Derek Bousfield

Father, Husband, Linguist, Former HoD. Reader in Pragmatics at Manchester Metropolitan University. Currently researching The Language of Gaslighting.

[Derek Bousfield @DrWordy]

Out Now Open Access Now and Forever: “Pragmatics in Contested Interpretation: Varied Audiences, Varied Implicatures, Varied Inferences” | SpringerLink. https://t.co/spuRG025jK

[Derek Bousfield @DrWordy]

@TraceyC37013957 @WildSentences You can, through a trust.

[Derek Bousfield @DrWordy]

Source: Times Higher Education

Too many of other people’s kids, he no doubt means. https://t.co/c1Z9771iRh

[Derek Bousfield @DrWordy]

@PasqualetoPat @LizaRosen0000 This happened in 2005.
Her murderers are still in prison.

[Derek Bousfield @DrWordy]

@matthewdmarsden The UK May temp record of 32.8C was set in 1922 & matched in 1944. UK temperatures have warmed by 1.24C from the 1961-1990 average to 2015-2024. The frequency of hot extremes has increased. Global temperatures have risen by more than 1C since 1880. So climate change is a thing.

[Derek Bousfield @DrWordy]

@AjcCritchley @fesshole

[Derek Bousfield @DrWordy]

@s8mb @Victoria_Spratt Fair comment

[Derek Bousfield @DrWordy]

@s8mb @Victoria_Spratt So pensioners cannot be lead tenants?
Huge if true.

[Derek Bousfield @DrWordy]

@s8mb @Victoria_Spratt Well as the total percentage of all people in the UK who are also in work is 49-50% (because babies don’t work, and young children no longer have to go up chimneys, ; and we also have this concept known as “retirement”) then the difference is only c.8% points.

[Derek Bousfield @DrWordy]

@ATRightMovies

[Derek Bousfield @DrWordy]

This is factually inaccurate. Koko and Washoe and so many others are on video asking questions of their keepers/handlers, including “Where baby?”, “where going?”, “this one?” And so many others.

[Anish Moonka @anishmoonka]

In the 1970s, David Premack wondered if a chimpanzee could be taught to ask a question. He taught Sarah 130 plastic word-tokens. She answered his questions easily. After years of work, she had never asked one of her own. Sixty years later, no signing ape has.

A four-year-old human asks about 25 questions an hour. Paul Harris at Harvard counted them: kids ask their parents around 40,000 questions between ages two and five.

Premack even worked out a method for teaching an ape to ask. Hide a snack the chimp expects. Wait for her to sign "where is it." He never bothered running it on Sarah. She spent her sessions answering his questions, never asking her own. A normal kid, he pointed out, asks "what that? who making noise? when Daddy come home?" on a loop.

Washoe the chimpanzee, the first one taught American Sign Language, knew 250 signs. She could request food. She could sign her name. She once saw a swan and called it "water bird," a sharp invention for an animal she had no sign for. She never asked what the swan was, or where it came from, or anything else.

Koko the gorilla knew about 1,000 signs. Kanzi the bonobo understands more than 3,000 spoken English words. Nim Chimpsky, Herbert Terrace's chimp at Columbia (named to mock the linguist Noam Chomsky), strung 125 signs into more than 20,000 combinations. His longest stretch was "give orange me give eat orange me eat orange give me eat orange give me you." He never asked a thing.

Joseph Jordania, a researcher in Melbourne, thinks this is the line between us and them. To ask a question, you first have to know that the person across from you knows something you don't. Apes do not seem to get to that step, even after a lifetime of being talked at by humans.

Human kids cross that line around their fourth birthday. Apes never do.

[Derek Bousfield @DrWordy]

@anon_opin Watch “Threads”

[Derek Bousfield @DrWordy]

@MerriamWebster Define please what is an “English” word here, given the absolute plethora of lexemes adopted by our veritably gestalt tongue over a literal millennium…

Because “Hallelujah” would appear, now, to be an English word, despite the original language from which it was adopted…

[Derek Bousfield @DrWordy]

@Coinvo @lil_doza Do they have a view on whether members of the genus Ursus also defecate in the Silva, Saltus, or Nemus?

[Derek Bousfield @DrWordy]

@nycgraceryan I literally live in the gateway to the world famous “Lake District” in Northwest England, & am less than 90 minutes’ drive away from Scotland’s Lochs. I’ve spent time at the Italian & Hungarian lakes. Europe has lakes every bit as beautiful & relaxing as North American ones.

[Derek Bousfield @DrWordy]

@muellerberndt One of the biggest problems you’ve got is that we still don’t know exactly how our universe works nor its precise size and shape in all elements, so simulating it *exactly* is impossible at least until we do know the above.

[Elisa Mosini 🇪🇺🇮🇹 @MosiniElisa]

Today is a beautiful day!

The UK has officially signed its return to Erasmus+.
British students will once again study across Europe, feeling closer to our shared continent

A wonderful victory for all who believe in the bond between the UK and EU

Erasmus+ welcomes the UK home

[UK Mission to the EU 🇬🇧🇪🇺 @UKMisBrussels]

The UK and the EU have today completed the final step for the UK’s association to Erasmus+ in 2027 🤝

Good news for students, apprentices, educators and young people across Europe.

🇬🇧 The @BritishCouncil has been appointed as the UK’s National Agency for Erasmus+

[UK Prime Minister @10DowningStreet]

Britain is rejoining Erasmus+.

From 2027, thousands of students, apprentices and young people will be able to study and work across Europe, gaining international experience and new skills.

Run by the @BritishCouncil, the programme will unlock a range of opportunities for people from different backgrounds across the UK.

[Derek Bousfield @DrWordy]

@TheBoiiEon @Khanstillday Yellowstone
It’s a TV series.

[Derek Bousfield @DrWordy]

@BrockRiddickIFB We do…