Humans are undeniably unique among all the animals in the world. Our capacity for complex thinking is far above that of any other animal, so it is no surprise that researchers want to know why. In ...

Listen carefully to a spoken conversation and you’ll notice that the speakers use a lot of little quasi-words—mm-hmm, um, huh? and the like—that don’t convey any information about the topic of the ...

The recipient of the 2024 Crafoord Prize in Mathematics discusses math as art, math as language, and math as abstract thought. It took a long time for Claire Voisin to fall in love with mathematics.

But these little words may be much more important than that. A few linguists now think that far from being detritus, they may be crucial traffic signals to regulate the flow of conversation as well as ...