This article was published in Scientific American’s former blog network and reflects the views of the author, not necessarily those of Scientific American When Emperor Akihito stepped down from the ...

Forget language genes or innate linguistic universals; language is not only learned, it's also powerfully shaped by the culture we live in.... There's no language gene. There's no innate language ...

“SHAPE: The system of shape representations in cognition, development and across languages,” encompasses the way that shape figures into the learning of 44 different languages — systematically sampled ...

You spend almost all of your waking hours—and even some of your non-waking hours—using language. Even when you’re not talking with other people, you’re still running a monologue in your head much of ...

Language shapes how we see the world. We use it to make sense of our reality. We use it to label people and things around us. Label something beautiful, and you acknowledge its uniqueness, elevate its ...