Assistant professor at Yale Linguistics. Studying computational linguistics, cognitive science, and AI. He/him.https://bsky.app/profile/rtommccoy.bsky.socialhttps://bsky.app/profile/rtommccoy.bsky.social/post/3mui5edjka225🤖🧠NEW PAPER🧠🤖 (The result of an 8-year project!) LLMs seem very different from symbolic systems. Yet LLMs excel in symbolic domains (e.g., language/code/math). How do they do it? Our finding: LLM representations have implicit symbolic structure! Link in thread ⬇️ 1/n01 Sep 2026 19:21 +0000at://did:plc:bcsvlv7ubeagj5virdvatadd/app.bsky.feed.post/3mui5edjka225https://bsky.app/profile/rtommccoy.bsky.social/post/3mu3ckxvohk2hCome be my colleague! Yale's Wu Tsai Institute is hiring for a position in neurocognition. [contains quote post or other embedded content]27 Aug 2026 16:50 +0000at://did:plc:bcsvlv7ubeagj5virdvatadd/app.bsky.feed.post/3mu3ckxvohk2hhttps://bsky.app/profile/rtommccoy.bsky.social/post/3mtjhysuvfk2hSince many are starting grad school soon, let me re-share my One Big Tip™️ for research! Research involves many skills - collaborating, writing, presenting, etc. But many of these skills can be unified under a single overarching ability: theory of mind Blog post link in reply20 Aug 2026 14:39 +0000at://did:plc:bcsvlv7ubeagj5virdvatadd/app.bsky.feed.post/3mtjhysuvfk2hhttps://bsky.app/profile/rtommccoy.bsky.social/post/3mssu6qos7s2uSpeaking of poetry hidden in plain sight, everyone should read Anne Cutler's paper on the subject. Absolutely mind-blowing. (link and quote in reply ⬇️) [contains quote post or other embedded content]11 Aug 2026 14:46 +0000at://did:plc:bcsvlv7ubeagj5virdvatadd/app.bsky.feed.post/3mssu6qos7s2uhttps://bsky.app/profile/rtommccoy.bsky.social/post/3msqs5cwwts2sJust found an Easter egg on Wikipedia! On the page for double dactyls (a type of poem), there's a sentence that's formatted as a normal line of text, but it's actually a stanza of double dactyl poetry! And... THE PLOT THICKENS! 1/210 Aug 2026 19:04 +0000at://did:plc:bcsvlv7ubeagj5virdvatadd/app.bsky.feed.post/3msqs5cwwts2shttps://bsky.app/profile/rtommccoy.bsky.social/post/3mqncjoskx22wAmazon's "Track Package" button should really be called "Package Trackage"14 Jul 2026 22:56 +0000at://did:plc:bcsvlv7ubeagj5virdvatadd/app.bsky.feed.post/3mqncjoskx22whttps://bsky.app/profile/rtommccoy.bsky.social/post/3mpvxlcd4fc2hSeeking two ARR emergency reviewers for papers about steering. Please let me know if you'd be able to help out!05 Jul 2026 16:09 +0000at://did:plc:bcsvlv7ubeagj5virdvatadd/app.bsky.feed.post/3mpvxlcd4fc2hhttps://bsky.app/profile/rtommccoy.bsky.social/post/3mpw4rmdims2fToday at #acl2026nlp: Check out the panel on "Linguistics and NLP in the LLM Era", featuring Allyson Ettinger, @futrell.bsky.social, Zoey Liu, and me! 2:00 - 3:30 in Gaslamp C&D05 Jul 2026 17:42 +0000at://did:plc:bcsvlv7ubeagj5virdvatadd/app.bsky.feed.post/3mpw4rmdims2fhttps://bsky.app/profile/rtommccoy.bsky.social/post/3mpvxlcd4fc2hSeeking two ARR emergency reviewers for papers about steering. Please let me know if you'd be able to help out!05 Jul 2026 16:09 +0000at://did:plc:bcsvlv7ubeagj5virdvatadd/app.bsky.feed.post/3mpvxlcd4fc2hhttps://bsky.app/profile/rtommccoy.bsky.social/post/3mpvx2zt2as2jVery meta! [contains quote post or other embedded content]05 Jul 2026 16:00 +0000at://did:plc:bcsvlv7ubeagj5virdvatadd/app.bsky.feed.post/3mpvx2zt2as2jhttps://bsky.app/profile/rtommccoy.bsky.social/post/3mpr5mcfizc2lToday at CoNLL (paper links in thread): 1️⃣ 2:00 - 3:30 poster session (Harbor C): Zhenghao Herbert Zhou on what children's filler-gap input looks like! 2️⃣ 4:00 - 5:30 talk session (Harbor C): Claire Hobbs on how input statistics can support the learning of abstract syntactic rules!03 Jul 2026 18:14 +0000at://did:plc:bcsvlv7ubeagj5virdvatadd/app.bsky.feed.post/3mpr5mcfizc2lhttps://bsky.app/profile/rtommccoy.bsky.social/post/3mpqyvqz35s2eMy hotel room is on the fourth floor - putting the "linguistics" in "ACL"!03 Jul 2026 16:50 +0000at://did:plc:bcsvlv7ubeagj5virdvatadd/app.bsky.feed.post/3mpqyvqz35s2ehttps://bsky.app/profile/rtommccoy.bsky.social/post/3mpq4yq4dyk2sIn San Diego for #acl2026nlp! Excited to talk to people about connections between CogSci, Linguistics, and AI03 Jul 2026 08:30 +0000at://did:plc:bcsvlv7ubeagj5virdvatadd/app.bsky.feed.post/3mpq4yq4dyk2shttps://bsky.app/profile/rtommccoy.bsky.social/post/3mogoe2vudk2sI'm developing a new type of Transformer that has no normalization in its softmax. I call it undivided attention.16 Jun 2026 20:49 +0000at://did:plc:bcsvlv7ubeagj5virdvatadd/app.bsky.feed.post/3mogoe2vudk2shttps://bsky.app/profile/rtommccoy.bsky.social/post/3mnrs6lu4vk2wWrote today's NYT crossword - enjoy!08 Jun 2026 13:32 +0000at://did:plc:bcsvlv7ubeagj5virdvatadd/app.bsky.feed.post/3mnrs6lu4vk2whttps://bsky.app/profile/rtommccoy.bsky.social/post/3mmv53knii227This is a funny title once you realize that Jane Austen wrote exactly 6 books Other listicles I want to see: - "The 11 most enjoyable months" - "The 49 greatest US states" - "The 25 most useful letters of the alphabet"28 May 2026 03:59 +0000at://did:plc:bcsvlv7ubeagj5virdvatadd/app.bsky.feed.post/3mmv53knii227https://bsky.app/profile/rtommccoy.bsky.social/post/3mmh53shsfc2m🤖🧠NEW PAPER🧠🤖 Children & neural networks can learn syntax from linear strings of words. How do they do it? Our hypothesis: Word co-occurrence statistics provide cues to syntax! (I.e., a new type of bootstrapping to consider!) Paper: arxiv.org/abs/2605.20529 1/n22 May 2026 14:22 +0000at://did:plc:bcsvlv7ubeagj5virdvatadd/app.bsky.feed.post/3mmh53shsfc2mhttps://bsky.app/profile/rtommccoy.bsky.social/post/3mm55wb5yq22r🤖🧠 New commentary 🧠🤖 What role should large language models (LLMs) play in linguistics? I reflect on this question in a commentary now on arXiv: arxiv.org/abs/2605.10061 To appear in BBS as a commentary on @futrell.bsky.social and @kmahowald.bsky.social's excellent piece on LLMs & Linguistics!18 May 2026 15:11 +0000at://did:plc:bcsvlv7ubeagj5virdvatadd/app.bsky.feed.post/3mm55wb5yq22rhttps://bsky.app/profile/rtommccoy.bsky.social/post/3mhgrkt7bnk24Scientific American has a piece today on NACLO (the linguistics competition) by @dodecalemma.bsky.social! Features some quotes and puzzles by yours truly! [contains quote post or other embedded content]19 Mar 2026 19:50 +0000at://did:plc:bcsvlv7ubeagj5virdvatadd/app.bsky.feed.post/3mhgrkt7bnk24https://bsky.app/profile/rtommccoy.bsky.social/post/3mgiixovxws2hWhat's the endgame for people who mass-email conference organizers saying that they'd like to review papers? I've gotten several such requests in the past few months07 Mar 2026 18:56 +0000at://did:plc:bcsvlv7ubeagj5virdvatadd/app.bsky.feed.post/3mgiixovxws2hhttps://bsky.app/profile/rtommccoy.bsky.social/post/3meihexolys2wI could use an emergency reviewer for an ACL submission involving interpretability and syntax. Please DM me if you might be able to provide an emergency review before February 15!10 Feb 2026 07:38 +0000at://did:plc:bcsvlv7ubeagj5virdvatadd/app.bsky.feed.post/3meihexolys2whttps://bsky.app/profile/rtommccoy.bsky.social/post/3me544vacp22jI like the three consecutive dots in the word "hijinks". They're like an ellipsis telling you that the hijinks will continue.05 Feb 2026 19:17 +0000at://did:plc:bcsvlv7ubeagj5virdvatadd/app.bsky.feed.post/3me544vacp22jhttps://bsky.app/profile/rtommccoy.bsky.social/post/3mdnre6j5c22fI'm excited to be speaking at Carnegie Mellon today - it's where I got my start as a researcher (a summer job making a finite-state morphological analyzer for Kinyarwanda), and it's fun to be back! Say hi if you're around! https://www.lti.cs.cmu.edu/misc-pages/lti-colloquium.html30 Jan 2026 16:54 +0000at://did:plc:bcsvlv7ubeagj5virdvatadd/app.bsky.feed.post/3mdnre6j5c22fhttps://bsky.app/profile/rtommccoy.bsky.social/post/3maeoj2xjis26🚨Calling all fans of analyzing neural networks: There will be a workshop at Yale in the spring that you should come to! (May 11 to May 13) [contains quote post or other embedded content]19 Dec 2025 21:54 +0000at://did:plc:bcsvlv7ubeagj5virdvatadd/app.bsky.feed.post/3maeoj2xjis26