Sophisticated birdsong follows strict grammatical rules, much like human sentences. But what happens when birds can’t hear ...

In human language, syntax is the set of rules that creates a system capable of expressing an infinite number of meanings. “Syntax is all about providing more and more precise, refined information.

"Human language is qualitatively different because there are two things, words and syntax, working together to create this very complex system," Miyagawa says. "No other animal has a parallel ...

There are many famous examples of animals who seem to understand human language. ... those symbols into larger structures to create more complex meaning — a feature of language called syntax.

In the book “More Than Words,” writer-educator John Warner makes the case for renewing the concept of writing as a fundamentally human activity. Large Language Model bots like ChatGPT offer ...

Linguist Shigeru Miyagawa from MIT explains, "Every population branching across the globe has human language, and all languages are related. Since the first split happened about 135,000 years ago ...

As the accuracy of natural language processing (NLP) models increased over the 2010s, there was a clear sacrifice in interpretability. Effectively, the more powerful and accurate language models ...

So why haven’t they evolved languages of their own? A new study suggests that great apes (specifically gorillas, chimpanzees, and orangutans) seem to track events in the way that we do.

It’s possible that the language used by chimpanzees is some kind of precursor to how human language itself evolved. At least, that appears to be the suggestion that the researchers are making here.

But complex communication involving compositional structures and even a degree of syntax (or word order that plays a role in determining meaning, as in human language) isn't just a mammal thing.

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.