Language feels simple when we use it. We talk, we text, we listen, and words seem to appear naturally from thought. But the ...

Lenition, a pervasive phonetic phenomenon, involves the systematic weakening or alteration of consonant sounds in contextual speech environments. This process, which may result in fully articulated ...

Cognitive linguistics is a modern school of linguistic thought that originally began to emerge in the 1970s due to dissatisfaction with formal approaches to language. As I explain in my book, ...

Phonological development in children encompasses the progressive organisation of sound patterns that underlie spoken language. This intricate process enables the acquisition of clear and intelligible ...

This post is Part 2 of a series. Read Part 1 here. Although speech and language ability is relatively new in our evolutionary history—our ape cousins can’t speak—it may be built on a foundation that ...

Sifting through two-thirds of the world’s languages, scientists have discovered a strange pattern: Words with the same meanings in different languages often seem to share the same sounds — even when ...

A new study suggests that the phonemic composition of words influences as how beautiful we perceive them to be, and how well ...