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 ...

Humans are the only species on Earth known to use language. They do this by combining sounds into words and words into sentences, creating infinite meanings. This process is based on linguistic rules ...

In 2001 scientists studying human language made a breakthrough: by looking at the DNA of a family with a rare speech disability, they found that a mutation in a single gene called FOXP2 were ...

Ancient DNA reveals Indo-European speakers came from a region where multiple populations mixed and migrated over time. Geralt via Wikimedia Commons under CC0 New research analyzing ancient DNA may ...

Imagine a world where speech and communication didn’t exist. Daily life would probably be much, much more difficult. This is the value of language. Without it, no higher discussion or discovery would ...

Wild chimpanzees alter the meaning of single calls when embedding them into diverse call combinations, mirroring linguistic operations in human language. Human language, however, allows an infinite ...

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 ...