News 2019

For 50 years, the theory of the "descended larynx" has stated that before speech can emerge, the larynx must be in a low position to produce differentiated vowels. Monkeys, which have a vocal tract anatomy that resembles that of humans in the essential articulators (tongue, jaw, lips) but with a higher larynx, could not produce differentiated vocalizations.

Two French researchers from the CNRS and Ecole nationale des chartes disprove the theory according to which Corneille was Molière's ghostwriter - a popular and century-old theory, defended by some academics and writers. According to their forthcoming study in Science Advances, Molière would most likely be the only author of his numerous masterpieces.

Carnegie Mellon University, a longtime proponent of open-access research, is championing an international movement to revolutionize academic publishing. The university recently reached a transformative agreement with the scientific publishing giant Elsevier that prioritizes free and public access to the university's research.

Channels McGill University News and Events Music, including songs with words, appears to be a universal phenomenon according to a paper published this week in Science. An international team of researchers involving musicians, data scientists, psychologists, political scientists and linguists, including one from McGill University, reached this conclusion after five years of collaboration, bringing together a broad range of skills and tools to the question of whether music is universal.

This week we catch up with Neuroscience PhD student Claudia, who shares with us her favourite musical in London, experience meeting fellow Neurology scientists in Paris and top spot in the city for finding inspiration to write. What are you studying, why are you interested in this subject and what do you plan to do in the future?  I am currently doing a PhD in Neuroscience researching Alzheimer's disease.

Donald Trump used Twitter effectively to promote his campaign, communicate policy goals and attack opponents as part of a systematic campaign ahead of the 2016 US Presidential elections - a new study reveals. Detailed analysis of the US President's tweets from 2009 to 2018 has also allowed researchers to estimated the point in time when the former Apprentice host actually decided to run for the Presidency.

Speaking, writing and reading is integral to everyday life, where language is the primary tool for expression and communication. Studying how people use language - what words and phrases they unconsciously choose and combine - can help us better understand ourselves and why we behave the way we do. Linguistics scholars seek to determine what is unique and universal about the language we use, how it is acquired and the ways it changes over time.

Starting today (Wednesday, July 10), Elsevier, the world's largest provider of scientific, technical and medical information, has shut off the University of California's direct access to new articles. Its 2,500-journal portfolio includes such highly-regarded publications as The Lancet and Cell . But with the UC Berkeley Library's help, researchers can still access articles from Elsevier journals in other ways.

New research examined how Republicans and Democrats express themselves online in an attempt to understand how polarization of beliefs occurs on social media. New Stanford linguistics research has analyzed how Republicans and Democrats use different language when discussing mass shootings on social media and found that Republicans talk more about the shooter and Democrats focus more on the victims.

New research from the University of Birmingham suggests Benjamin Franklin, one of the Founding Fathers of the United States, could have contributed to a forgotten shipwreck narrative. Based on studies of Franklin's early life as a printer, Dr Hazel Wilkinson claims there are clues which provide information about Benjamin Franklin's activities during his first visit to London as an eighteen-year-old printer.

Playwright Alana Valentine has been delighted by responses from scientists to her work Made to Measure, now playing at the Seymour Centre. Playwright Alana Valentine is urging scientists and clinicians to attend her new play, Made to Measure , at the Seymour Centre because it puts complex research in the public domain and it brings to life the human behaviour around obesity issues.

A University of Bristol academic appears to have succeeded where countless cryptographers, linguistics scholars and computer programs have failed - by cracking the code of the 'world's most mysterious text', the Voynich manuscript. Although the purpose and meaning of the manuscript had eluded scholars for over a century, it took Research Associate Dr. Gerard Cheshire two weeks, using a combination of lateral thinking and ingenuity, to identify the language and writing system of the famously inscrutable document.

Nowadays, Digital Humanities is a booming subject, but it has a long history. "Quantitative Literary Studies" at the University of Stuttgart investigates how computational methods have been used for the analysis and interpretation of language and literature since the early 19th century. The German Research Foundation (DFG) has now approved the continuation of the project.

Diet-induced changes in the human bite resulted in new sounds such as "f" in languages all over the world, a study by an international team led by researchers at the University of Zurich has shown. The findings contradict the theory that the range of human sounds has remained fixed throughout human history.

Non-English speaking migrants take to the unique Australian dialect more readily than English-speaking migrants, according to research by ANU. The research from the School of Literature, Languages and Linguistics found migrants learning English as their second language use "Aussie words", such as 'esky', 'thong', 'doona' and 'nappy' at the same rate as Australian-born people.