Dolphins name one another, and they click and whistle about their lives or the dangers posed by sharks and humans. They also pass on useful bits of know-how from mother to child, such as how to catch ...

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 ...

Lecturer in Linguistics and Language Education, Universitas Kristen Duta Wacana If there is one most distinguishing feature that makes us human, it would be our ability to enunciate words, aka ...

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 ...

This article is part of our Summer reads series. Visit the full collection for book lists, guest essays and more seasonal distractions. IN 1786 WILLIAM JONES, a British civil servant in Calcutta, told ...

Every boring email we type or moment of small talk we have at the grocery store is part of a historic and mysterious legacy: the creation of language. The kind of languages we speak — from Arabic to ...

Languages, like genes, evolve by a process of descent with modification. This striking similarity between biological and linguistic evolution allows us to apply phylogenetic methods to explore how ...

ALTHOUGH the origin of languages is due, doubtless, to the gradual variation, selection, and combination of a few primary sounds, partly emotional, partly imitative; yet the process differs ...

A linguistics analysis shows that language arrived in North America in multiple waves from Siberia. The Americas have half of the world’s linguistic diversity, despite a much shorter human history.

IN A CHURCH hewn out of a mountainside, just over a thousand years or so ago, a monk was struggling with a passage in Latin. He did what others like him have done, writing the tricky bits in his own ...

Rosina Lozano, associate professor of history, researches Latino history with a focus on Mexican American history, the American West, migration and immigration, and comparative studies in race and ...