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 ...

Language evolution encompasses the origin, diversification and change of human languages over time. It integrates comparative and computational methods—such as phylogenetic modelling, phylogeography ...

Scientists wanted to know why the chatter of Alston’s singing mice sounds so much like human conversation. What they found ...

From "yeet" to "social distancing," new words and phrases constantly emerge and evolve in American English. But how do these neologisms—newly coined terms—gain acceptance and become part of mainstream ...

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, ...

The human environment is a very social one. Family, friends, colleagues, strangers – they all provide a continuous stream of information that we need to track and make sense of. Who is dating whom?

Researchers from Fudan, Harvard, and Stony Brook University used AI and statistical analysis to study the evolution of 22 languages, uncovering a universal statistical structure underlying their ...

Each year, new words find their way into the general American English lexicon. Even if we try to avoid them, these new slang terms are spreading and being used all around us.Related video above: RETRO ...

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 ...