Birdsong Syntax: Are Birds Using Grammar?
We often dismiss birdsong as simple alarms or mating calls, but what if birds are forming simple sentences? Groundbreaking research on species like the Japanese Tit reveals they combine calls…
Syntax
The Hidden Grammar of Emojis
Far from being simple digital decorations, emojis follow a complex and unwritten grammar that dictates their meaning. The order of emojis can tell a story, their context can completely change…
Parsing the Unparsable: The Dhaasanac Language
Journey to the Omo Valley to meet the Dhaasanac people of Ethiopia, whose language defies easy categorization. Instead of marking nouns for their role, Dhaasanac bundles subject and object markers…
The Syntax of Sheet Music
We often speak of music as a "universal language", but beyond the metaphor lies a tangible, non-verbal writing system of incredible power. This article deciphers sheet music as a linguistic…
The Horse Raced Past the Barn Fell: Parsing Garden-Path Sentences
Read this sentence: "The horse raced past the barn fell." If you had to read it twice, your brain just fell for a classic "garden-path" sentence, a grammatical illusion designed…
Go Buy Bring Come: The Logic of Serial Verbs
In languages from Thailand to Ghana, you can say "go buy bring the book" and be perfectly grammatical. This fascinating feature, known as a serial verb construction, strings verbs together…
When Did We Start Asking Questions?
Questions represent a monumental leap in human evolution, demanding a complex toolkit of intonation, syntax, and abstract words like "why." Far more than a linguistic trick, asking a question requires…
The Grammar of Swearing
Far from being linguistic sludge, swearing is a surprisingly sophisticated system that follows its own intricate grammatical rules. Profanity is processed uniquely by our brains in the ancient, emotional limbic…
Why You Can’t Just “Count” in Thai
Ever tried to say "two dogs" in Thai and been corrected? That's because you can't just count nouns; you need a special "measure word" called a classifier. This post dives…
The Silent Language of 64 Squares: Deconstructing the Grammar of Chess Notation
Beyond the silent battle of wits on the board, chess has its own powerful language. This post deconstructs Algebraic Notation, revealing a complete linguistic system with its own vocabulary (K,…
A Heckin’ Good Syntax: The Surprisingly Complex Grammar of DoggoLingo
Beyond the cute misspellings of "doggo" and "pupper," the internet phenomenon of DoggoLingo has developed its own surprisingly consistent grammatical rules. From its distinct morphology to its unique syntax, this…
The “If” That Changes Everything: How Counterfactuals and the Subjunctive Mood Built Science
What if the ability to say "if" was a prerequisite for science itself? This post explores how counterfactuals and the subjunctive mood—the grammar of hypothetical worlds—provided the cognitive toolkit necessary…
Building Languages for Machines: The Linguistic Principles Behind Programming Languages
We think of Python or Java as "computer languages," but they are fundamentally constructed languages built on core linguistic principles. This article explores the hidden grammar of code, from the…
The Agent and the Patient: How Transitivity Shapes Blame and Responsibility
Who broke the window? The choice between saying "The boy broke the window" and "The window broke" is more than just grammar. This linguistic feature, known as transitivity, profoundly shapes…
The Future Tense That Never Was: How Languages Without a Future Tense Shape Planning and Perception
Did you know that many languages, like Mandarin Chinese and Finnish, get by perfectly well without a grammatical future tense? This seemingly minor linguistic detail may have a profound impact…
I Heard, I Saw, I Inferred: The Linguistic World of Evidentials
In English, we use optional phrases like "I heard" or "I saw" to show how we know something. But in many languages, this information is mandatory and baked directly into…
The World in a Different Order: How Subject-Object-Verb Languages Challenge Our Linguistic Assumptions
For most English speakers, "The dog chased the cat" is the only logical way to say it. But what if we told you that for over half the world, the…
The Language That Broke the Rules: Daniel Everett and the Pirahã Controversy
Deep in the Amazon, linguist Daniel Everett encountered a language that seemed to break all the rules. His claim that Pirahã lacks recursion—a feature once thought to be the bedrock…
The Grammar of Silence: Why Sign Languages Are as Complex as Spoken Languages
Far from being simple pantomime, sign languages are a testament to the human brain's linguistic ingenuity. These visual-gestural systems possess all the grammatical complexity of spoken languages, from their unique…
Language Stories: “Up With This, I Will Not Put”
In the annals of linguistic anecdotes, few stories are as enduring, entertaining or illuminating as the exchange attributed to the irrepressible Sir Winston Churchill about...