In 1884 the anthropologist Franz Boas returned from Baffin Island with a discovery that would kick off decades of linguistic wrangling: by his count, the local Inuit language had four words for snow, ...

The idea of “reading minds” has shifted from science fiction to a concrete engineering challenge, and the latest breakthroughs suggest the brain’s private code is finally yielding. Researchers are not ...

Early on in the evolution of artificial intelligence, researchers realized the power and possibility of machines that are able to understand the meaning and nuances of human speech. Conversation and ...

If you listen to songbirds, you will recognize repeated melodies or phrases. Each phrase is made up of distinct sounds, strung together. A study has found that the song phrases of many songbird ...

New research reveals sperm whale communication is more complex than thought. Instead of simple clicks, whales use vowel-like sounds. These patterns are deliberate and structured, similar to human ...

Last month, the architect and author Christopher Alexander received the Vincent Scully Prize, given annually by the National Building Museum “to recognize exemplary practice, scholarship or criticism ...