Discovery Dispatch
Islands are incubators of linguistic diversity, and people are more likely to cooperate with those who use similar linguistic constructions
Here’s what happened this week in language and linguistics.
World of Words
The etymology of ‘one’: From Proto-Indo-European to Modern English
There are over thirty English words that derive from the Proto-Indo-European word for ‘one’. This is the story of how they came to be, and what that story teaches us about how language works.
Discovery Dispatch
Inside the fiercest debate in linguistics—Universal Grammar. Plus, why your brain can process short text messages so quickly.
Here’s what happened this week in language and linguistics.
Discovery Dispatch
How hypothetical are protolanguages?
How hypothetical are protolanguages? How did the Indo-Europeans spread? What does conversation look like in the brain? Here’s what happened this week in language and linguistics.
Discovery Dispatch
1,000 subscribers! 🎉 And did Proto-Indo-European have SOV word order?
The Linguistic Discovery newsletter just reached 1,000 subscribers! 🎉 And linguist Danny L. Bate suggests that Proto-Indo-European didn’t have Subject-Object-Verb word order after all.
Discovery Dispatch
The quest for the first Indo-Europeans, and whales communicating like humans
New DNA evidence emerges in the hunt for the first speakers of Indo-European, and researchers discover that whalesong shares a property of human language never before found in the animal kingdom.
World of Words
What are language isolates?
A language isolate is a language that is unrelated to any other known language.