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Un-total Recall: Amnesics Remember Grammar, but Not Meaning of New Sentences
Syntactic persistence is the tendency for speakers to produce sentences using similar grammatical patterns and rules of language as those they have used before. Although the way this occurs is not well understood, previous research
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Psychology in Singapore
When I was preparing to come to the National University of Singapore (NUS) for a one-year visiting appointment in 1991 (a stay which has now stretched to 17 years), many of my friends and colleagues
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Talk to the Hand: New Insights into the Evolution of Language and Gesture
In his book Me Talk Pretty One Day, humorist David Sedaris chronicled his pain at trying to learn French, in France, at age 41. His commiseration with a fellow language student sounds like it could
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What Does it Mean to be Alive? How Notions of the Natural World Unfold- in Development and Across Languages.
Understanding the concept of a “living thing” is a late developmental achievement. Early research by Jean Piaget, showed that kids attribute “life status” to things that move on their own (e.g. clouds or bikes) and
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Running Words Together: The science behind cross-cultural linguistics
While communication may be recognized as a universal phenomenon, distinctions—ranging from word-order to naming—undoubtedly remain as they help to define culture and develop language. Yet, little is understood about the similarities and differences in languages
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How Do I Hate Thee?
Long before pop culture turned “bitchin” into a synonym for cool, “bitch” was one of the more derogatory epithets you could hurl at a woman. Indeed, man’s best friend doesn’t fare well in the human
