Imagine you’ve just slammed a door on your finger. More often than not, this sudden jolt of pain elicits a vocal response. Maybe you exclaim “ouch!” or let out a cry or loud groan. But do the sounds ...

Kasia Pisanski receives funding from the National Centre for Scientific Research in France (CNRS 80-Prime grant 'EvoHumanVoice') and the National Research Agency in France (ANR grant 'SCREAM').

Listen carefully to a spoken conversation and you’ll notice that the speakers use a lot of little quasi-words—mm-hmm, um, huh? and the like—that don’t convey any information about the topic of the ...

Some parts of speech get lots of attention from language researchers. Nouns and verbs certainly do, and this seems appropriate, given that they refer to the objects and the actions that make up our ...