Syntax

The Ghost in the Object: Spain’s Personal ‘a’

Ever wonder why Spanish speakers say "Veo a María" but "Veo la mesa"? This grammatical quirk, known as the "personal…

4 months ago

Leísmo, Laísmo, Loísmo: Spain’s Pronoun War

In the world of Spanish grammar, a quiet war rages on. The combatants are three tiny pronouns—le, la, and lo—and…

4 months ago

The Forest for the Trees: Inside Linguistic Treebanks

Ever wonder how your phone understands complex questions? Behind every major advance in AI and search technology is a massive,…

4 months ago

Can a Language Have No Adjectives?

How would you describe a "big red ball" in a language with no words for "big" or "red"? Many languages…

4 months ago

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…

4 months ago

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…

4 months ago

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…

4 months ago

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…

4 months ago

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…

4 months ago

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…

4 months ago

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