In a quest to understand complex speech, scientists inserted what's been dubbed a human “language gene” into mice. Remarkably ...

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 ...

The animals’ complex songs share structural patterns with human language that may make them easier for whales to learn, a new study suggests. By Emily Anthes The English language is full of wonderful ...

Language has long been considered a uniquely human trait, with features that mark it out as distinct from the communication of all other species. However, research published in Science has uncovered ...

Human languages are complex phenomena. Around 7,000 languages are spoken worldwide, some with only a handful of remaining speakers, while others, such as Chinese, English, Spanish and Hindi, are ...

A new study suggests that the NOVA1 gene may have been a key player in the evolution of human language. By Carl Zimmer Scientists have long struggled to understand how human language evolved. Words ...

The study of rhythmic structures, which appears in the journal Current Biology, analyzed the drumming patterns of chimps from the rainforests in East and West Africa. The trees in those rainforests ...

Humans' unique language capacity was present at least 135,000 years ago, according to a survey of genomic evidence. As such, language might have entered social use 100,000 years ago. It is a deep ...

There are many famous examples of animals who seem to understand human language. But is there any real science behind them? When you purchase through links on our site, we may earn an affiliate ...

Ellen Garland received funding from the following grants for this work: Royal Society University Research Fellowship (UF160081 and URF\R\221020), Royal Society Research Fellows Enhancement Award ...

Researchers have found two important building blocks of human speech in wild chimpanzees, one of our closest relatives. A pair of studies finds that chimp communication includes both rhythmic ...