The list of things in which humans are unique is fascinating: art, shyness, spirituality, passion for technology, accumulation of objects. There are other activities that we share with other species, but in which we excel because of our ability, complexity and speed: communication and sociability are two good examples. Humans have the most sophisticated language […]
It is clear that the world began before human beings learned to speak and even long before they made their appearance. However, as far as we are concerned and from our subjective point of view, “everything” began when we were able to articulate our thoughts as a sequence of meaningful words, for it was then […]
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 […]
Authors: Elissa-Marie Cocquyt, speech therapist and postdoctoral researcher at the University of Groningen & Adrià Rofes, assistant professor of Neurolinguistics at the University of Groningen. The human brain is one of the most wonderful organs. In general, our brain consists of a left and right part, of which the outermost layer is called the ‘cortex’ […]
Have you ever wondered what chickens are talking about? Chickens are quite the communicators — their clucks, squawks and purrs are not just random sounds but a complex language system. These sounds are their way of interacting with the world and expressing joy, fear and social cues to one another. Like humans, the “language” of […]
In their recent paper “Telling Gender: The Pragmatics and Ethics of Gender Ascriptions” , the philosophers Quill Kukla and Mark Lance (well known in the philosophy of language as authors of the 2009 essential book Yo! And Lo! The Pragmatic Topography of the Space of Reasons ) embark on a journey into the heart of […]
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 […]
anticipate Authors: Victoria Cano Sánchez & Patricia Fuente García, PhD candidates at the University of the Basque Country, Dept. of Linguistics and Basque Studies (UPV/EHU) and members of The Bilingual Mind Research Group (Gogo Elebiduna) Have you ever wondered why are we able to respond and comprehend others as fast as we do? The answer […]
Emotional Authors: Anna Hatzidaki, Assistant Professor and member of the Bilingualism and Psycholinguistics (BiPsy) Lab, Dept. of English Language and Literature, National and Kapodistrian University of Athens (NKUA); Mikel Santesteban, Senior Researcher and member of The Bilingual Mind research group, Dept. of Linguistics and Basque Studies, University of the Basque Country (UPV/EHU). Our brain is […]
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 […]