MariannaBolog
Linguist (Semantics, Cognition, Computation)
PI of ABSTRACTION (ERC-2021-STG-101039777)
linktr.ee/mariannabolognesi
- 📣 Abstraction seminars are back! 🗓️ 13 February 2026, 10:30 (Rome time, UTC+1) 📍 Bologna (in presenza) or 💻 Microsoft Teams (link: shorturl.at/dBI5L) 🎆 Join us for another seminar, details in the figure! 👉 Save the date & spread the word! ✨ @abstractionerc.bsky.social
- #WordLadder of the day. Peeking into the backend of the Word Ladder mobile app 👀 This is an example of the power of linguistic compositionality 😅 (Note that #LLMs tend play Word Ladders exactly like this user, we found). But where do we draw the line between a legit hyponym and a non-legit one?
- #WordLadder 🎮 of the day. 👀 Is it legit to list "metal" a subtype of "rock" music? 🎶 Or are rock and metal music co-hyponyms, on the same level but different styles? 🤔
- here's another folksonomy from Word Ladders data: a FOX classified as a type of FELINE. Apparently this is a very common misconception, at least in #WordLadders data. Download Word Ladders and play now: Android 👉 shorturl.at/kqAOS Apple 👉 shorturl.at/buIS2
- Another #WordLadders pearl: this is the ladder of abstraction created by a creative user 😇 , starting from prompt word 🍎 APPLE (remember the rules: climbing up the ladder words are increasingly more general, strolling down are increasingly more specific:
- 1/2 posts #WordLadders data, peaking into the backoffice of the app. SO MANY abstraction ladders in which meronymy is confused with hyponymy! "seed" as a suptype of "apple", a classic :-) This suggests that hierarchical semantic relations in our minds are not very stable and clear. How about #LLMs?
- 2/2 #LLMs show the same tendency to mix these semantic relations (Puccetti et al. 2025). What we are doing now, is developing a classifier that can learn to disentangle hyponymy from meronymy (work in prep, with a pilot under review). This would help us cleaning the 40K gameplays collected so far.
- here another example, in English 👇 given the word CUP, a more general is CONTAINER (correct: a CUP is a type of CONTAINER), and a more specific is indicated as HANDLE. But a handle is NOT a type of CUP!
- Do cross-sensory metaphors drive consumers' appreciation in print advertising? Visuals or linguistic expressions? Check it out! www.cambridge.org/core/journal...
- We tested synaesthetic metaphors (where metaphor meets sensory experience) using experimentally manipulated print advertisements. Key findings 👇 • Ads with both visual & linguistic synaesthetic metaphors are more appreciated • Ads perceived as more multisensory are liked more BUT.....
- Purchase intention doesn't increase! Takeaway: aesthetic appreciation ≠ persuasion. Making ads richer and more sensory boosts liking, but buying decisions depend on more than metaphor and multisensoriality. Relevant for #MetaphorStudies #SensoryMarketing #Multimodality #ConsumerPsychology
- Have a joyful break!
- Have a joyful and well-deserved winter break, y'all! From us at @abstractionerc.bsky.social
- 🎥 Yesterday’s seminar by @kristinadespot.bsky.social is now online: "Metaphor literalization strategies: from concrete to abstract and back to concrete again". The recording is available on the Abstraction website. 👉 Watch it here: site.unibo.it/abstraction/...
- Reposted by MariannaBologWord Ladders is a free mobile app developed by @Abstraction_ERC to collect linguistic data site.unibo.it/abstraction/en Join more than 3400 players to help us study the role of language in Abstraction. Download: Android 👉 shorturl.at/kqAOS Apple 👉 shorturl.at/buIS2
- Being literal using metaphor. Literalization as a process to cooperatively delve into language use and its consequences, during psychotherapy sessions. @abstractionerc.bsky.social @kristinadespot.bsky.social
- @kristinadespot.bsky.social on the truthfulness of metaphor in conceptual metaphor theory @abstractionerc.bsky.social
- Metaphor literalization strategies, a seminar by @kristinadespot.bsky.social joint organized with colleagues from the Metaphor Lab, connected from remote.
- Setting up the room for @abstractionerc.bsky.social seminar with speaker prof. @kristinadespot.bsky.social on Metaphor literalization strategy: from concrete to abstract and back to concrete again. Join us at 10.30, Rome time! 💻 Microsoft Teams (link: shorturl.at/B4H7R) A recording will be available
- Say hi to the IconicITA dataset! We introduce iconicity ratings for Italian produced by L1 and L2 speakers, and show how iconicity relates to key psycholinguistic variables and chronometric data. Note: Specificity emerges as a good predictor of iconicity! journals.plos.org/plosone/arti...
- New theoretical paper: “Beyond concreteness: why word specificity is the missing piece in theories on embodied language comprehension” shorturl.at/6Rv3Y Included in the special issue "Rethinking the Embodiment of Language: Challenges and Future Horizons", led by V. Cuccio, V. Gallese & Y. Shtyrov.
- 📣 Abstraction seminars are back! 🗓️ 12 December, 10:30 (CET) 🎙️Prof.ssa Kristina S. Despot 🎓Metaphor literalization strategy: From concrete to abstract and back to concrete again 📍 Bologna 💻 Microsoft Teams (link: shorturl.at/B4H7R) 👉 Save the date & spread the word! ✨@abstractionerc.bsky.social
- 🌐 Il seminario della collega Valentina Cuccio è ora online! È disponibile sul sito di Abstraction al link: site.unibo.it/abstraction/... Se vi siete persi l’incontro o volete riascoltarlo con calma, potete trovarlo lì. Buona visione! 🎧✨
- In the Netherlands, when you walk into a pharmacy with a prescription, a pharmacist takes your medication and then, every single time, hands both the prescription and the medicine to a second pharmacist for a congruence check before you pay. Peer review all the way down. I find it brilliant!
- E oggi ho condiviso con il centro interdipartimentale Alma AI e un gruppo di colleghe e colleghi giuristi capitanati da Monica Palmirani i risultati a grandi linee del gruppo @abstractionerc.bsky.social su studi che coinvolgono l'uso di LLMs. Questa settimana è decisamente densa :-)
- Reposted by MariannaBologSeeing this slide after completing my postdoc at @abstractionerc.bsky.social makes me emotional. Great talk of @mariannabolog.bsky.social at the workshop "Large and Small Language Models: stato dell’arte fra limiti e prospettive" at Unibo. Many works about abstraction and LLM are on the horizon! :)
- Dopo il seminario di Valentina Cuccio con una delegazionedi Abstraction, nel magnifico chiostro del dipartimento di storia, San Giovanni in Monte, Bologna.
- Prof. Valentina Cuccio kicks off her seminar asking whether there are any cross-cutting, neglected dimensions that can explain the concreteness effect. She elaborates on the modality of acquisition of concepts @abstractionerc.bsky.social
- Tavola rotonda all' ISTI-DAY, un'opportunità per discutere dei rischi, responsabilità e opportunità legate all'uso di GenAI per la ricerca.
- Tomorrow I’m ready to hop on a train to Pisa right after my class, to take part in the round table at CNR ISTI, with top-notch computer scientists, to talk about the use and abuse of AI in research. I’ll be contributing the perspective of the humanities. Stay tuned! www.isti.cnr.it/it/ricerca/i...
- Per chi fosse interessato a leggere cosa fa il gruppo ABSTRACTION @erc.europa.eu , ecco il flipbook interattivo con gli studi condotti fino ad oggi (in lingua italiana). heyzine.com/flip-book/61... Il flipbook accompagna un video introduttivo, che trovate qui: www.youtube.com/watch?v=xIqc...
- Today I officially took up my new position as Full Professor of Linguistics at the University of Bologna @unibo.it 🎉 Funny to think it all began when I was a kid, convinced everyone thought in Italian (of course!) and the others just had to translate into whatever language they spoke 😅.
- Time flies! 🚀 @grambelli.bsky.social just wrapped up her 3-year postdoc with Abstraction_ERC and is already off exploring new research frontiers. Grateful that some projects still keep us collaborating: once an Abstractioner, always an Abstractioner! ☕✨Thanks for the amazing mug!!!
- I primi 2 seminari autunnali di @abstractionerc.bsky.social sono online!🥳 share.google/gGvHTdAA9O07... 👉Filippo Domaneschi 🎤Titolo: Concretely offensive: the processing f reclaimed slurs. 👉Veronica Repetti, 🎤Titolo: Concrete or abstract possession? Animacy, alienability, and syntactic structure.
- Love this visual device: parents's discussions are shown not through words, only symbols, mostly pointing fingers. From the child’s view, the words don’t matter; it’s adult stuff. What he perceives is the tone, the tension, the conflict. A brilliant way to show how kids experience adult language.
- Invited keynote at Rende, University of Calabria, went great! On the role of context and abstraction mechanisms in the construction and interpretation of multimodal metaphors
- Excited to kick off day 1 of the CIRM International Annual Conference on Metaphor and Multimodality at the University of Calabria in Rende: such a beautiful campus nestled in the hills. Enjoyed a lovely morning walk to get here! My invited keynote is scheduled for tomorrow morning.
- In the seminar room this morning, there was this (rather distracting) writing on the wall: “Piume al vento” (“Feathers in the Wind"). 🦩 Quite exotic and mysterious, indeed 🙃
- Veronica Repetti explaining variation in animacy, alienability and syntactic structure of concrete and abstract possession, this morning for the second @abstractionerc.bsky.social seminar. All seminars are recorded and posted on site.unibo.it/abstraction/...
- Filippo Domaneschi, director of the Lab of Language and Cognition presenting at @abstractionerc.bsky.social on the reclamation of slurs, discussing pragmatic and psycholinguistic aspects in relation to abstraction mechanisms
- 📣 November's Abstraction seminar is all set too! 🗓️ 19 November, 11:30 - 12.30 (CEST) 📍 Bologna (in presenza) or 💻 Microsoft Teams (link: shorturl.at/xW7mF ) 🎆 Join us, details in the figure! 👉 Save the date & spread the word! ✨ @abstractionerc.bsky.social
- I knew I hired well for @abstractionerc.bsky.social from day 1. But seeing @tomlamarra.bsky.social presenting this morning his phd progress in front of faculty and this evening to the city, taking part to phd storytelling (part of EU Researchers' night) was a clear confirmation. Brilliant, Tom!
- “What do I mean by simulating through language?” 🤔 At #GenerAzioni, @tomlamarra.bsky.social satisfied our curiosity in one of the most beautiful places in the city. Science is better when shared 💡 Thank you UniBo, and well done Tom! 👏 @abstractionerc.bsky.social
- Reposted by MariannaBologExcited to share that @abstractionerc.bsky.social has even reached #CambridgeUniversity and #TrinityCollege! Yesterday, at the #XPrag2025 conference, I presented how speakers maximize the informativeness of their descriptions in naturalistic conversations. Thanks for the insightful discussions!
- Reposted by MariannaBologGlad to be at #XPrag2025 at the #UniversityOfCambridge! Day 1 was packed with fascinating talks and exciting discussions!
- Reposted by MariannaBolog📣The chapter "𝗦𝗽𝗲𝗰𝗶𝗳𝗶𝗰𝗶𝘁𝘆: 𝗠𝗲𝘁𝗿𝗶𝗰 𝗮𝗻𝗱 𝗡𝗼𝗿𝗺𝘀" w/@mariannabolog.bsky.social is now online & forthcoming in the #ElsevierEncyclopedia of Language & Linguistics 🔍 Theoretical overview, quantification tools, and behavioral evidence on specificity. 👉 Read: urly.it/31c4nm @abstractionerc.bsky.social
- 📣 Abstraction seminars are back! 🗓️ 17 October, 10:00 (CEST) 📍 Bologna (in presenza) or 💻 Microsoft Teams (link: shorturl.at/RjrOU) 🎆 Join us for another seminar, details in the figure! 👉 Save the date & spread the word! ✨ @abstractionerc.bsky.social
- Apparently I searched multiple times for our consensus paper using this string: "what do we mean when we say Reilly" 😅 @reilly-coglab.com
- Prof Kristina Despot from the Institute of Croatian Language visiting the @abstractionerc.bsky.social group to establish collaborations on th use of figurative language and abstraction mechanims, and to brainstorm a fantastic ERC proposal :-)
- Excited to share that I contributed to an article just published in #Nature. My role was on the cognitive side, as part of a collaboration evolved from a fantastic #Dagstuhl seminar. Collective works like these are crucial windows into where our communities are going! www.nature.com/articles/s42...
- 📣 Abstraction seminars are back! 🗓️ 16 October, 15:00 (CEST) 📍 Bologna (in presenza) or 💻 Microsoft Teams (link: shorturl.at/0fw5a) 🎆 Join us for a thought-provoking seminar, details in the figure! 👉 Save the date & spread the word! ✨ @abstractionerc.bsky.social
- Thrilled to see our research featured on PsyPost 🚀 Trump vs. Harris, 2024 debate: sharp contrasts and surprising overlaps 👉 www.psypost.org/study-finds-...
- Reposted by MariannaBologNew Paper Alert 🚨🆕 "Specificity Effect in Concrete/Abstract Semantic Categorization Tasks" doi.org/10.1007/s103... We observed faster response times for specific words compared to general words in a semantic decision task, regardless of their level of concreteness.
- Reposted by MariannaBolog[This post could not be retrieved]
- Arrived back home in Bologna and found a nice poscard by @adeleloia.bsky.social and @caterinavillani.bsky.social from San Francisco (#cogsci-2025) 🥰 Apparenly Lombard street' iconic stairs evoked #wordladders and language-mediated abstraction :-)
- So, on the airplane i startes to watch "The White Lotus" (HBO) and the first minutes the resort manager explains to a trainee how to behave with the guests: "you don't wanna be too specific as a... as a presence, as an identity. You wanna be more generic." Abstraction terminology all the way down 🤪
- Kudos to you Giulia!
