Iconicity, a resemblance between properties of linguistic form (both in spoken and signed
languages) and meaning, has traditionally been considered to be a marginal, irrelevant …

The presence of divergent and independent research traditions in the gestural and vocal
domains of primate communication has resulted in major discrepancies in the definition and …

Language is an essential part of what makes us human. Where did it come from? How did it
develop into the complex system we know today? And what can an evolutionary perspective …

Technical skills are no longer enough for workers to compete in this highly competitive
global work environment. Soft skills are of paramount importance. A multiple case study …

Experimental and cross-linguistic evidence suggests that certain speech sounds are
associated with size, especially high front vowels with 'small'and low back vowels with …

Sound symbolism emerged as a prevalent component in the origin and development of
language. However, as previous studies have either been lacking in scope or in phonetic …

We propose reframing one of the key questions in the field of language evolution as what
was the original human-specific communicative system? With the help of cognitive …

Some spoken words are iconic, exhibiting a resemblance between form and meaning. We
used native speaker ratings to assess the iconicity of 3001 English words, analyzing their …

How abstract is language? We show that abstractness pervades every corner of language,
going far beyond the usual examples of freedom and justice. In the light of the ubiquity of …

Recent work on emerging sign languages provides evidence for how key properties of
linguistic systems are created. Here we use laboratory experiments to investigate the …