The fossilised bones of our ancestors remain silent. So, how can we possibly imagine what our earliest languages sounded like ...

Cognitive and computer scientists at the University of Toronto, Universitat Pompeu Fabra and the Catalan Institution for Research and Advanced Studies have found child language development and the ...

Wild chimpanzees alter the meaning of single calls when embedding them into diverse call combinations, mirroring linguistic operations in human language. Human language, however, allows an infinite ...

A photo by Seán Roberts on a recent hike near his house in Wales, which prompted him to recall the conclusion of a research paper he co-authored on the impact of environment on language. "Ultimately, ...

Many linguists have proposed that languages spoken by numerous non-native speakers tend to have simpler grammars. A new study challenges this claim. By analyzing a global sample of 1,314 languages, ...

This research was supported by funding from: The National Center for Competence in Research "Evolving Language" (SNSF agreement number 51NF40_180888) Swiss National Science Foundation (project grant ...

Linguist Anne Curzan delights in the nuances and evolution of language. She says we should embrace they/them as singular pronouns---which have actually been used for hundreds of years. Anne Curzan is ...

Breakthroughs, discoveries, and DIY tips sent six days a week. Terms of Service and Privacy Policy. It’s relatively easy to trace a written linguistic history ...

Language is one of the few faculties that still seems to be uniquely human. Other animals, like chimpanzees and songbirds, have developed elaborate communication systems, but none appears to convey ...

For more than 150 years ago, the assumption that language is a singular event has hampered progress in explaining its evolution. Another obstacle was the failure to recognize that certain social ...