At the turn of the 20th century, a famous horse named Clever Hans toured Germany. The horse stunned crowds as his trainer demonstrated the animal's alleged ability to understand German, tell time and ...

Humans speak more than 7,000 languages today. As different as they all seem, researchers argue in a new review that they all stem from a single linguistic family tree that emerged before our species ...

The cerebellum, often called the little brain, plays a much bigger role in language processing than once believed. Located at ...

All human languages follow the same pattern: The most common word is used twice as often as the second most common word, three times as often as the third most common word, four times as often as the ...

Despite the vast diversity of human languages, specific grammatical patterns appear again and again. A new study reveals that around a third of the long-proposed "linguistic universals"—patterns ...

A new study suggests that language may rely less on complex grammar than previously thought. Every time we speak, we’re ...

Why do humans have language and other animals apparently don't? It's one of the most enduring questions in the study of mind and communication. Across all cultures, humans use richly expressive ...

Language has long been considered a uniquely human trait, with features that mark it out as distinct from the communication of all other species. However, research published in Science has uncovered ...

There are many famous examples of animals who seem to understand human language. But is there any real science behind them? When you purchase through links on our site, we may earn an affiliate ...

Anna Jon-And receives funding from from the Swedish Research Council and has received funding from Knut and Alice Wallenberg Foundation. Johan Lind has received funding from the Swedish Research ...