William Timkey

wtimkey.bsky.social

17 October 2026 22:21

The takeaway: heads that appear to track syntactic dependencies aren’t the main mechanism that drives syntax-sensitivity in LM predictions, reaffirming the ancient wisdom that attention is not explanation. Paper link: arxiv.org/abs/2610.192...

William Timkey

wtimkey.bsky.social

17 October 2026 22:20

Transformer LMs develop attention heads that appear to track syntactic dependencies. But do these heads actually drive syntax-sensitive predictions? In a new preprint with @tallinzen.bsky.social, we put this to the test. The answer was surprisingly mixed. 🧵 Paper link: arxiv.org/abs/2610.192...

William Matchin

wmatchin.bsky.social

17 October 2026 21:38

Apply for research position on syntax in aphasia in NeuroSyntax lab here. uscjobs.sc.edu/postings/214361 For doctoral applications, please apply through the COMD department website and/or the Linguistics program. sc.edu/study/colleges_schools/public_health/degrees-programs/doctoral/phd-comd.php

Elaine Francis

ejfranci2.bsky.social

17 October 2026 21:13

Attention prospective graduate students in linguistics! Purdue Linguistics will be holding a virtual open house on Friday, November 13, 2026 starting at 9:00am EST. My lab is among those recruiting this year. You can sign up at this link: purdue.ca1.qualtrics.com/jfe/form/SV_...

Özge Bakay

ozgebakay.bsky.social

01 October 2026 14:16

End of an era, start of a new one: I became Dr. Bakay last week, after successfully defending my dissertation at UMass Amherst Linguistics 🎓🎉 Thank you to so many people for their support; a HUGE thank you to my advisors, @linguistbrian.bsky.social and Faruk Akkuş 😇 Next stop: U of Michigan 💙💛