If language is what makes us human, what does it mean now that large language models have gained “metalinguistic” abilities?

Scientists have long considered the complexity of language to be an obvious separation between humans and all other life forms on Earth. New research, however, suggests our linguistic abilities might ...

At the turn of the 20th century, a famous horse named Clever Hans toured Germany. The horse stunned crowds as his trainer demonstrated the animal's alleged ability to understand German, tell time and ...

Language has long been considered a uniquely human trait, with features that mark it out as distinct from the communication of all other species. However, research published in Science has uncovered ...

Language is one of the few faculties that still seems to be uniquely human. Other animals, like chimpanzees and songbirds, have developed elaborate communication systems, but none appears to convey ...

A strange mathematical rule organizes the words of all human languages. A recent study reveals that birds also seem to follow this logic. For decades, linguists have observed that the most frequently ...

Cells producing the NOVA1 protein are shown in green in the brain of a mouse. A specific variant of this protein is unique to humans, and researchers suggest it is linked to spoken language ...