In 1884 the anthropologist Franz Boas returned from Baffin Island with a discovery that would kick off decades of linguistic wrangling: by his count, the local Inuit language had four words for snow, ...

Remember the famous 30 million word gap in language exposure between the children of professional families and those on welfare, and all its attendant problems in reading and attention? How could ...

Language patterns could be predicted by simple laws of physics, a new study has found. A theory using ideas from physics predicts where and how dialects occur. Language patterns could be predicted by ...

Why, and when, do we learn to speak the way that we do? New research on African-American children presents an unexpected finding: language use can go on a roller-coaster ride during childhood as kids ...

Viorica Marian knows the power of multilingualism firsthand. She grew up bilingual in Moldova—a small country nestled between Ukraine and Romania that was formerly a part of the Soviet Union—speaking ...

Early on in the evolution of artificial intelligence, researchers realized the power and possibility of machines that are able to understand the meaning and nuances of human speech. Conversation and ...

BARCELONA, Spain ― Distorted language structure may help clinicians diagnose mild depression and distinguish between the disorder and "normal sadness," new research suggests. A study of 201 ...