Our ability to comprehend and produce language is one of humans' most impressive skills,
but it is not flawless. We must convey and interpret messages via a noisy channel in ever …

How does social cognition help us communicate through language? At what levels does this
interaction occur? In classical views, social cognition is independent of language, and …

Languages vary considerably in syntactic structure. About 40% of the world's languages
have subject–verb–object order, and about 40% have subject–object–verb order. Extensive …

A foundational assumption of human communication is that speakers should say as much as
necessary, but no more. Yet, people routinely produce redundant adjectives and their …

Human social intelligence relies on our ability to infer other people's mental states such as
their beliefs, desires, and intentions. While people are proficient at mental state inference …

Abstract Language and social cognition come together in communication, but their relation
has been intensely contested. Here, I argue that these two distinctively human abilities are …

Word order harmony describes the tendency, found across the world's languages, to
consistently order syntactic heads relative to dependents. It is one of the most well-known …

Abstract Language use is shaped by a pressure to communicate efficiently, yet the tendency
towards redundancy is said to increase in older age. The longstanding assumption is that …

Combining information from adjectives with the nouns they modify is essential for
comprehension. Previous research suggests that preschoolers do not always integrate …

A psychophysical analysis of referential communication establishes a causal link between a
visual stimulus and a speaker's perception of this stimulus, and between the speaker's …