Why do humans have language and other animals apparently don't? It's one of the most enduring questions in the study of mind and communication. Across all cultures, humans use richly expressive ...

Humans are the only species known to use fully symbolic language: a system capable of expressing abstract ideas, imaginary ...

Language is one of the few faculties that still seems to be uniquely human. Other animals, like chimpanzees and songbirds, have developed elaborate communication systems, but none appears to convey ...

Wild chimpanzees alter the meaning of single calls when embedding them into diverse call combinations, mirroring linguistic operations in human language. Human language, however, allows an infinite ...

A tiny set of ancient genetic “switches” may have played a surprisingly large role in making human language possible.

My son is a wizard. He walks into the kitchen, looks at me and utters the magic words: “Can I have a cheese and tomato sandwich, please?” A few minutes later, just such a snack appears in front of him ...

Scientists have long considered the complexity of language to be an obvious separation between humans and all other life forms on Earth. New research, however, suggests our linguistic abilities might ...

Why do humans have language and other animals apparently don’t? It’s one of the most enduring questions in the study of mind and communication. Across all cultures, humans use richly expressive ...