Intonation is an integral part of communication for all speakers. But can sign languages have intonation? A new study shows that signers use their faces to create intonational ‘melodies’ just as ...

A spoken language is more than just words and sounds. Speakers use changes in pitch and rhythm, known as prosody, to provide emphasis, show emotion, and otherwise add meaning to what they say. In a ...

16 mothers and 16 fathers were recorded in dyadic sessions with their children (8 5-years-olds, 8 2-year-olds; half boys, half girls) and with an adult. The noise-free questions and declaratives were ...

Raúl Sánchez and Dan Bullock are linguistics and communications specialists and NYU professors. They say improving vocalics, aka nonverbal aspects of speech, is key for effective communication. Vocal ...

All products featured on WIRED are independently selected by our editors. However, we may receive compensation from retailers and/or from purchases of products through these links. It’s not hard to ...

This paper identifies modern Yiddish intonation patterns for three different semantic structures and contends that they derive from modern (Ashkenazic) talmudic chant. An examination of the ...

When we read, it’s very easy for us to tell individual words apart: In written language, spaces are used to separate words from one another. But this is not the case with spoken language – speech is a ...