Category: apes

Artwork by Shang Long Yeo

355: The Bee Show (with Stephen Mann)

11 March 2019 / / Comments Off on 355: The Bee Show (with Stephen Mann)

Bees: not just great pollinators; great communicators.

The dance of the European honeybee is one of the most famous methods of communication in the animal kingdom, and shows features that are very similar to human language.

But are bees losing …

331: Koko

26 June 2018 / / 3 Comments

Koko the Gorilla has passed away.

Koko was claimed to have learned words through modified sign language, and even spoken English. But how do these claims stack up? What was she able to do, and what does this teach us …

273: Voice of the Apes

31 January 2017 / / Comments Off on 273: Voice of the Apes

Why don’t monkeys talk to us?

New research tells us that if our primate cousins don’t do language, it’s not because of their vocal tracts. Those appear to be speech-ready. So if the voice is good to go, what’s the …

265: Universal Grammar 2 (featuring Dan Everett and Lynne Murphy)

18 October 2016 / / 2 Comments

The biggest idea in linguistics is back on the table.

Is there such a thing as the Universal Grammar? Do you have to have a human brain to learn language, or is learning a language just like learning anything else? …

239: Animal Syntax

29 March 2016 / / Comments Off on 239: Animal Syntax

Other animals don’t have language like we do, but some of them might be getting awfully close.

A recent experiment claims that some birds use a form of syntax — that they combine their signals in a way that’s always …

237: Hinglish (featuring Sana Bharadwaj)

15 March 2016 / / Comments Off on 237: Hinglish (featuring Sana Bharadwaj)

Hinglish. It’s not Hindi. It’s not English. So what is it?

It’s a hybrid language spoken by about 350 million Indian people. And it’s getting bigger all the time. But what’s it like, and what function does it have for …

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