linguistics archive

No easy answers in evolution of human language - The evolution of human speech was far more complex than is implied by some recent attempts to link it to a specific gene, says MIT Professor Robert Berwick, who will discuss his work Feb. 17 at the AAAS Annual Meeting in Boston. February 17, 2008

MIT research among Nature magazine's best of 2007 - Nature's editors have picked their favorite 18 research papers of 2007, including three studies involving MIT scientists. Topics of the MIT papers include the search for extrasolar planets, a new technique for weighing single cells and the future of irregular verbs. January 14, 2008

Predicting the future of the past tense - Verbs evolve and homogenize at a rate inversely proportional to their prevalence in English, according to a formula developed by MIT and Harvard University mathematicians using evolutionary principles to study our language over the past 1,200 years. October 15, 2007

Linguists doubt exception to universal grammar - The controversy over certain studies of the Pirahã language is making headlines, unusual for the field of linguistics. MIT's David Pesetsky has thrown doubt upon many of linguist Daniel L. Everett's claims about Pirahã's cultural and linguistic uniqueness. April 23, 2007

Army linguist learns language of leadership - Lynne McCann served as chief of the Army's Foreign Language Proponency Office before she came to MIT Sloan, and the M.B.A. student had seen a lot of the world, but she found a world within her classrooms and among her classmates. November 22, 2006

Anti-microbial 'grammar' underlies health advance - In most languages, sentences only make sense if the words are placed in the right order. Now, MIT researchers and an IBM colleague have used grammatical principles to help their search for new antimicrobial medicines. October 19, 2006

SHASS announces new department heads - Five new heads in the School of Humanities, Arts and Social Sciences have been named, effective July 1, 2006. September 12, 2006

Media Lab project explores language acquisition - Associate Professor Deb Roy is recording nearly all of his new son's waking hours in an ambitious attempt to use these data to unravel the mystery of how humans naturally acquire language within the context of their primary social setting. May 15, 2006

Warbling whales speak a language all their own - Researchers led by an MIT graduate student have now mathematically confirmed that whales have their own syntax that uses sound units to build phrases that can be combined to form songs that last for hours. March 22, 2006

Swager, Yablo to head departments - Timothy Swager, professor of chemistry, and Steve Yablo, professor of philosophy, have been appointed heads of their respective departments, effective July 1, 2005. April 5, 2005

Lardil brought to life - During his stay on Mornington Island (off the northwest coast of Queensland and populated mostly by Aborigines), Richards plans to help compile educational materials in Lardil. October 22, 2003