B. Bickel

Animal acoustic communication maintains a universal optimum rhythm

The paper analyzes acoustic communication rhythms across 98 species, finding that vocalization rhythms are conserved around a 3Hz optimum, suggesting a universal neural constraint.

Oldest attested languages in the Near East reveal deep transformations in the distribution of linguistic features

The paper analyzes linguistic features in ancient Near Eastern languages to show that their distributions differ from modern ones, indicating historical transformations in language.

Primate origins of human event cognition

The paper compares event cognition in humans, great apes, and infants, finding that adults and apes track events as agent-patient relations, while infants do not.

From collocations to call-ocations: using linguistic methods to quantify animal call combinations

The paper applies collocation analysis to animal calls to identify non-random call combinations in a pseudo dataset.

Contact-tracing in cultural evolution: a Bayesian mixture model to detect geographic areas of language contact

The paper introduces sBayes, a Bayesian clustering algorithm to detect geographic language contact areas while accounting for inheritance and universal preference confounders, using simulated data and case studies in South America and the Balkans.

Exploring correlations in cultural and genetic variation across language families in Northeast Asia

The paper analyzes correlations between cultural and genetic variation across 11 language families in Northeast Asia, finding grammatical structure correlates with population history.

Can Bayesian phylogeography reconstruct migrations and expansions in human history?

This paper evaluates Bayesian phylogeography's ability to reconstruct migrations and expansions in human history using simulations and real data.

Languages, evolution and statistics: human sound systems were shaped by changes in bite configuration. Response to Tarasov & Uyeda (2020)

The paper responds to criticisms of their statistical analysis on the evolution of human sound systems, arguing that discrepancies stem from model issues and misinterpretations.