African American Vernacular English is a stigmatized dialect that is still ridiculed in education and the workplace. Its speakers are coherent and intelligent communicators, but remain disadvantaged.
Supporters and volunteers love them. But it’s difficult for political scientists to determine whether they even influence the outcome of elections, since no two campaigns or election cycles are alike.
Linguists have long considered grammar to be the glue of language, and key to how children learn it. But new prose-writing AIs suggest language experience may be more important than grammar.
The words indicating colours that are available in our mother tongue influence the way we perceive and differentiate colours. Does this mean that language determines our thinking?
Victoria Chen, Te Herenga Waka — Victoria University of Wellington
An overlooked grammatical affix lends further linguistic support for the idea that Austronesian speakers in eastern Taiwan used their seafaring skills to span out across the Pacific.
Created in Europe during a time of intercultural struggle and strife, Esperanto was meant as a communication tool to spread peace among the people of the world. Its speakers are still at it.
Kyle Mahowald, The University of Texas at Austin et Anna A. Ivanova, Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT)
Fluent expression is not always evidence of a mind at work, but the human brain is primed to believe so. A pair of cognitive linguistics experts explain why language is not a good test of sentience.