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For decades, researchers have assumed that people overestimate the risk of dramatic causes of death, such as road traffic accidents. The reason given for this was that such deaths are the subject of far greater media attention than more significant but less spectacular mortality risks. However, a study at the Technical University of Munich (TUM) has now debunked this assumption.

Linguistic analysis provides insight into the vocabularies for body parts in more than a thousand languages Human bodies have similar designs. However, languages differ in the way they divide the body into parts and name them. A team of linguists from the Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology in Leipzig and the University of Passau conducted a comparison of body part vocabularies to shed light on the interplay between language, culture, and perception of the human body.

Study finds language-processing difficulties are an indicator - more so than memory loss - of amnestic mild cognitive impairment. Individuals with mild cognitive impairment, especially of the "amnestic subtype" (aMCI), are at increased risk for dementia due to Alzheimer's disease relative to cognitively healthy older adults.

Twitter study may signal shift to greater Ukrainian self-identification Published on Wednesday 10 January 2024 Last updated on Monday 15 January 2024 Russia's invasion of Ukraine in 2022 significantly accelerated the shift from Russian language to Ukrainian on social media in what may signal a move towards greater Ukrainian self-identification, according to new research from the University of Bath, Ludwig-Maximilians-University Munich, and the Technical University of Munich.

Systematic testing of OpenAI's GPT-3 reveals that question format can influence models to agree with misinformation New research into large language models shows that they repeat conspiracy theories, harmful stereotypes, and other forms of misinformation. In a recent study, researchers at the University of Waterloo systematically tested an early version of ChatGPT's understanding of statements in six categories: facts, conspiracies, controversies, misconceptions, stereotypes, and fiction.

Study highlights the positive impact of doctors working over the festive period - may prompt broadcasters to air new Doctor Who episodes each year at Christmas A new Doctor Who episode shown during the festive period, especially on Christmas Day, is associated with lower death rates in the subsequent year across the UK, finds a new study.

Novels and poems often contain descriptions of plants or animals - sometimes more, sometimes less detailed. The extent to which flora and fauna feature in a literary work also depends on who wrote it and under what circumstances. For example, female authors tend to use more species names when they write.

Study on the connection between language and thinking by neuroscientists at Freie Universität Berlin published The influence of language on human thinking may be stronger than previously thought. This is the result of a new study by the language, cognition, and neuroscientist Friedemann Pulvermüller and his team from the Laboratory for Brain and Language Research at Freie Universität Berlin.

Department of Brain and Cognitive Sciences faculty members Ev Fedorenko, Ted Gibson, and Roger Levy believe they can answer a fundamental question: What is the purpose of language? Over a decade ago, the neuroscientist Ev Fedorenko asked 48 English speakers to complete tasks like reading sentences, recalling information, solving math problems, and listening to music.

As in previous years, the speech from the throne was difficult once again: it contained many complicated and unfamiliar words, phrases, and constructions. More even, than the speeches from the throne of the previous four years, analysis by linguists Leo Lentz and Henk Pander Maat shows. Difficult speech from the throne To measure the level of difficulty of the speech from the throne, Lentz and Pander Maat used LiNT, a software tool developed by Utrecht University.

Throughout history, people have created different sign systems that correspond to the specifics of each language. The scripts have evolved in the process. Today, it is no longer possible to trace exactly how, since the development has usually been completed thousands of years ago. This is not the case with the West African Vai script, which did not come into being until the 1830s.

The scientists used a natural language-based logical inference dataset to create smaller language models that outperformed much larger counterparts. Socrates once said: "It is not the size of a thing, but the quality that truly matters.

Grambank, a database of 2,467 languages that Yale linguist Claire Bowern helped create, helps researchers better understand the stakes when languages die off. Languages, like animal species, can go extinct. More than half of the world's approximately 7,000 signed and spoken languages are currently endangered.

An international team has created a new database that documents patterns of grammatical variation in over 2400 of the world's languages What shapes the structure of languages? In a new study, an international team of researchers reports that grammatical structure is highly flexible across languages, shaped by common ancestry, constraints on cognition and usage, and language contact.

MIT researchers trained logic-aware language models to reduce harmful stereotypes like gender and racial biases. Close Turns out, even language models "think" they're biased. When prompted in ChatGPT, the response was as follows: "Yes, language models can have biases, because the training data reflects the biases present in society from which that data was collected.

Seven Utrecht University Humanities scholars have been awarded a grant by the Dutch Research Council (NWO) in the Open Competition SGW programme.

New study by a researcher in English didactics at Freie Universität Berlin shows that the use of hand gestures in English lessons can improve language retention A recent study from the Institute of English Language and Literature at Freie Universität Berlin has shown that using codified gestures as a teaching method may make it easier for children and adolescents to understand the grammar rules of a foreign language.

Garbell, developed at the Neology Observatory at Pompeu Fabra University, within the framework of the Research Program of the Catalan Studies Institute, analyses words that are not in the standard dictionary but we use on a daily basis and tells us if they are more or less dictionarizable. This technological tool is the first in the world capable of making this assessment and could inspire similar tools for other languages.

A global database helps explore the complex history of our genes and languages Does the history of our languages match the history of our genes? Charles Darwin thought yes, others said no. An interdisciplinary team of researchers from the Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology, the University of Zurich and Harvard University has put together GeLaTo, a global database linking linguistic and genetic data.