Forbes contributors publish independent expert analyses and insights. I write about the broad intersection of data and society. When it comes to using “big data” to analyze the patterns of society, ...

Remember the famous 30 million word gap in language exposure between the children of professional families and those on welfare, and all its attendant problems in reading and attention? How could ...

The simple pronoun "I" carries enormous psychological weight in ways most people never realize. Research shows that how frequently you use first-person singular pronouns reveals crucial aspects of ...

Language patterns could be predicted by simple laws of physics, a new study has found. A theory using ideas from physics predicts where and how dialects occur. Language patterns could be predicted by ...

Why, and when, do we learn to speak the way that we do? New research on African-American children presents an unexpected finding: language use can go on a roller-coaster ride during childhood as kids ...

Viorica Marian knows the power of multilingualism firsthand. She grew up bilingual in Moldova—a small country nestled between Ukraine and Romania that was formerly a part of the Soviet Union—speaking ...

Like learning math, from simple counting to solving complex equations, language learning happens in a similar stepwise fashion, with each new step building on previous knowledge. Brown (1973) outlines ...

The way African penguins talk — in shrieks and squawks — during breeding season may not sound like much, but new research published Tuesday suggests that the raucous calls follow linguistic patterns ...