Do birdsong and human speech share biological roots?
Do songbirds and humans have common biological hardwiring that shapes how they produce and perceive sounds?
Plants & Animals
Nov 22, 2017
3
262
News tagged with human languages
The 'myth' of language history: Languages do not share a single history
The 'myth' of language history: languages do not share a single history but different components evolve along different trajectories and at different rates.A large-scale study of Pacific languages reveals that forces driving ...
Social Sciences
Oct 2, 2017
4
1586
Humans learn complex grammatical patterns even in extremely challenging circumstances
A large-scale study of languages shows that the grammar of creoles - which emerged in multilingual situations of extreme social upheaval, like colonial slaveries - are composed from the grammars of other languages that preceded ...
Social Sciences
Sep 5, 2017
0
259
Cognitive scientist calls for integration in language sciences
In a new opinion piece in a major publication, Morten Christiansen, professor of psychology, describes how the study of language has fragmented into many highly-specialized areas of study that tend not to talk to each other. ...
Social Sciences
Aug 1, 2017
0
1256
Populations along the eastern Mediterranean coast share a genetic heritage that transcends nationality
The Mediterranean Sea has represented one of the most important crossroads in human history, acting both as a barrier and a bridge between three continents and multiple human groups characterized by different genetic and ...
Archaeology
May 17, 2017
2
513
System enables people to correct robot mistakes using brain signals
For robots to do what we want, they need to understand us. Too often, this means having to meet them halfway: teaching them the intricacies of human language, for example, or giving them explicit commands for very specific ...
Robotics
Mar 7, 2017
0
23
Teaching computers to understand human languages
Researchers at the University of Liverpool have developed a set of algorithms that will help teach computers to process and understand human languages.
Computer Sciences
May 6, 2016
0
181
Vocal sequences of monkeys and humans follow a common pattern
A new study of geladas – a species of monkey living in the highlands of Ethiopia – has revealed that their long and complex vocal sequences follow a pattern seen in many human languages: the longer the overall sequence, ...
Plants & Animals
Apr 18, 2016
0
615
Larger set of translations may shed light on an idiosyncratic Amazonian language
A heated controversy in linguistics in recent years involves a few hundred people deep in the Amazonian rainforest: the Pirahã tribe of Northern Brazil. Their idiosyncratic language has raised questions about how widely ...
Social Sciences
Mar 10, 2016
4
774
Syntax is not unique to human language
Human communication is powered by rules for combining words to generate novel meanings. Such syntactical rules have long been assumed to be unique humans. A new study, published in Nature Communications, show that Japanese ...
Plants & Animals
Mar 8, 2016
6
3373
