Another article on the European starling’s ability to learn “syntax-like” patterns. This one includes (towards the end) a response from Chomsky.
Read the full article at LiveScience.com
Although linguists have argued that certain patterns of language organization are the exclusive province of humans — perhaps the only uniquely human component of language — researchers from the University of Chicago and the University of California San Diego have discovered the same capacity to recognize such patterns and distinguish between them in Sturnus vulgaris, the common European starling.
Read the full article at EurekAlert!
The European starling - long known as a virtuoso songbird and as an expert mimic too - may also soon gain a reputation as something of a “grammar-marm.” This three-ounce bird, new research shows, can learn syntactic patterns formerly thought to be the exclusive province of humans.
Read the full article at University of California, San Diego
In a study involving over 8,000 males and females ranging in age from 2 to 90 from the across the United States, Vanderbilt University researchers Stephen Camarata and Richard Woodcock discovered that females have a significant advantage over males on timed tests and tasks. However, the study also found that males consistently outperformed females in some verbal abilities, such as identifying objects, knowing antonyms and synonyms and completing verbal analogies, debunking the popular idea that girls develop all communication skills earlier than boys.
Read the full article at Vanderbilt University
While language acquisition is a predictable process, making the transition from the language you speak to the language you read can present various challenges.
Read the full article at Newswise
Written words have only been around for about 6000 years, but that hasn’t kept some scientists from believing that there’s a specific part of our brain devoted to reading. Now this controversial idea is getting an important piece of support from a man whose surgical procedure may have disrupted this region.
Read the full article at Science
Ground-breaking Auckland University research has found that people with dyslexia appear to be trying to read with a different side of their brains to other people. The research breakthrough, which found that dyslexics try to read with the right side of their brains, may eventually help scientists to work out a way of helping them learn to read.
Read the full article at The New Zealand Herald
Writing systems may look very different, but they all use the same basic building blocks of familiar natural shapes, reports Roger Highfield. The shapes of letters are not dictated by the ease of writing them, economy of pen strokes and so on, but their underlying familiarity and the ease of recognising them. We use certain letters because our brains are particularly good at seeing them, even if our hands find it hard to write them down. In turn, we are good at seeing certain shapes because they reflect common facets of the natural world.
Read the full article at Telegraph
Contrary to popular belief, brain cells use a mix of analog and digital coding at the same time to communicate efficiently, according to a study by Yale School of Medicine researchers published this week in Nature.
Read the full article at Yale University
Counting from one to 1 million - physically saying 1 million words - is said to take 23 days. But to make 1 million words? According to one California high-tech executive and his roving band of “language police,” that feat has taken about 1,500 years for English speakers around the globe to execute. That magic date when the one-millionth English word will be born should fall between Sept. 1 and Nov. 30, 2006, according to Paul JJ Payack, founder of the Global Language Monitor.
Read the full article at CBS News
Four-year-olds who are still developing numerical abilities show activity in the same brain region during numerical tasks as do math-adept adults, Duke University researchers Jessica Cantlon, Kevin Pelphrey and colleagues report in the open access journal PLoS Biology. Their comparative brain scan studies explore the earliest glimmerings of numerical processing in pre-school children.
Read the full article at EurekAlert!
The origin of human language has always been a puzzle. Languages don’t leave fossils, and while there has never been any dearth of theories explaining why language might have evolved (be it for grooming, gossip or seduction), empirical evidence has been hard to come by. All that is finally starting to change. The booming science of comparative genomics is allowing researchers to investigate the origins of language in an entirely new way: by asking how the genes that underwrite human language relate to genes found in other species.
Read the full article at The New York Times
A school in India is reportedly teaching its students to use both their hands to write on different subjects simultaneously. All 72 pupils of the Veena Vadini School at Singrauli in Madhya Pradesh use both their hands “with equal ease”, reports Asian News International.
Read the full article at Ananova
A new infant language laboratory has been launched this week at the University of Liverpool, to discover how babies process language.
Read the full article at icLiverpool
A new research laboratory established at the University of Liverpool to study how babies learn to understand language is in need of volunteers. The Infant Laboratory, in the School of Psychology, forms part of a new research group focused on the study of all aspects of child language development. It will be used to investigate how far children aged between 18 and 30 months can match spoken words with the relevant action by filming their responses to a series of screened tests. The project will focus on a child’s understanding of both the meanings of words and their relevant position in a sentence.
Read the full article at University of Liverpool
No Comments - Add a comment