These days, if someone called you a “nervous nimrod” you’d probably be upset, but that wasn’t always the case. An error has occurred. Please try again. With a ...

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 ...

The words "mama", "cookie", and "paper" might seem innocuous and common enough, but they share a linguistic quality that's statistically rare within the world's collective lexicon: They all contain a ...

What shape do you see when you hear “bouba”? What about “kiki”? It turns out that nonsense words that evoke certain shapes have something to say about the origins of language. If you're enjoying this ...

Few animals appear to be able to communicate with a range as complex and intricate as humans. Those language skills may exist in a limited capacity in our nearest evolutionary neighbors, the great ...

Lake Superior State University presented its 50th annual Banished Words list, an idea that began at a New Year’s Eve party in ...

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 ...