Author: Kristina Bilbao, PhD candidate at the University of the Basque Country, Dept. of Linguistics and Basque Studies (UPV/EHU) and member of The Bilingual Mind Research Group (Gogo Elebiduna) Reciprocal constructions express a symmetrical relation between participants involved in an event . For instance, consider the reciprocal construction Anne and Mary hugged each other, which […]
words Author: Juan F. Trillo, PhD in Linguistics and Philosophy (U. Autónoma de Madrid), PhD in Literary Studies (U. Complutense de Madrid). The first word of the Preamble to the Constitution of the United States is “ We “, a personal pronoun belonging to the category of function words and, as such, ambiguous, which is […]
endangered Author: Dave Sayers, Senior Lecturer in Sociolinguistics, University of Jyväskylä / Jyväskylän yliopisto Headlines abound with the plight of endangered minority languages around the world. Read a few of these and you’ll see some common themes: the rising number of languages dying worldwide, the distressing isolation of individual last speakers, and the wider cultural […]
Computer science • Language • Linguistics • Medicine • Robotics
At a time when the mass media are full of predictions about the apocalyptic effect that AI will have on humanity, it is comforting to read two essays that show that the reality, for the moment, points in the opposite direction. The first of these reveals the excellent results that the application of natural language […]
Author: Marta Sánchez-López is a PhD candidate at the Dept. of Linguistics and Basque Studies (UPV/EHU), The Bilingual Mind research group. What if I told you that language can incriminate you? Yes, it is true, the way you speak tells so much about yourself. Humans use language to communicate about events of the world and […]
Semantic Author: Juan F. Trillo, PhD in Linguistics and Philosophy (U. Autónoma de Madrid), PhD in Literary Studies (U. Complutense de Madrid). Among the many features that differentiate us from other animals, one of the most striking is our ability to communicate. No other species has developed such an elaborate and effective language for exchanging […]
The acquisition of the native language (L1) is fast and unconscious. By the time children are 4-5 years old, their competence in the L1 is already adult-like (Aparici & Igualada, 2019). One of the underlying factors of this competence is linguistic exposure, since children constantly listen to their caretakers speak the native language. Another factor […]
Author: Juan F. Trillo, PhD in Linguistics and Philosophy (U. Autónoma de Madrid), PhD in Literary Studies (U. Complutense de Madrid). This essay is an excerpt from the paper that will be presented at the IX Jornadas de Divulgación Científica at the city of Medellín, Badajoz (Spain), March 2-5, 2023. The possibility of establishing contact […]
Though the persistent reference to “Athens and Jerusalem” captures the cliché that the modern Western way of thinking and of being comes basically from two main roots (Greek philosophy and Hebrew monotheism), the fact is that probably we owe much more to the Romans, the true creators of the civilization from which our kind of […]
Have you ever been in a situation in which irony was misunderstood as sincerity? For example, let’s say you’re at a clothing store with a friend of yours and you see a really ugly shirt on display. You say “Look! What a nice shirt!”. The next thing you know, your friend decides to buy you […]