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University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign Launches Masters in Translation and Interpreting

Fall semester of this year marks the launch of a degree-seeking translation and interpretation program at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. What makes this program particularly unique among a small but stellar group of U.S. universities that offer similar courses of study is a welcome fact for many potential students: the university offers online […]

A Brief Overview of Several Speech-Language Disorders

A recent study out of the Max Planck Institute for Human Cognitive and Brain Sciences in Leipzig may shed some light on the neural mechanisms underlying dyslexia. Using magnetic resonance tomography (MRT) technology, researchers compared the brains of control subjects with those of dyslexic adults. Their findings pinpointed a very specific malfunction – originating in […]

EEG Study Examines the Brain as it Skips Semantics

Getting through day-to-day life requires a multitude of shortcuts and heuristic devices. Consciously or subconsciously, we save time by skimming pages, half-listening to lectures, and multitasking whenever possible. Similarly, our processing of language demands glossing over certain semantic variations in order to quickly and efficiently glean meaning from the bevy of information we receive every […]

The Etymology of Popular Sports

Many of the sports we play and watch today have fascinating etymological histories. Below you will find some of the freaky, funny, intuitive, and counterintuitive roots in the world of sport. The word “sport” itself has been around in the English language since the mid-15th century, when it was derived from the Old French desporter, […]

Etymology of Common Legal Terms

Legalese – the bone-dry and tortuous language of the law – can be as mystifying as it is ubiquitous. To help our readers parse some of the more common and curious legal terms, below are their Latin roots. a posteriori: A phrase used to describe an argument derived from experience, it means “from later.” a […]

A Cross-Disciplinary Approach to Language Resuscitation

Just as linguists drew from the field of biology to apply the terms “living”, “endangered”, “dead”, and “extinct” to languages, so, too, do other fields dip into linguistics, either to develop models based on concepts popularized in that field or – in the case of mathematician Anne Kandler and colleagues – to lend a helping […]

Recent Studies Examine Categories of Language and Thought

Three centuries ago, in his Essay Concerning Human Understanding, John Locke examined the idea of linguistic and psychological categories by juxtaposing them with a hypothetical language in which every object that exists would have its own name. Instead of using the word “bird” to mean any member of its species, people would be forced to […]

Incredible Etymologies: Robot

If we trace the history of any word diligently enough, we are sure to experience the uncanny sensation of how truly interconnected world languages of the past and present are. Perhaps no word better evokes that idea than the word robot. In modern usage, robot conjures up images of lifeless automatons and machines whose explicit […]

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