Humans are the only species known to use fully symbolic language: a system capable of expressing abstract ideas, imaginary worlds and endless combinations of meaning. But how did we get there? The ...

Language has been an embarrassment for the theory of evolution for more than 150 years. Charles Darwin, who thought that language evolved from animal communication, argued, “The difference in mind ...

It’s often said that large language models (LLMs) along the lines of OpenAI’s ChatGPT are a black box, and certainly, there’s some truth to that. Even for data scientists, it’s difficult to know why, ...

It’s important to use the right words when writing about writing. Scholars studying the history of it distinguish between pre-writing symbols used to mark objects and more precise marks that establish ...