If you hear someone say "John and Mary kiss," you'd likely imagine a single symmetrical action. But hear them say "John and Mary kiss each other," and you may construe an entirely different picture—one in which the parties ...
Social Sciences
May 30, 2019
0
538
Eric DeGiuli, a physicist at École Normale Supérieure, has proposed that a human language grammar can be viewed as if it were a physical object, allowing theories such as those in statistical mechanics to explain how a ...
The great Laurel-or-Yanny debate of 2018 was so fun because it shined a light on the often-illusory nature of auditory perception. What you hear may not be the same as what somebody else hears. Or, perhaps what you hear could ...
Social Sciences
Jun 8, 2018
1
113
When and where did humans develop language? To find out, look deep inside caves, suggests an MIT professor.
Archaeology
Feb 21, 2018
9
1530
Researchers at UC San Francisco have shown how the Bengalese finch, a domesticated songbird, can learn to tweak its song in specific ways depending on context, which could shed light on how the human brain learns to apply ...
Plants & Animals
Nov 16, 2017
0
44
Read a few lines of Chaucer or Shakespeare and you'll get a sense of how the English language has changed during the past millennium. Linguists catalogue these changes and work to discern why they happened. Meanwhile, evolutionary ...
Social Sciences
Nov 1, 2017
1
235
An analysis of ancient DNA has revealed that Ancient Minoans and Mycenaens were genetically similar with both peoples descending from early Neolithic farmers.
Archaeology
Aug 2, 2017
5
7064
In a study that shatters a cornerstone concept in linguistics, an analysis of nearly two-thirds of the world's languages shows that humans tend to use the same sounds for common objects and ideas, no matter what language ...
Social Sciences
Sep 12, 2016
11
397
A team of researchers from the University of Cologne and the University of Würzburg have found in training studies that the distinction between known and unknown words can be trained and leads to more efficient reading. ...
Education
Apr 18, 2024
0
77
When babies learn to talk or birds learn to sing, the same principle applies: listen and then imitate. This is how the first babble becomes the first word or vocalization. Male zebra finch chicks initially memorize the song ...
Plants & Animals
Apr 17, 2024
0
1
