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Dr. Mitsuhiko Ota, a linguist in the University of Edinburgh Language Sciences department, was the lead researcher in a 2018 study (Ota, Davies-Jenkins, and Skarabela 2018) examining infant-directed speech, a.k.a. baby talk. Across languages, lexical items specific to infant-directed speech (i.e., 'baby-talk words') are characterized by three major features: 1. onomatopoeia incorporated into non-arbitrary, "highly iconic" words, e.g. "quack", "bow wow" 2. diminutives, e.g. "daddy", "tummy" 3. reduplication, e.g. "din din", "easy peasy" These three lexical characteristics may help infants discover the referential nature of words, identify word referents, and segment fluent speech into words. If so, the amount of lexical input containing these properties should predict infants' rate of vocabulary growth. To test this prediction, Ota's team tracked the vocabulary size in 47 English-learning infants from 9 to 21 months and examined whether vocabulary growth was related to measures of iconicity, diminutives, and reduplication in the lexical input at 9 months. The team's analyses showed that both diminutives and reduplication in the input were associated with vocabulary growth, although measures of iconicity were not. These results are consistent with the hypothesis that phonological properties typical of lexical input in infant-directed speech play a role in early vocabulary growth.

This article discusses hundreds of the world's endangered & threatened languages in New York. Linguist Ross Perlin introduces the work he has done to document language extinction in NY for over 11 years. It introduces/provides an interview of the people who speak languages that are going extinct.

This text dives into the psychological aspects of linguistics and how kind words can positively impact ones neurological senses and brighten someone's day. Not only does it send dopamine hits, but the addition of personalizing a note to someone, whether thanking them or letting them know they matter, is crucial to relationships and having meaninful conversations.

Imagine putting on a virtual reality headset and entering a world where you can explore communities, like Missoula, except your character, and everyone you interact with, speaks Salish, Cheyenne or Blackfoot. Imagine having a device like Amazon's Alexa that understands and speaks exclusively in Indigenous languages. Or imagine a digital language playground in Facebook's Metaverse, where programmers create interactive games to enhance Indigenous language learning. Michael Running Wolf, a Northern Cheyenne man who is earning his Ph.D. in computer science, wants to make these dreams a reality. Running Wolf grew up in Birney, a town with a population of 150 just south of the Northern Cheyenne Reservation. He spent most of his childhood living without electricity. Running Wolf can speak some Cheyenne, but he wants Indigenous language learning to be more accessible, immersive and engaging. And he believes artificial intelligence is the solution. Running Wolf is one of a handful of researchers worldwide who are studying Indigenous languages and AI. He works with a small team of linguists and data scientists, and together, they analyze Indigenous languages and work to translate them into something a computer can interpret. If his team can accomplish this, Running Wolf reasons, then perhaps AI can be used to help revitalize Indigenous languages everywhere.

While we may be punctuating less as a whole (a recent study found that only 39 percent of college students punctuate the end of texts and 45 percent the end of instant messages), the punctuation we do use is more likely to be scrutinized. "Digital punctuation can carry more weight than traditional writing because it ends up conveying tone, rhythm and attitude rather than grammatical structure," said Ben Zimmer, a linguist and the executive editor of Vocabulary.com. "It can make even a lowly period become freighted with special significance."

The correct use of punctuation can really improve someone's opinion of you. The author of this piece decided to go out with someone based on their use of punctuation in a text message. The author also discusses how we have been conditioned to read certain punctuation marks and how they correlate to tone of voice in the text message. Punctuation marks are an important aspect of language that can help convey a meaning in a text.

Filler words ("um", "uh", "like", etc) play an important linguistic role in communication. This article explores explains the different types of filler words that exist, as well as the function that they serve in conversation. It also briefly touches on the use of filler words in different demographics.

This article describes a linguistic experiment that took place in Antarctica in 2017-2018. Scientists going to Antarctica were surveyed on their pronunciation of specific words, and by the end of the four month trip, the team pronounced one of the words in a different way to their individual original pronunciation. This illustrates that accents form through prolonged social and geographical isolation.

The author examines the meaning of rizz, which is derived from "charisma." This term, rizz, proves how dynamic language is. Rizz also emphasizes the role of online platforms, such as TikTok, where younger people can own and coin their linguistic expressions.

This chapter from "World Literature Today", by Sydneyann Binion and David Shook, talks about how languages and the cultures connected to them are constantly moribund. There are people who are trying to revive these dying languages around the world, however the process of doing so is complicated.

This article considers sarcasm to be "the highest form of intelligence" because it symbolizes an individuals flexible and creative mind. Through research done by psychologist and neuroscientists, it has been found that the usage of sarcasm actually requires more brain power to interpret than a literary statement. This is supported by the fact that young children don't understand sarcasm while teenagers are able to fully utilize it.

This article explains a study conducted to analyze how modern technology affects linguistic education. Based on data from 1990 to 2015, it concluded that technology interventions support language learning.

The notion of a "gay lisp"-an offensive stereotype to many people-has been a confusing phenomenon for linguists. For decades, popular depictions of gay men have sometimes portrayed them pronouncing the letter "s" as more of a "th" sound-even though studies have failed to find "lispier" speech in gay men than in straight men. Now, however, preliminary data from a small study presented here last week at the biannual Meeting of the Acoustical Society of America (ASA) show that young boys who don't identify with their assigned gender use "th"-like pronunciation at slightly higher rates than their peers who do, although they seem to grow out of that tendency. The authors speculate that stereotypes of gay adults may be rooted in the speech of boys who go on to identify as gay.

This paper discusses how the French Revolution impacted language going into the 19th century. As the language and rhetoric of French Republicans spread throughout Europe, a cultural gulf emerged between France and traditional European nation-states, such as Prussia.

The U.S Department of Defense is cutting funding for 13/31 language flagship programs at 23 universities including Brigham Young, UH Manoa, and University of Washington. This comes as a surprise for the linguistic community as this will cut nearly half of of Chinese, Korean, Arabic, and Russian groups alike. The overall concern is this will be detrimental to national security, and global diplomacy raising conerns about the future of language education, and the U.S's ability to engage with other cultures.

This is an article debating on what was the "true" first language ever used in human history. Most historians and linguists somewhat agree that the oldest language is between Sumerian, Egyptian and Akkadian.

This article discusses that there is a new emergence of the "Tiktok voice". This accent is described as one with a rising intonation and declarative sentences which incapsulates a sense of persuasiveness and personalization. The "Tiktok voice" has been more concentrated in the younger female demographics as it is scientifically proven that women are often the innovators of linguistics.