Language evolution encompasses the origin, diversification and change of human languages over time. It integrates comparative and computational methods—such as phylogenetic modelling, phylogeography ...

As the parent of two teenagers, being a linguist did not adequately prepare me for the strange things that sometimes come out of their mouths. For example, "like" is omnipresent, "hecka" punctuates ...

Scholars have created a new global repository of linguistic data. The project is designed to facilitate new insights into the evolution of words and sounds of the languages spoken across the world ...

Reconstructing the spatial evolution of languages can deepen our understanding of the demic diffusion and cultural spread. However, the phylogeographic approach that is frequently used to infer ...

Throughout human history, there have been many instances where two populations came into contact—especially in the past few thousand years because of large-scale migrations as a consequence of ...

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 ...

Is wittiness a kind of fitness? Ljiljana Progovac explores the idea that quick-wittedness—using and combining words in a clever and funny way—has been actively selected for in humans from the dawn of ...

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Is it true that many languages in the world use words similar to “mama” and “papa” for “mother” and “father”? If a language uses only one word for both “arm” and “hand”, does it also use only one word ...