Language is one of the few faculties that still seems to be uniquely human. Other animals, like chimpanzees and songbirds, have developed elaborate communication systems, but none appears to convey ...

Human languages are known to have grown and changed considerably over the course of history, often reflecting technological, cultural, and societal shifts. Studying the evolution of languages can thus ...

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 ...

A superb fairy-wren calls to a Horsfield's bronze-cuckoo. Brood parasites like cuckoos lay eggs in other birds' nests and leave them behind for the host birds to raise. David Ongley / Cornell Lab of ...

Language has long been considered a uniquely human trait, with features that mark it out as distinct from the communication of all other species. However, research published in Science has uncovered ...

A growing ecosystem of open-access platforms is making Chinese-language books, academic research, and cultural archives more widely available online. Resources like Internet Archive, Project Gutenberg ...

She is an editor of the Observatory’s Guide to Linguistics and Guide to Language Arts & Writing. Her interests span science communication, discourse analysis, pragmatics, and literacy. How often do we ...

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 ...