Tracing Our Linguistic Roots Through DNA For millennia, dialects spread across Europe and the Caucasus, creating what we now ...

Humans are the only species known to use fully symbolic language: a system capable of expressing abstract ideas, imaginary worlds and endless combinations of meaning. But how did we get there? The ...

Humans are the only species on Earth known to use language. They do this by combining sounds into words and words into sentences, creating infinite meanings. This process is based on linguistic rules ...

For more than 150 years ago, the assumption that language is a singular event has hampered progress in explaining its evolution. Another obstacle was the failure to recognize that certain social ...

In 2001 scientists studying human language made a breakthrough: by looking at the DNA of a family with a rare speech disability, they found that a mutation in a single gene called FOXP2 were ...

The languages in the Indo-European family are spoken by almost half of the world’s population. This group includes a huge number of languages, ranging from English and Spanish to Russian, Kurdish and ...

A linguistics analysis shows that language arrived in North America in multiple waves from Siberia. The Americas have half of the world’s linguistic diversity, despite a much shorter human history.

Are language and mythology linked? Yes, according to French politician Dominique de Villepin (b. 1953): "If we speak our adversary's language, we feed their propaganda and mythology." But can we speak ...

Chimpanzees Asanti and Akuna vocalising. A new study shows that wild chimpanzees use a variety of call combinations to expand messaging. Humans are the only species on earth known to use language.