psycholinguistics

How the Deaf Read Lips: A Feat of Phonetics

Contrary to Hollywood depictions, lip-reading is less like a superpower and more like a high-stakes puzzle with most of the…

8 hours ago

The Logic of Back-Formation: From ‘Editor’ to ‘Edit’

Which came first: the editor or the edit? The answer reveals a fascinating linguistic process called back-formation, where we reverse-engineer…

8 hours ago

The Grammar of a Menu: How Wording Whets the Appetite

Ever wonder why "Grandma's slow-cooked apple pie" sounds more appealing than just "apple pie"? The secret lies in menu engineering,…

8 hours ago

The Sound of a Valley: Dialect Leveling in Isolation

Ever wonder why people in isolated places like an Appalachian hollow develop such a unique way of speaking? It's not…

8 hours ago

The Speech of Sleep: Is Somniloquy a Language?

Ever wondered if the mumbles and groans of a sleep-talker are just random noise? We take a linguistic deep dive…

8 hours ago

Color as a Grammatical Marker

In most languages, color is purely descriptive, but in some systems, it plays a grammatical role. This post explores how…

8 hours ago

Your Brain’s Internal Fact-Checker

When you hear a false statement like "The sky is green", your brain reacts in milliseconds, long before you consciously…

8 hours ago

Error Cascades: One Typo, System-Wide Failure

How can a single misplaced comma bring down an entire software system? This piece explores "error cascades" from a linguistic…

7 days ago

Kitchen-Table Creole: A Child’s Private Language

Ever heard a bilingual child say something that isn't quite one language or the other? This isn't a mistake, but…

7 days ago

The Brain’s Glue: Solving the Binding Problem

When you hear 'the blue ball', how does your brain know 'blue' applies to 'ball' and not something else? This…

7 days ago

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