Linguistics
25 articles-
Never Say Wolf
How taboo language turned the wolf into a monster. -
Talking Is Throwing Fictional Worlds at One Another
A linguist exposes the inner truths about language. -
This Simple Structure Unites All Human Languages
Language builds meaning through self-similarity. -
The Communication We Share with Apes
Hand gestures signal the emergence of human language. -
Cormac McCarthy Returns to the Kekulé Problem
Answers to questions and questions that cannot be answered.
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The Rise and Fall of the English Sentence
The surprising forces influencing the complexity of the language we speak and write.
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Why Doesn’t Ancient Fiction Talk About Feelings?
Literature’s evolution has reflected and spurred the growing complexity of society.
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Listening for Extraterrestrial Blah Blah
At the cosmic dinner party, intelligence is the loudest thing in the room.
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The Scientist Who Helped Amy Adams Talk to Aliens in “Arrival”
Earlier this year, when Amy Adams was in Montreal working on the sci-fi movie, Arrival, out today, she hung out with linguist Jessica Coon. In the film, Adams plays a linguist tasked by the United States government with deciphering a visiting aliens’ language. The film’s producers tapped Coon, an associate professor in the Department of Linguistics […] -
Is Multilingual Rap Eroding Canada’s French Language?
Recently a Quebec arts foundation required the Francophone rap group Dead Obies to give back an $18,000 grant they’d been awarded to record their newest album. The problem? A word count determined that the group had stirred too much English into their distinctive multilingual lyrics, falling short of the rule that 70 percent of the […] -
The Strange Persistence of First Languages
After my father died, my journey of rediscovery began with the Czech language. -
Why Red Means Red in Almost Every Language
The confounding consistency of color categories. -
5 Languages That Could Change the Way You See the World
How habits of speech can shape our thoughts.