Does climate affect language?
A linguist has found that tone languages appear in regions of high humidity. But the idea that human speech adapts to the environment is not a popular one. So what’s going on?
Daniel Midgley speaks with …
Category: language evolution (page 2 of 4)
We get questions from our many listeners. And we have answers.
Do the languages of the world form a continuous chain? And isn’t it possible that language influences thought by the words we use?
Linguist Daniel Midgley tells all on …
Boom, crash, and beep.
These words are onomatopoeic; they sound kind of like the thing they describe. Onomatopoeia has contributed to our vocabulary in some unexpected ways, and may have even helped get language started in …
Linguists are discovering signed languages in unexpected places.
Created where there are high rates of congenital deafness, these village sign languages are challenging traditional ideas about how humans do language. What can they teach us about language and the mind?…
How did language begin? What was it like long ago?
Did we come up with meaningful utterances first and then break them down, or did we build language from the words up? Did other pre-humans have language?
Researchers are working …
Why do languages have the grammar they do?
For some Australian languages, grammar is shaped by the stuff you’re not supposed to say. Linguist Joe Blythe is finding out about the evolution of language, and challenging one of the biggest …
Pointing at stuff is something every human understands.
A new study shows that for babies, pointing bridges the gap between communication and language. Could pointing have kickstarted language? And do any other animals do it?
Linguist Daniel Midgley gets to …
Humanity, we may have a problem.
Computers are getting good at imitating us. How good? Good enough to fool us into accepting their scientific papers and their robocalls. Might they have already passed the Turing Test? And what are bots …
What’s the most common word in the world?
A research team finds that huh? is shared by languages around the globe. But is it really a word? What are words like?
We’re also talking to Simon Tam of the Slants, …
Yes and no.
You use these words all the time, but how often do you think about them? They’re not nouns, they’re not verbs, so what are they? Why do we nod our heads yes and shake our heads …
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