from the ancient past. It's a bit unnerving if you recorded those historical artifacts yourself 😳

A CD-ROM labelled "Korpus 7. Juni 2005" rar

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Daniel Duran @simphon.bsky.social · 22/04/2026

Congratulations to Dr. Simeon Junker, from the CLAUSE group at Bielefeld University, who successfully defended his doctoral dissertation on the topic “Visual Context and Communicative Goals in Referring Expression Generation”! 🥳 @clausebielefeld.bsky.social

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Daniel Duran @simphon.bsky.social · 14/04/2026

I'm very excited. I am teaching again! My first seminar since the pandemic. My first seminar since ChatGPT. I'm curious, how much the world actually changed. 🤓

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Daniel Duran @simphon.bsky.social · 17/02/2026

My word of the day: »fašnik« — /ˈfáʃník/ m noun, short rising accent, Croatian, Kajkavian, from German „Fasching“, meaning carnival. At first glance, this is an example of relatively simple metathesis. However, -nik is a common masculine noun suffix. The word thus does not feel like a loan.

Source: Silverije, CC BY-SA 4.0 <https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0>, via Wikimedia Commons.
(cropped image)

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Daniel Duran @simphon.bsky.social · 17/02/2026

Do you have a favourite letter? Behold: Latin Capital Letter Sharp S: ẞ This is my favourite German letter (used in German only ― though not in Switzerland). Its codification fixed some orthographical problems with names, for example. Cute footnote: (lower case) ß is called ringel-s in Dutch.

LATIN CAPITAL LETTER SHARP S (U+1E9E) in different fonts

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Daniel Duran @simphon.bsky.social · 16/02/2026

»fair play must be given to the machine […] if a machine is expected to be infallible, it cannot also be intelligent.« — Alan M. Turing, 1947. Turing asked why we should allow for occasional “blunders” from human experts but not from machines. (cited by A. Hodges, The Enigma, 2012:361)

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Daniel Duran @simphon.bsky.social · 15/02/2026

“If you knew how something ended — would you still begin?” D. W. Moore's beautiful summary of Ted Chiang’s “Stories of your life” Just re-read this short story of dread, despair and memories of joy… and linguistics. Highly recommend!

Universitätsbibliothek Freiburg. February 2020.

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Daniel Duran @simphon.bsky.social · 14/02/2026

Habt euch lieb! Nicht nur heute.

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Daniel Duran @simphon.bsky.social · 09/02/2026

Very proud and happy about all my collaborations so far ― past and present! I learned so much from all of you. #CRC1646 #LINCC

co-authorship network around members of project A02 | CRC1646

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Daniel Duran @simphon.bsky.social · 06/02/2026

#Throwback2016 LabPhon15 at Cornell University. Fond memories of collaborations past. Presented joint work with J. Roux, A. Coetzee, J. Bruni and my late Doktorvater G. Dogil on devoicing in Tswana. With A. Schweitzer and N. Lewandowski we showed that personality affects convergence. What a time!

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Daniel Duran @simphon.bsky.social · 02/02/2026

More upcoming: At this year’s #ESSV conference, I will present a little study where we test some ASR systems with co-authors Laurens Winkler and Sina Zarrieß from the #CRC1646 #LINCC discussing “How well can LLMs handle novel phonetic forms?” ― www.essv.de/essv2026 @clausebielefeld.bsky.social

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Daniel Duran @simphon.bsky.social · 31/01/2026

Upcoming: At this year’s #ESSV conference, I will present joint work by Robert Fromont, Jennifer Hay, Daniel Duran, Allie Osborne, Melanie Weirich, Miriam Oschkinat & Stefanie Jannedy: “Evaluating Full Automation of Computational Sociophonetics for the #Plapper Corpus” ― www.essv.de/essv2026

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Daniel Duran @simphon.bsky.social · 28/01/2026

Fritz Seebauer from the #Bielefeld University #Phonetics group successfully defended his doctoral dissertation “Synthetic Speech Evaluation - Quality and Context”. Congratulations Dr. Seebauer! 🥳👨‍🎓

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Daniel Duran @simphon.bsky.social · 25/01/2026

#Throwback2016 Buenos Aires, Argentina: International Congress on Acoustics. Amongst hardcore acoustics with numerical simulations — no LLMs, not even deep learning — me with a humble 3D computer game promoting #gamification in #phonetics research. I dare say, I was a professional game designer. 😎

Daniel Duran in front of the Pontificia Universidad Catolica Argentina in Buenos Aires, Argentina

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Daniel Duran @simphon.bsky.social · 16/01/2026

Started 2025 with an Erdős number not higher than 5*. Now I am at 4. ...only two more years to go! 🚀 (*taking into account all scientific publications, not restricted to mathematics)

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Daniel Duran @simphon.bsky.social · 11/01/2026

Hannover kann kein Schnee. Totales Chaos hier 😂 In Esslingen war der Schneepflug jeden Tag in meiner Straße (eine verkehrstechnisch unwichtige Sackgasse), obwohl schon fast kein Schnee mehr lag. Hier in Langenhagen liegen etwa 20cm Schnee auf der Straße. Nix geräumt 😱

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Daniel Duran @simphon.bsky.social · 01/01/2026

Sretna nova 2026. godina svima! Happy new year everyone!

Outside the X buliding of Bielefeld University on a cold December night. Edited image.

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Daniel Duran @simphon.bsky.social · 26/11/2025

How to elicit natural speech in different communicative settings in a controlled laboratory setting? Cool work in progress using virtual reality was presented by Miriam Oschkinat from #SFB1412 today at the linguistics CRC networking meeting in Bielefeld hosted by #CRC1646 @labphon-zas.bsky.social

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Daniel Duran @simphon.bsky.social · 19/11/2025

Am I evil? Am I likeable? Need a 10 minutes break? Like Fantasy? Loath it? Take part in our study and help us by rating images of fictional characters here: bixprag.lili.uni-bielefeld.de/publix/0aSWK...

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Daniel Duran @simphon.bsky.social · 11/11/2025

Do you even need visual social cues to trigger speech register effects? Imagining to address a friend vs a policeman is enough to change speaking style (f0 in this case). Check out our new paper in which we present an analysis of speech data collected with the #Plapper app: doi.org/10.1121/10.0...

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Daniel Duran @simphon.bsky.social · 01/11/2025

Rund um den Babo-Hype liest man nun oft: „Haftbefehl gehört in die Schulen“ Ganz meine Meinung! Ich habe da auch schon mal was vorbereitet: ― D. Duran, J. Happes & D. Schumacher (2024). Antisemitismus als „popkulturelles Phänomen“. In N. Hodaie et al. (Hrsg) (Deutsch-) Rap und Gewalt. Beltz Juventa.

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Daniel Duran @simphon.bsky.social · 27/10/2025

»Lieber Friedrich, du hast echt bezaubernde Töchter Wir auch, aber uns’re hausen in Löchern« — Eko Fresh. Friedrich. 2025

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Daniel Duran @simphon.bsky.social · 27/10/2025

Es muss doch eine bessere Berufsbezeichnung geben 🤔

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Daniel Duran @simphon.bsky.social · 26/10/2025

Eine Stunde zu früh zum Termin aus dem Haus gehetzt und erst im Auto den Fehler bemerkt: Check! 🥴 #Zeitumstellung

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Daniel Duran @simphon.bsky.social · 24/10/2025

Speech registers are not just about the choice of fancy words or complex linguistic constructions. Speakers also adjust their pronunciation in different situations. Check out our analysis of formal vs informal video interactions using a novel experimental paradigm: doi.org/10.1075/rs.2... #SFB1412

Experimental setup in the laboratory at Leibniz-Zentrum Allgemeine Sprachwissenschaft (ZAS) in Berlin, November 2022.

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Daniel Duran @simphon.bsky.social · 23/10/2025

How to get high quality, naturalistic speech recordings from the same speakers in formal vs informal situations for phonetic analysis? Check out our new paper in Register Studies which introduces a novel experimental framework involving simulated video calls! doi.org/10.1075/rs.2... #SFB1412

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Daniel Duran @simphon.bsky.social · 21/10/2025

»Empfinden gehet vor dem Denken, Denken vor dem Sprechen, und Sprechen vor dem Schreiben her. So wie man nicht richtig denken kann, wenn man falſch empfunden hat, ſo kann man auch nicht richtig ſprechen, wenn man nicht richtig gedacht hat, …« ― Johann Christoph Adelung. 1788

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Daniel Duran @simphon.bsky.social · 14/10/2025

Best Poster Award for #Plapper at #P&P last week! A first peak at our results shows complex patterns of regional and sociodemographic variation in the phonetic realization of German vowels. More coming soon! www.leibniz-zas.de/de/plapper home.uni-leipzig.de/pundp2025

Miriam Oschkinat at the poster presentation »Patterns of Variation of German Monophthongs in the PLAPPER Corpus« by Stefanie Jannedy, Melanie Weirich, Daniel Duran, Miriam Oschkinat, Jen Hay, Robert Fromont & Allie Osborne.

Melanie Weirich and Stefanie Jannedy at the poster presentation »Patterns of Variation of German Monophthongs in the PLAPPER Corpus« by Stefanie Jannedy, Melanie Weirich, Daniel Duran, Miriam Oschkinat, Jen Hay, Robert Fromont & Allie Osborne. Image by Christoph Draxler.

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Daniel Duran @simphon.bsky.social · 10/10/2025

Some #LLMs promise universal “speech-to-phoneme” transcription. At #P&P I presented first results on the special use-case of creative phonetic forms and discussed how well different LLMs perform on this task. Turns out: very poorly with horrendous error rates. home.uni-leipzig.de/pundp2025 #CRC1646

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Daniel Duran @simphon.bsky.social · 07/10/2025

Second keynote today will be given by Melanie Weirich (Friedrich-Schiller-Universität Jena): „Sex and the City“: Geschlechtsspezifische Variation im Kontext. What a great way to start the day! #P&P home.uni-leipzig.de/pundp2025/

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Daniel Duran @simphon.bsky.social · 06/10/2025

Früsche Analysen zur Rundung des kurzen [ɪ] zu [ʏ] im norddeutschen Standarddeutsch präsentiert von Francois Conrad. #P&P home.uni-leipzig.de/pundp2025/

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Daniel Duran @simphon.bsky.social · 06/10/2025

First keynote talk by Volker Dellwo (U Zürich) at #P&P »Warum Linguisten und Phonetiker mehr über Stimmerkennung lernen sollten« ― Why should linguists and phoneticians learn more about voice recognition? #phonetics & #phonology

Volker Dellwo at the keynote presentation

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Daniel Duran @simphon.bsky.social · 06/10/2025

Es geht los. Ich freue mich auf zwei spannende Tage in Leipzig bei der #P&P home.uni-leipzig.de/pundp2025/

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Daniel Duran @simphon.bsky.social · 05/10/2025

Letzte Station der diesjährigen Konferenztour: Auf dem Weg nach Leipzig zur Phonetik und Phonologie Tagung #P&P

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Daniel Duran @simphon.bsky.social · 23/09/2025

Attending the The Second International Workshop on Construction Grammars and NLP (CxGs+NLP 2025) in Düsseldorf, Germany? Check out the poster “Do Construction Distributions Shape Formal Language Learning In German BabyLMs?” by Bastian Bunzeck and colleagues! @bbunzeck.bsky.social #CRC1646 #LINCC

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