RECENT NEWS
Under contract! The Gift: What nature and culture gave us. The trade book division of Princeton University Press. May 2025. Publication: late 2026.
MIT News about “Linguistic capacity was in the early Homo sapiens population 135,000 years ago.” March 2025.
SPAGAD Lect.Series:Speaker-Addressee Phrase & Commitment Phrase -Syntax in the treetops, Apr.29,2022
Review of Syntax in the treetops, Open Journal of Linguistics, by J. Song and M. Deng. May 2024.
New article in Glossa, “The commitment of rhetorical questions,” with Virginia Hill, February 2024.
New piece on looking at Generative AI from the perspective of human evolution, This View of Life, November 2023.
Review of Syntax in the Treetops in Journal of Linguistics by Nicholas Catasso. February 2023.
In press, “Commitment phrase: Linking proposition to illocutionary force,” Linguistic Inquiry (with Virginia Hill). Publication in spring 2023.
Video lecture on human language in evolution, USP Lecture, University of São Paul. January 10, 2022.
Workshop on Altaic Formal Linguistics 17 will be held September 27-29, 2023, at the National University of Mongolia, Ulaanbaatar. See website for Call for Papers.
New article in Frontiers in Human Neuroscience, “On the representation of hierarchical structure: Revisiting Darwin’s musical protolanguage,” with Analía Arévalo ,Vitor Nóbrega (November 2022).
An article I wrote about the future of education appeared in Nikkei, WSJ of Japan 8/16/2022.
Two new articles on MOOCs published in the proceedings of Learning@Scale, June 2022:
“The Relationship Between COVID-19 Severity and Computer Science MOOC Learner Achievement: A Preliminary Analysis,” Proceedings of Learning@Scale, June 2022. With Anindya Roy, Michael Yee, Meghan Perdue, Julius Stein, Ana Bell, Ronisha Carter.
“How COVID-19 Affected Computer Science MOOC Learner Behavior and Achievements: A Demographic Study,” Proceedings of Learning@Scale, June 2022. With Michael Yee, Anindya Roy, Meghan Perdue, Julius Stein, Ana Bell, Ronisha Carter.
Syntax in the Treetops published by MIT Press (Linguistic Inquiry monograph), May 3, 2022. MIT News story.
Miyagawa was awarded the São Paulo Excellence Chair for his work in language and evolution. This award, given by the São Paulo Research Foundation, will support research at the University of São Paulo in archeology, biology, neuroscience, linguistics, primatology, and animal communication studies. Miyagawa will be appointed as a visiting faculty member in USP’s Institute of Biosciences. The research will begin March 1, 2022.
New article, “Revisiting Fitch and Hauser’s observation that tamarin monkeys can learn combinations based on finite-state grammar” Frontiers in Psychology, November 29, 2021.
History channel article about cave art talks about Miyagawa’s idea of acoustics, cave art, and language. October 27, 2021.
New article, “What will remain?” Inside Higher Education, June 8, 2021. With Meghan Perdue.
New article, “On the 20th anniversary of OpenCourseWare: How it began,” MIT Faculty Newsletter Vol. XXXIII No. 5 May/June 2021. With Hal Abelson and Dick Yue.
New article, “What will remain post-pandemic?” MIT Faculty Newsletter Vol. XXXIII No. 5 May/June 2021. With Meghan Perdue.
Miyagawa speaks at the Anti-Asian Hate Solidarity Rally, May 31, 2021, Boston Common.
Panel on being an Asian-American, hosted by the Chinese Americans of Lexington, MA, May 20, 2021.
Under contract! Syntax in the Treetops. Linguistic Inquiry Monograph, MIT Press. January 20, 2021. Pre-publication version Manuscript updated June 20, 2021.
Pete Wyer, a British composer, dedicates a movement to Miyagawa from his new musical piece, For Love and Only for Love: Letters to New York, premiering at the New York Botanical Garden, December 2020. Interview with the famous WNYC music announcer, John Schaefer (third paragraph for the dedication).
“Moving abruptly online: What it was like for faculty and for students.” MIT Faculty Newsletter. November/December 2020. Vol. XXXIII No. 2. With Meghan Perdue.
“A renewed focus on the practice of teaching,” Inside Higher Ed. November 11, 2020. With Meghan Perdue.
“Inducing and blocking labeling” (with Danfeng Wu and Masa Koizumi) published in Glossa, 12/31/2019.
Miyagawa quoted in a New York Times article (towards the end) about a recent discovery reported in Nature of cave art in Indonesia. December 2019.
New article, “The beginning of innovation,” on Medium. November 2019.
Review article of Agreement beyond phi (2017 MIT Press) by Masao Ochi, English Linguistics.
Workshop on Altaic Formal Linguistics (WAFL) 16 will be hosted by the National University of Mongolia, Ulaanbaatar, September 24, 25, 26, 2020.
“Systems underlying human and Old World monkey communication: One, two, or infinite.” Frontiers in Psychology, September 2019, with Esther Clarke. Article. MIT News.
Organized a workshop on human language in evolution at Creteling, Rethymnon, Crete, July 17, 2019.
MIT Press makes the 2017 LI monograph, Agreement beyond phi, available under open access (free!).
Gave a keynote address on AI and education at the Times Higher Ed Teaching Excellence Summit, June 5, 2019, London, Ontario, Canada (Western University). THE published a related article, and uploaded a short tweet. Here is the full keynote and Q&A.
Review of the MIT Press LI monograph Agreement beyond phi in Language by Elena Anagnostopoulou, December 2018. Review
Twilight Chorus of birdsongs performed by humans, Brooklyn Botanical Garden, June 21, 2018. By Pete Wyer, inspired by the Integration Hypothesis. Write up in New York Times (3rd story down).
Workshop on Case Theory and Labeling of Structures, held on Friday, August 4, 2018, at the UTokyo Komaba campus. With Masa Koizumi (Tohoku U), Mamoru Saito (Nanzan U), and Danfeng Wu (MIT).
New article on language and evolution: "Cross-modality information transfer: A hypothesis about the relationship among prehistoric cave paintings, symbolic thinking, and the emergence of language," Frontiers 2018, with Cora Lesure and Vitor Nóbrega (Frontiers 2018). MIT News article, National Geographic article, AAAS EurekaAlert!, Boston Globe.
Appointed Senior Associate Dean for Open Learning, MIT, 2018. News article.
A very short and very fast video, "Where did language come from?", by Jessica Sun, featuring the Integration Hypothesis. Youtube. 2018.
Handbook of Japanese Linguistics: Syntax, (eds) M. Shibatani, S. Miyagawa, H. Noda. De Gruyter. October 2017.
MIT Press publishes Agreement Beyond Phi, Linguistic Inquiry Monograph. MIT News story. March 17, 2017. Link to pre-copyedited Chapter 1. Review in Language by Elena Anagnostopoulou.
‘Song of the human’ by the British composer Pete M. Wyer under a commission from Arts Brookfield of the New York World Financial Center premiered in the Winter Garden of the Brookfield Place on October 12, 2016, with an installation that followed starting on October 15. This original orchestral and choir piece is in part inspired by Shigeru Miyagawa’s Integration Hypothesis. "We must say goodbye." Link to the song. WNYC interview with Pete Wyer and John Schaefer. Song of the Human Premiere 10/12/2016. Announcement
Song of the Human
Naked Scientists. BBC, Cambridge UK/ABC Australia. "Did the cavemen have names?"
"Birds, Monkeys, and Humans." A mini MOOC, free. www.edcast.org
BBC Radio 4 features Integration Hypothesis (about 17 minutes into the program). What the Songbird Said.
"What the songbird said" wins the 2015 AAAS Kavli science journalism award. Video of the producers about the production of the show.
Nature Podcast interview with Chomsky, Miyagawa, etc. (17 minutes into the program). Real Life Dr. Dolittles.
"The precedence of syntax in the rapid emergence of human language in evolution as defined by the integration hypothesis." Frontiers in Psychology. 18 March 2015 (with Vitor A. Nóbrega). Article.
"The integration hypothesis of human language evolution and the nature of contemporary languages," Frontiers in Psychology. June 2014 (with S. Ojima, R. Berwick, K. Okanoya). MIT News. Science News. LiveScience.
"The emergence of hierarchical structure in human language," Frontiers in Psychology. February 2013 (with R. Berwick, K. Okanoya). Science News. MIT News.
Case, Argument Structure, and Word Order. Leading Linguists Series.Routledge. 2012. Review by Stella Markantonatou in Linguist. YouTube Video of Chapter 10.
Why Agree? Why Move? Unifying Agreement-based and Discourse Configurational Languages. 2010, MIT Press, Linguistic Inquiry Monograph 54. Review by Anders Holmberg in Language. Link to The MIT Press. Link to MIT News. Link to Google Books.