What it is about women?
A few weeks a go, a young girl was assaulted in the othodox Jewish community of Beit Shemesh near Jerusalem. Being from an orthodox family, the girl was dressed in what most people in Israel and the rest of the world would judge an inordinately puritanical fashion. Apparently, that was not enough ...
Learning word meanings at 6 months?
Forthcoming in PNAS, an article by Elika Bergelson and Daniel Swingley arguing that "At 6–9 months, human infants know the meanings of many common nouns" with obvious implications for the study of cultural learning. The authors link their findings to the recent discovery of mindreading abilities ...
What’s the point of talking to your child?
I would like to recruit ICCI readers to help me solve a mystery that has long puzzled me. I have met many linguists who know (or think they know) that: 1) There are cultures where children are not spoken to until they already talk fluently (1 or 2 years of age). 2) In some cultures, infants are ...