Many linguists have proposed that languages spoken by numerous non-native speakers tend to have simpler grammars. A new study challenges this claim. By analyzing a global sample of 1,314 languages, ...

The global distribution of grammatical complexity (fusion). Closely related languages resemble each other's scores. Credit: Science Advances (2023). DOI: 10.1126/sciadv.adf7704 Languages around the ...

A large-scale study of languages shows that the grammar of creoles - which emerged in multilingual situations of extreme social upheaval, like colonial slaveries - are composed from the grammars of ...

Two styles of explaining the science of mind and behaviour have been competing for as long as anyone cares to remember: empiricist, centring on habit formation, statistical learning, imitation and ...

The authors do not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organization that would benefit from this article, and have disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their ...

Using an asymptotic characterization of probabilistic finite state languages over a one-letter alphabet we construct a probabilistic language with regular support that cannot be generated by ...

Languages around the world differ greatly in how many grammatical distinctions they make. This variation is observable even between closely related languages. The speakers of Swedish, Danish, and ...