Made-up sounds convey meaning across cultures.
Scientific American looks at babble and finds it comprehensible, thanks to language researchers who have learned that nonsense sounds imply the same concepts to listeners […]
linguistics
How forensic linguistics reveals who wrote what. (Or, why JK Rowling and Alexander Hamilton can’t stay anonymous.)
National Geographic goes (or went – this article is from 2013) into the science of forensic linguists, using computers to analyze things like word choice […]
An algorithm to sniff out fake news, linguistically.
The Conversation looks at a way that Fatemeh Torabi Asr, a computational linguistics researcher at Simon Fraser University, has devised to use computers to instantaneously […]
Farming gave our languages “f” and “v” – because it altered the way we bite.
Science News has a fricative breakthrough – biting off a bit of linguistic evolution that took place when we started growing our own food rather […]
Whistled language is right-brained.
German researchers, as disclosed in Science Daily, have found a singularly creative language – a form of whistled Turkish that, unlike any other language on […]
Polynesian polynomials? Islanders counted in binary.
Nature has more on the math whizzes of the South Pacific: Binary arithmetic, the basis of all virtually digital computation today, is usually said to […]
New language being born in Australia
I heard this on NPR, but it’s been doing the rounds lately – as all happy news should. Rather than mourning the death of yet […]
SONG: Spirit of the Words
SONG: “Spirit of the Words” [Download] (To download: double right-click & “Save As”) ARTIST: grant. SOURCE: Based on Computer program roots out ancestors of modern […]
“Bituqen” is Proto-Polynesian for “star.” A computer figured that out.
Nature reports on the algorithm researchers have devised to find (or recreate) the ancestors of modern languages: Statistician Alexandre Bouchard-Côté of the University of British […]
Reading really is fundamental. Neurologically. (Or: A Good Book Is Universal.)
Nature reveals that no matter what language you’re reading, your brain lights up the same way when you do it: Previous studies have suggested that […]
The oldest un-translated language is getting clearer.
BBC reports on the linguists who have started puzzling out how to read and write in proto-Elamite: “I think we are finally on the point […]
Demotic dictionary, for ancient expressions.
New York Times reviews a new dictionary of a really old language: Demotic was one of the three scripts inscribed on the Rosetta stone, along […]
Our languages are Turkish. Virally so.
The BBC reveals that English (and just about every other European language) descends from an ancestor that was not Russian, as was the popular belief, […]
Parrot names.
Wired brings us another step closer to talking with the animals, thanks to research showing that mama parrots give their babies names: Before a green-rumped […]
SONG: The Shape of Your Words
SONG: “The Shape of Your Words.” [Download] (To download: double right-click & “Save As”) ARTIST: grant. SOURCE: Based on “Kiki or bouba? In search of […]