World’s oldest alphabet discovered

Welcome to this week’s edition of Discovery Digest, a weekly roundup of the latest language-related news, research in linguistics, interesting reads from the week, and newest books and other media dealing with language and linguistics!

📢 Updates & Announcements

Announcements and what’s new with me and Linguistic Discovery.

🆕 New from Linguistic Discovery

This week’s content from Linguistic Discovery.

Should you be talking to your infant? The science of baby talk, Part 1

Is it pointless to speak to children before they start speaking themselves? This isn’t necessarily a dumb question. In some cultures parents rarely talk to infants, and those children learn their native languages just fine. How important can talking to your newborn really be if not everybody does it?

Well, pretty important actually. In this week’s article I kick off a 7-part series on the science of baby talk by exploring just how important talking to your child is for their linguistic development:

Should you be talking to your infant? The science of baby talk, Part 1

Is it pointless to speak to children before they start speaking themselves?

Linguistic DiscoveryDaniel W. Hieber, Ph.D.

In the coming weeks (probably every other week, to give y’all some topical variety on the other weeks), we’ll explore the following aspects of baby talk:

Articles in this Series

• Part 1: Should you be talking to your infant?
• Part 2: What is baby talk?
• Part 3: Is baby talk good for your child?
• Part 4: Do all cultures use baby talk?
• Part 5: Baby talk in the languages of the world
• Part 6: How much should you talk to your infant?
• Part 7: What really matters when talking to your toddler

The etymology of ‘five’: From Proto-Indo-European to Modern English

Here’s another video from the archives this week!

📰 In the News

Language and linguistics in the news.

World’s oldest alphabet discovered

An archaeological team working at a mortuary complex in Umm el-Marra, northern Syria, stumbled upon a collection of clay cylinders incised with symbols that may be the first known instance of alphabetic writing. The cylinders date to 2400 BCE, approximately 500 years earlier than other known alphabetic scripts.

World’s oldest alphabet discovery changes everything we thought about writing — National Geographic History

Clay cylinders offer scholars a new way to investigate the timeline and development of alphabetic symbols.

World’s Oldest Alphabet Found on an Ancient Clay Gift Tag

A finger-sized clay cylinder from a tomb in northern Syria appears to be the oldest example of writing using an alphabet rather than hieroglyphs or cuneiform

Scientific AmericanStephanie Pappas

• Archaeologists say these mysterious markings could be the world’s oldest known alphabet writing (Smithsonian Magazine)

Where do writing systems come from?

Writing was invented three different times in world history—in Mesopotamia, China, and Mesoamerica. But not all writing systems derive from those three original scripts. How can this be?

Linguistic DiscoveryDaniel W. Hieber, Ph.D.

🗞️ Current Linguistics

Recently published research in linguistics.

One-third of grammatical universals stand up to rigorous testing

Despite the vast diversity of human languages, certain grammatical patterns appear again and again. A new study reveals that around a third of the long-proposed “linguistic universals”—patterns thought to hold across all languages—are statistically supported when examined with state-of-the-art evolutionary methods.

Below is a research briefing (summary) of the article.

Enduring patterns in world’s languages: One-third of grammatical ‘universals’ stand up to rigorous testing

Despite the vast diversity of human languages, specific grammatical patterns appear again and again. A new study reveals that around a third of the long-proposed “linguistic universals”—patterns thought to hold across all languages—are statistically supported when examined with state-of-the-art evolutionary methods.

Phys.orgSandra Jacob

Enduring constraints on grammar revealed by Bayesian spatiophylogenetic analyses - Nature Human Behaviour

Despite their great diversity, human languages are shaped by recurring grammatical universals. Verkerk et al. show that about one-third of the proposed universals hold cross-linguistically through analyses of the Grambank database.

NatureAnnemarie Verkerk

Bees understand morse code

Since decoding the “waggle dance” in the 1940s, bees have been at the forefront of research into insect intellect.

A new study shows that bees can be trained to understand the dot-dash behavior of morse code when those short dots and long dashes are associated with sugary rewards.

While bees obviously can’t use this skill with human-level complexity, any level of recognition does provide compelling evidence that bees can differentiate between short and long time durations.

Bees Understand Morse Code. It Could Change How We See Human Intelligence.

Bees obviously can’t use this skill on human level, but this progress could help scientists better grasp complex cognitive-like traits.

Popular MechanicsDarren Orf

• Davidson et al. 2025. Duration discrimination in the bumblebee Bombus terrestris. Biology Letters 21: 20250440. DOI: https://doi.org/10.1098/rsbl.2025.0440.

📃 This Week’s Reads

Interesting articles I’ve come across this week.

It’s not you – some typefaces feel different

The different personalities of typefaces and how it affects our psychology.

The ConversationAndrea Piovesan

• Here’s a fun summary of some of the data from a study mentioned in this article: How happy–sad each typeface is perceived.

Talking To Dolphins Isn’t As Far Away As You Might Think — Here’s Why - Cuteness

DolphinGemma is a Google-backed LLM that is working to understand and predict the meaning behind dolphin sounds. The program hopes to be able to communicate.

CutenessSheri Radford

How debt shaped the way we speak

And what it shows about how language works

Dead Language SocietyColin Gorrie

The linguistic logic behind dropped syllables

What triggers haplology – why do speakers omit whole syllables?

The New WorldPeter Trudgill

• Haplology is the phenomenon where speakers drop an entire syllable from a word. This can happen over time, leading to new words (Engla land → England) or as a variation on a current word (probably → prolly).

What Is Occitan? Discover Its History and Unique Factors - Rosetta Stone

Interested in the Occitan language? Learn about this Romance language with close ties to French, Spanish, and Catalan and its history.

Rosetta StoneJamie Edwards

📚 Books & Media

New (and old) books and media touching on language and linguistics.

E pluribus English: The many languages we speak when we speak English

English is a language of other languages—and therein lies its magic. A new book explores the etymology of over 450 words:

Inventing languages: A practical introduction

This new textbook on inventing languages was just released, and it looks like a great introduction. I’m not even quite sure “textbook” is the right term, since it doesn’t mention that it’s designed for classroom use in particular, but you could most definitely use it in a conlanging class designed to introduce students to linguistic typology. Otherwise, it would make a great handbook for anybody interested in conlanging.

This would also make a great Christmas gift for the language nerds and creative writers in your life!

• Amazon
• Bookshop

👋🏼 Til next week!

What if English never adopted Latin names for months? From Starkey Comics.