The Toronto Star has just published a very introductory article about Steven Pinker and his ideas about the psychology of language. Pinker delivered a lecture in Toronto on January 24, as part of 15th anniversary celebrations for the Canadian Institute for Advanced Research.

The article is very uncritical and introductory, but it is interesting.

Of thought and metaphor, by Peter Calamai for Toronto Star.

Here are the first few lines.

“Asking Steven Pinker, Harvard researcher and best-selling author, to pass the salt turns out to be very educational. Not about sodium and high blood pressure, but about how we use language and what that reveals about human nature.”

(more…)

Big day: yesterday Zoe gave birth to baby Brennan! Our congratulations to them and of course to babbo Frank!

In the dogs world, on the other hand, Molly is about to have 5 puppies… chi vuole uno schnouzerino nano (puro)?

Finally we have the fight booked to go to Canada in May, from the 13th to the 23rd! It is not a long holiday but it makes for a nice break and I am looking forward to meeting the new members of the family, Benjamin and… BABY… he’s not born yet and the name is still a secret!

I can’t wait!

At last Sketch Engine has included the possibility to create Word Sketches from the Italian webcorpus too!!! This is a great addition for people who work on Italian, given the well-known lack of corpora available out there and how useful word sketches are.