Neuroscientist Andrey Vyshedskiy from Boston University has recently published a paper that could explain the long-standing mystery surrounding language evolution that has baffled scientists for ...

Is wit a sign of evolutionary fitness? A new study explores how "quick-wittedness" and ancient verb-noun compounds shaped the evolution of human grammar through sexual selection. Learn how "killjoys" ...

In A Nutshell A linguist argues that wit, humor, and wordplay helped drive human language evolution through sexual selection, ...

Cognitive and computer scientists at the University of Toronto, Universitat Pompeu Fabra and the Catalan Institution for Research and Advanced Studies have found child language development and the ...

The mystery of the origin of human language has captivated scientists for centuries, and it remains one of the most intriguing problems in the field. How did humans manage to progress from simple ...

In these audio interviews from NOVA Online, Barbara Forrest, a philosophy professor, and paleontologist Kevin Padian address the basis of a general misunderstanding of what a scientific theory is.

Progovac's study challenges two dominant narratives in human evolution: "survival of the fittest" (physical strength) and "survival of the friendliest" (prosociality). While both played a role, ...

Words are often seen as the building blocks of languages. But as children we don’t learn lists of words like we might in a school language class. We learn longer strings of sounds and break them up ...

Since even before John Scopes’ famous “monkey trial” in 1925, the acceptance of evolution in American schoolhouses has been uneasy. Elsewhere, however, Charles Darwin’s famous theory is taught with ...