The structure of languages may reveal more about their roots than their vocabularies do, according to a new biologically inspired linguistic technique. Studying languages can be extremely useful to ...

Humpback whale song is a striking example of a complex, culturally transmitted behavior, but up to now, there was little evidence it has language-like structure. Human language, which is also ...

The mystery of the origin of human language has captivated scientists for centuries, and it remains one of the most intriguing problems in the field. How did humans manage to progress from simple ...

In the early 20th century linguist Benjamin Lee Whorf thrilled his contemporaries by noting that the Hopi language, spoken by Native American people in what is now Arizona, had no words or grammatical ...

LANGUAGE structure may reveal more about human origins than vocabulary. Traditional techniques for studying the history of languages have relied on evolutionary trees based on word-type, but the speed ...