In 1884 the anthropologist Franz Boas returned from Baffin Island with a discovery that would kick off decades of linguistic wrangling: by his count, the local Inuit language had four words for snow, ...

Remember the famous 30 million word gap in language exposure between the children of professional families and those on welfare, and all its attendant problems in reading and attention? How could ...

Language patterns could be predicted by simple laws of physics, a new study has found. A theory using ideas from physics predicts where and how dialects occur. Language patterns could be predicted by ...

Why, and when, do we learn to speak the way that we do? New research on African-American children presents an unexpected finding: language use can go on a roller-coaster ride during childhood as kids ...

The language patterns a person uses in describing their feelings can reveal their true sentiments about other groups of people, researchers report. “There are times when people might lie about how ...

Is it possible to spot personality dysfunction from someone's everyday word use? My colleagues and I have conducted research ...

Ask a businessperson, “What exactly do you do?” and the answer will probably be, “I make decisions!” Ask a scientist, and the response will be, “I discover truth!” Actually, both of them are on the ...

We take an intimate look at Christopher Alexander's influential work of the 1970s, A Pattern Language, in which he ascribes patterns to architecture, claiming that they cross cultures and context.