Articles tagged with Linguistics
A recent study investigated social media posts of emergency medicine physicians during the COVID-19 pandemic, revealing key thematic shifts in language related to anxiety, anger, depression, and loneliness. Social media was found to provide a real-time landscape for evaluating emotional well-being among healthcare workers.
Researchers found that people produce louder and slower speech with less pitch variation when communicating with AI systems, while clearer speech improves comprehension. The study aims to improve AI's ability to understand human speech and investigate language changes as technology advances.
A study by Bocconi University researchers found that terrorist attacks and perceived threats from ethnic minorities shifted German Twitter users' language towards the far-right AfD party. Voters rewarded the party at the 2017 election, with no traditional explanatory variable playing a role in the effect.
Research finds that using unconventional spellings can lead to decreased consumer trust and loyalty, but may have positive effects in contexts where consumers seek a memorable experience. The study suggests caution for firms launching new brands with unusual spellings.
Bilingual individuals from cultures where mental health is stigmatized may be more open to treatment when presented with information in their second language. Studies found participants recommended therapy more strongly in English compared to Chinese, suggesting a potential counteractive effect of cultural norms.
The Grambank database provides an unprecedented level of detail on language structure, showcasing the diversity of human languages. Researchers found that languages exhibit greater similarity to their common ancestors than those they are in contact with, highlighting the importance of genealogical constraints on linguistic diversity.
A new study reveals that the English language is biased towards addition when it comes to improvement, leading people to overcomplicate things. This linguistic bias is found at multiple levels of language structure and use, influencing decisions and behavior.
Researchers found that syntactic surprise, a measure of unexpected word arrangement, significantly improves marketing message efficacy. The optimal level of syntactic surprise falls within the middle range, with messages being most effective at a medium level.
Researchers found previously unknown interactions among people in southern Africa between the 5th and 20th centuries, revealing a complex network of cultural exchange. The study used geochemical analyses on copper objects to reconstruct connectivity across the region, providing new insights into the history of the area.
A new study explores how language shapes attention and engagement, finding that easier-to-process language and emotional triggers like anxiety, excitement, and hope encourage readers to persist. Language, meanwhile, can discourage readers from continuing to read.
A Dartmouth study found that COVID-19 can cause 'prosopagnosia,' or face blindness, and impairments in navigational abilities. Researchers worked with a patient who experienced difficulty recognizing faces and navigating, leading to dissociation between face recognition and cognitive map representation.
Researchers at the Complexity Science Hub have developed an algorithm that can be applied to different languages and expand word lists significantly better than others. The new method, called LEXpander, outperforms previous algorithms in German and English, especially in sentiment analysis tasks.
British and American English speakers use the word “right” in distinct ways. In everyday conversations, Brits use “right” to signal that what they hear is informative and relevant. This linguistic difference might contribute to the stereotype that British people are smarter due to their sophisticated accent.
Researchers found broad similarities in how deaf homesigners and hearing adults describe tool-related events, suggesting universal aspects of human thinking. The study suggests that these similarities reflect the extent to which a tool shapes the object it is being used on.
Researchers seek to reduce medical errors among patients with limited English proficiency by implementing three different translation approaches. The goal is to compare the effectiveness of telephone interpreter-based and in-person interpreter-assisted communication in reducing errors.
A 17th-century satire on marriage employs fragments from Elio Antonio de Nebrija's Latin grammar to justify arguments. The study highlights Nebrija's significant role as a Latinist over his Spanish grammar.
Assistant Professor Stephen Hopkins received a year-long, $60,000 NEH fellowship to finish his book, The Infernal Laboratory: Vernacular Theology and Hell in the Medieval North Sea. The study explores how medieval writers developed their conception of hell as an experimental space for cultural and theological belonging.
Research suggests a universal pattern in profanity across different languages, with the lack of approximants being a common feature when perceiving swear words. Participants rated pseudo-words with and without approximants differently, indicating that approximant-free words were more likely to be considered swear words.
Researchers at Stockholm University developed a fully automatic method to categorize English smell words into offensive, malodorous, fragrant, and edible smells. The study's findings have great potential for standardizing vocabularies in the food and perfume industries.
Researchers from McGill University and MIT developed an AI system that can learn the rules and patterns of human languages on its own. The model automatically generates higher-level language patterns that can be applied to different languages, achieving better results.
A study by University of Missouri researchers found that storytelling can help college students make sense of the pandemic and reduce stress. The study involved first-year college students who used stories to express personal growth during the early days of the COVID-19 pandemic, reporting less stress and more confidence in their schoo...
The ECNU Review of Education special issue examines the benefits and challenges of collaborative education, shedding light on issues like racism, neoliberalism's impact on education, and effective teaching strategies.
Researchers found that infants differentiate sounds based on neighboring sounds and vowel durations. Their study suggests that babies can learn the speech contrasts of their language through naturalistic speech data.
A study published in Early Education and Development journal found that preschoolers with stronger vocabulary skills at the start of the year display more positive engagement with teachers and peers. The researchers also discovered that inhibitory control is crucial for classroom engagement and learning.
Research by University of Cambridge academics found that children as old as five or six struggle to reconcile inference and perspective, leading to difficulties in conversations. Combining these skills is crucial for understanding 'implicatures' - inferences made in conversation when people mean more than they say.
The study found that the use of comics for humour, visual-verbal interplay, informality, simple narrative plots, and exaggerated personalities contributed to the campaign's enduring success. The researchers argue that humour is a powerful discursive strategy to educate the public, making content relatable while addressing taboo topics.
An interdisciplinary team has created a large public database of standardized wordlists for over 2000 language varieties, providing insights into the structure of human languages. The data reveals patterns of independent parallel evolution in linguistic diversity, with many languages using similar words for related concepts.
A new framework for classifying content and trigger warnings has been developed based on analysis of 32 countries and 10 different sectors. The framework categorizes warnings by theme (e.g. violence, language) and media type.
A study by Tokyo University of Science researchers used WCNs with increasing n values to find features of language that cannot be analyzed using existing WCNs. They found important features in networks with more than three co-occurrences, independent of text data.
Researchers observed that English accounted for 61% of time, while Spanish had 39%, indicating a greater proportion of corrections were made when speaking in English. This study highlights the need for balanced tasks that consider these differences to benefit both students learning English and Spanish.
A new study by researchers at New York University found that people tend to prioritize men when referring to individuals in general. The study analyzed over 630 billion words from internet web pages using artificial intelligence tools to measure word meanings.
The Volkswagen Foundation has awarded €1 million to support the development of Sorbian Studies, a small discipline. The project aims to strengthen this field through digitalization and interdisciplinary collaboration, resulting in enhanced language courses, study materials, and digital resources.
New research at MU shows that women's use of humor is perceived differently than men's, with factors like status and target influencing judgments. Women who use humor directed towards a man are seen as positive, but those targeting a lower-status woman are viewed negatively.
A new study by Thomas Pepinsky challenges the idea that language shapes thought and behavior, finding no evidence that linguistic differences affect social and economic outcomes. The study reveals that statistical methodologies used in previous research are prone to producing false positives.
Research suggests that using language to label innovations as 'new and different' is a key strategy for software companies. Category innovation was found to be associated with firms' likelihood of initial public offerings (IPO), suggesting it's part of successful firm strategies.
A new study found that people's pronunciation of certain words changes after hearing a southern-accented talker, even if they didn't hear the actual sound. Participants who had never lived in the U.S. south still converged on a southern-like pronunciation, suggesting that expectations about accents shape our speech.
A new MIT study found that lawyers' frequent use of long definitions in sentences makes legal texts difficult for non-lawyers to understand. Center-embedding, a common feature of legal writing, was the biggest contributor to comprehension difficulty. The researchers suggest reducing center-embedding and simplifying jargon to improve ac...
A study from MIT and UC Berkeley found a relationship between Tsimane' individuals' counting ability and their success in matching tasks up to 25. The researchers suggest that representing exact quantities larger than four requires words for those numbers.
Researchers compared preprints to their final publications and found that over 83% of COVID-19 and 93% of non-COVID related life sciences articles do not change from their preprint to final published versions. A machine learning tool also recommends potential journals for linguistically similar articles.
The HTRC will create a framework for researchers to build and implement their own tools to access the HathiTrust data more directly. The project aims to enable users to interact with the rich data extracted from the HathiTrust Digital Library's collection of over 17.5 million digitized volumes.
A new study found that nearly four times as many words describing rough surfaces contain the trilled /r/ sound compared to smooth ones. This pattern is prevalent across sensory words in 38 Indo-European languages and has likely existed for over six millennia.
Researchers studied evacuees from Finland during WWII and found that cultural similarities, such as language and social networks, were crucial for successful migrations. Being younger, male, educated, and linguistically similar to the host population also increased the likelihood of staying in a new home.
A recent study found that gender bias in linguistics textbooks has not changed since 1997, with male protagonists appearing twice as often as female ones and being associated with more prominent roles. The study suggests that implicit biases against women are perpetuated in language education.
A study of the Vai script found that it became visually simpler with each passing year, as letters were designed for efficient reading and writing. This pattern of simplification can be observed in other ancient writing systems, suggesting a predictable evolutionary process.
Researchers at University of Rochester Medical Center found that the brain processes attended and unattended speech differently, converting attended speech into linguistic units for understanding. This study contributes to developing better wearable devices, such as hearing aids.
Two studies published in Language reveal persistent gender bias in both peer-reviewed journal articles and course materials used in linguistics. Linguistics textbooks exhibit male-gendered protagonists more often, while research articles show stereotypes about men and women, with non-binary identities absent.
A new study from Pusan National University suggests that phonological awareness (PA) and phonics instruction can significantly improve the reading skills of English language learners. The meta-analysis of 46 studies found a moderate effect of PA and phonics on word reading, but a larger impact on pseudo-word reading.
A new UniSA study is helping protect children from online predators by investigating language and behaviors used to gain unacquainted children's trust. The research aims to deliver new linguistic indicators to monitor, identify, and apprehend suspects.
Researchers have identified a common genetic component among speakers of Transeurasian languages, tracing their origin to the beginning of millet cultivation. The 'Farming Hypothesis' suggests that early farmers spread these languages across Northeast Asia, with speakers later admixing with other populations.
Researchers at the University of California, Davis and the University of Texas at Dallas found that listeners can reliably identify the gender of individual children as young as 5. They also discovered that identification of gender must take place jointly with the identification of age and likely physical size.
Researchers discovered that the majority of people worldwide exhibit the 'bouba/kiki effect', matching sounds with shapes, regardless of language or writing system. This finding suggests that iconic vocalisations may form a global basis for creating new words.
Researchers from HSE School of Linguistics and Centre for Language and Brain conducted an experiment to understand how language speakers perceive polysemous words. The proximity of figurative senses to the literal sense affects perception as semantically different.
New study traces common ancestry of Japanese, Korean, and Tungusic languages to millet cultivation and early Amur gene pool in West Liao River region. The Farming Hypothesis is supported by linguistic, archaeological, and genetic evidence showing early farmers' spread across Northeast Asia.
Researchers found that people's pupils dilate more in response to metaphors than to literal or concrete statements. The study suggests that everyday metaphors, often considered clichés, play a significant role in engaging our brains and conveying richer meaning.
Researchers found that conservative tweets are more effective at reaching moderates than liberal tweets, thanks to their network connections and linguistic similarities. The study suggests that liberals need to consciously connect with moderates to compete on Twitter.
Researchers found that bilinguals are better at spotting grammatical illusions, a type of manipulative discourse. Bilingual participants detected 56% of the constructions, while monolinguals only succeeded 39%. However, bilinguals needed more time to respond.
Researchers found that newer formulas considering lexical sophistication, syntactic complexity, and cohesion predict ESL reading effort more accurately than traditional formulas. Eye-tracking data revealed that longer fixations, shorter movements, skipped words, and regressions indicate higher reading difficulty.
A study by Boston University researcher Jennifer Zuk found that the brain's organizational pathways, known as white matter, set a foundation for language learning abilities within the first year of life. This is reflected in children born with higher indications of white matter organization having better language skills five years later.
A team of researchers developed an algorithm that infers the communicative needs of different linguistic communities regarding colors. The study found that warm hues like reds and yellows have a higher demand for language, while less prominent colors are underrepresented.
A multidisciplinary team of scientists is using human whistled languages as a model to understand how dolphins encode complex information in their whistle communication. By studying the structure and attributes of human whistled speech, researchers aim to develop new techniques for analyzing dolphin whistles.