“The limits of my language mean the limits of my world,” observed philosopher Ludwig Wittgenstein in 1922. We might ask, accordingly, how does language shape reality, arbitrating human experience of ...

“Plop plop, fizz fizz, oh what a relief it is.” You might have thought that only the pill that goes with that jingle creates relief. But science suggests the jingle’s wording itself elicits relief.

New research from UC Berkeley’s Linguistics Department, in collaboration with Project CETI, suggests that sperm whale communication may mirror the structure and complexity of human language far more ...

A linguistics analysis shows that language arrived in North America in multiple waves from Siberia. The Americas have half of the world’s linguistic diversity, despite a much shorter human history.