Language feels simple when we use it. We talk, we text, we listen, and words seem to appear naturally from thought. But the study of linguistics tells a more complicated story, one where language ...

Imagine it’s the year 2500, and scientists at some NASA-like space agency are waiting to hear back from the first colonists to ever travel to another planetary system. The spaceship took off 200 years ...

All human societies use language. As far as we know, they always have. Over the course of history, humans have written nearly 130 million books, containing over half a trillion words. The average ...

When most people meet a linguist, they wonder how many languages they speak. While one sense of the term linguist is someone proficient in a multitude of languages, most people who study linguistics ...

A crucial problem facing historical linguists is how to account for the direction of certain changes. The direction of change taken by two constructions, Object Raising and Object Deletion, between ...

The study of linguistic cognition takes you into the heart of the mind. Cognitive linguists examine the language that we use to tell stories, describe feelings and sensory experiences, collaborate ...

In October 2012, Hurricane Sandy approached the eastern coast of the United States. At the same time, the English language was undergoing a small earthquake of its own. Just months before, the word ...

Michael Dunn does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organization that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their ...