Listen carefully to a spoken conversation and you’ll notice that the speakers use a lot of little quasi-words—mm-hmm, um, huh? and the like—that don’t convey any information about the topic of the ...

Some parts of speech get lots of attention from language researchers. Nouns and verbs certainly do, and this seems appropriate, given that they refer to the objects and the actions that make up our ...

WASHINGTON, Nov. 12, 2024 – There are an estimated 7,000 languages spoken worldwide, each offering unique ways to express human emotion. But do certain emotions show regularities in their vocal ...

Rachel Feltman: If you stubbed your toe right now, what sound would you make? According to linguists, the chances are pretty good that your answer would be surprisingly similar to the one given by ...