Breakthroughs, discoveries, and DIY tips sent every weekday. Terms of Service and Privacy Policy. It’s relatively easy to trace a written linguistic history—there ...

Why did humans start speaking? Scientists suggest genetics played a big role – and they say the evolution of this singular ability was key to our survival. A new study links a particular gene to the ...

A study on Indo-European languages, using direct linguistic data, reconciles the two dominant hypotheses of where and how ...

A computational analysis has highlighted the poorly understood relationships and elusive histories of modern sign languages worldwide, revealing two major sign language families shaped by geopolitical ...

The global distribution of grammatical complexity (fusion). Closely related languages resemble each other's scores. Credit: Science Advances (2023). DOI: 10.1126/sciadv.adf7704 Languages around the ...

A new study links a particular gene and a protein variant found only in humans to the origins of spoken language. Researchers used CRISPR gene editing to replace the NOVA1 protein found in mice with ...

Example of recurrent change. Still images from video dictionary entries that illustrate the phonological pattern of thumb extension. Both signs are produced with four fingers extended, but the sign ...

FILE - Casts of skulls are seen inside an exhibit of early human species inside the Smithsonian Hall of Human Origins, Thursday, July 20, 2023, at the Smithsonian Museum of Natural History, in ...