A grammatical problem that has defeated Sanskrit scholars since the 5th century BC has finally been solved by an Indian Ph.D. student at the University of Cambridge. Rishi Rajpopat made the breakthrough by decoding a rule ...
Archaeology
Dec 14, 2022
5
9130
An ongoing debate among scientists, on why chimpanzees and other nonhuman primates cannot speak or sing like humans, has focused mainly on evolutionary changes in human brain development. Attention has now expanded to anatomical ...
Plants & Animals
Aug 11, 2022
0
113
How we speak matters to animals. Horses, pigs and wild horses can distinguish between negative and positive sounds from their fellow species and near relatives, as well as from human speech, according to new research in behavioral ...
Plants & Animals
May 24, 2022
0
809
Dog brains can detect speech and show different activity patterns to familiar and unfamiliar languages, according to a new brain imaging study by researchers from the Department of Ethology, Eötvös Loránd University (Hungary). ...
Plants & Animals
Jan 6, 2022
1
2341
Most people around the world agree that the made-up word 'bouba' sounds round in shape, and the made-up word 'kiki' sounds pointy—a discovery that may help to explain how spoken languages develop, according to a new study.
Social Sciences
Nov 16, 2021
1
241
Hoover the "talking seal" famously imitated human speech. But can baby seals already adapt their voices to sounds? Researchers from the Max Planck Institute for Psycholinguistics in Nijmegen, the Free University of Brussels ...
Plants & Animals
Nov 2, 2021
0
92
Researchers can predict what syllables a bird will sing—and when it will sing them—by reading electrical signals in its brain, reports a new study from the University of California San Diego.
Molecular & Computational biology
Sep 23, 2021
1
182
Whistling while you work isn't just a distraction for some people. More than 80 cultures employ a whistled form of their native language to communicate over long distances. A multidisciplinary team of scientists believe that ...
Other
Sep 21, 2021
0
1276
Some songbirds learn to sing by listening to other birds. Some other animals can learn to copy sounds. But what does that tell us about human speech? Sonja Vernes from the Max Planck Institute for Psycholinguistics in Nijmegen ...
Plants & Animals
Sep 6, 2021
0
194
Bat conversations might be light on substance, according to researchers from the University of Cincinnati.
Plants & Animals
Jul 16, 2021
0
9
