Intonation is an integral part of communication for all speakers. But can sign languages have intonation? A new study shows that signers use their faces to create intonational ‘melodies’ just as ...

This paper identifies modern Yiddish intonation patterns for three different semantic structures and contends that they derive from modern (Ashkenazic) talmudic chant. An examination of the ...

Tonal languages are different from non-tonal languages because tonal languages are dependent on the emphasis and pronunciation, because how a word is said will affect its meaning. It is quite ...

The distinctive sounds of a newborn's first cries may be influenced by the mother tongue of its parents. A new study of over a thousand recorded cries from 30 French newborns and 30 German newborns ...

Dogs have the ability to distinguish vocabulary words and the intonation of human speech through brain regions similar to those that humans use, a new study reports. Dogs have the ability to ...

When we read, it’s very easy for us to tell individual words apart: In written language, spaces are used to separate words from one another. But this is not the case with spoken language – speech is a ...

Raúl Sánchez and Dan Bullock are linguistics and communications specialists and NYU professors. They say improving vocalics, aka nonverbal aspects of speech, is key for effective communication. Vocal ...