An AI model trained on dozens of hours of real-world conversation accurately predicts human brain activity and shows that features of language structure emerge without being coded in. When you ...

At the turn of the 20th century, a famous horse named Clever Hans toured Germany. The horse stunned crowds as his trainer demonstrated the animal's alleged ability to understand German, tell time and ...

The original version of this story appeared in Quanta Magazine. Among the myriad abilities that humans possess, which ones are uniquely human? Language has been a top candidate at least since ...

Wild bonobos – our closest living relatives – communicate using vocal calls organized in compositionally complex semantic structures that mirror key features of human language, according to a new ...

The origins of human language remain mysterious. Are we the only animals truly capable of complex speech? Are Homo sapiens the only hominids who could give detailed directions to a far-off freshwater ...

Humans' unique language capacity was present at least 135,000 years ago, according to a survey of genomic evidence. As such, language might have entered social use 100,000 years ago. It is a deep ...

Among the myriad abilities that humans possess, which ones are uniquely human? Language has been a top candidate at least since Aristotle, who wrote that humanity was “the animal that has language.” ...

Language shapes the way we view our world. In the field of wildlife conservation, even very subtle word choices drive peoples’ perceptions around individual species or situations. These word choices ...

There are many famous examples of animals who seem to understand human language. But is there any real science behind them? When you purchase through links on our site, we may earn an affiliate ...