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An Infant’s Refined Tongue
ScienceNOW: Your baby’s language skills may surprise you. Before they speak—before they even crawl—infants can distinguish between two languages they’ve never heard before just by looking at the face of a speaker. And if they’re
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Vieux, en bonne sante . . . et bilingue
In French, that means old, healthy . . . and bilingual. I could just as well have used Google Translate to put that phrase into Finnish or Spanish or Chinese. The fact is, I don’t
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What Does it Mean to be Alive? How Notions of the Natural World Unfold- in Development and Across Languages.
Understanding the concept of a “living thing” is a late developmental achievement. Early research by Jean Piaget, showed that kids attribute “life status” to things that move on their own (e.g. clouds or bikes) and
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Baby Talk is Universal
A major function of speech is the communication of intentions. In everyday conversation between adults, intentions are conveyed through multiple channels, including the syntax and semantics of the language, but also through nonverbal vocal cues
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A New Language Barrier: Why learning a new language may make you forget your old one.
Traveling abroad presents an ideal opportunity to master a foreign language. While the immersion process facilitates communication in a diverse world, people are often surprised to find they have difficulty returning to their native language.
