After applying advanced evolutionary modeling techniques, the researchers report that about one-third of the long-proposed “linguistic universals”—patterns believed to exist across all languages—show ...

Humpback whale song is a striking example of a complex, culturally transmitted behavior, but up to now, there was little evidence it has language-like structure. Human language, which is also ...

Patrick van Eyck (SFS ’28) intended to study Russian or Persian at Georgetown University. After three semesters of classes, he instead earned proficiency in Spanish, which he learned attending middle ...

In the early 20th century linguist Benjamin Lee Whorf thrilled his contemporaries by noting that the Hopi language, spoken by Native American people in what is now Arizona, had no words or grammatical ...