An international team proposes replacing Hockett’s feature checklist with a model of language as a dynamic, multimodal, and socially evolving system.

Learning a language can’t be that hard — every baby in the world manages to do it in a few years. Figuring out how the process works is another story. Linguists have devised elaborate theories to ...

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.” ...

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 ...

The focus of this section is on strategies to support resettled refugees’ acquisition of the language of the receiving community (often referred to as the target language). Some of the principles and ...