A strange mathematical rule organizes the words of all human languages. A recent study reveals that birds also seem to follow this logic. For decades, linguists have observed that the most frequently ...

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 ...

For all the world’s linguistic diversity, human languages still obey certain universal patterns. These run deeper than grammar and syntax; they’re rooted in statistical laws that predict how ...

Most people learn to count and do basic arithmetic at a young age and don’t give these skills a second thought. But numerosity or numeracy, the ability to think about and use numbers, is more than a ...