The Invisible Plural: Zero-Marking in Language
One sheep, two sheep. One fish, two fish. Ever wonder why some English nouns refuse to add an '-s' for their plural? This linguistic quirk, known as zero-marking, isn't a…
Unlocking the Universe of Languages
One sheep, two sheep. One fish, two fish. Ever wonder why some English nouns refuse to add an '-s' for their plural? This linguistic quirk, known as zero-marking, isn't a…
While most languages belong to vast family trees, some stand utterly alone. These linguistic isolates, like the mysterious Basque of Spain or the endangered Ainu of Japan, have no known…
When two AI systems are tasked to work together, they often develop their own optimized, private language to communicate more efficiently—a language we can't understand. This phenomenon of emergent AI…
In the high-stakes environment of the International Space Station, flawless communication has led to the spontaneous development of "Runglish," a functional pidgin blending Russian grammar with English technical vocabulary. This…
Ever wonder how new words like 'rizz' make it into the dictionary or why grammar rules seem to change over time? The answer lies in corpus linguistics, a fascinating field…
The Hebrew Bible was not written in a single moment, and the language itself is a key to unlocking its layered history. By exploring the field of Biblical philology, we…
Over several millennia, a wave of migration spread a single language family from West-Central Africa to cover nearly the entire southern half of the continent. This was the Bantu Expansion,…
Why can we describe a shade of blue with a dozen words, but struggle to articulate the scent of rain? Our language seems to fail us when it comes to…
For every new word that enters the dictionary, thousands of others fall into disuse and disappear into the graveyard of language. This linguistic culling isn't decided by a single authority,…
How did one language family colonize a third of the planet, from Madagascar to Easter Island? The answer lies in a revolutionary piece of technology—the outrigger canoe—and an even more…
Human speech is a miracle of evolution, but it comes at a steep price. Our ability to form a rich variety of sounds is thanks to a descended larynx, a…