By Carl Zimmer For thousands of years, philosophers have argued about the purpose of language. Plato believed it was essential for thinking. Thought “is a silent inner conversation of the soul ...

For those looking to learn a new language, the process can feel daunting, especially as an adult. It’s long been thought that the earlier you learn new skills, the easier they are to pick up.The ...

But the human brain routinely does this work nearly instantaneously based on the language’s grammatical rules, says linguist Andrea E. Martin of the Max Planck Institute for Psycholinguistics in ...