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New journal focuses on how the mind and brain process language
A cartoon drawing of two silhouetted heads facing each other, with lines to indicate speaking, moving from the mouths to the brains around in a circle.

New journal focuses on how the mind and brain process language

The open-access, online-only Glossa Psycholinguistics recently published its inaugural issue after more than two years of effort from Penn linguist Florian Schwarz and colleagues around the world.

Michele W. Berger

People imitate accent features they expect to hear, even without hearing them
An illustration of many different-colored heads with many different-colored talking bubbles.

People imitate accent features they expect to hear, even without hearing them

Research from postdoc Lacey Wade confirmed this idea, what she calls expectation-driven convergence, in a controlled experiment for the first time. The work reveals just how much the subconscious factors into the way people speak.

Michele W. Berger

Interrupting to show we care

Interrupting to show we care

Nicole Holliday of the School of Arts & Sciences interviewed experts about cooperative overlapping, which some cultures perceive as a sign of engagement and others view as a sign of disrespect.

A partnership to preserve Kashaya
A person leaning against a tree outside, wearing a blue-and-white button down shirt, arms crossed.

Eugene Buckley is an associate professor and Graduate Chair in the Department of Linguistics.

A partnership to preserve Kashaya

Since the 1980s, linguist Eugene Buckley has studied this Native American language, now spoken by just a dozen or so people in northern California. In collaboration with members and descendants of the Kashia Band of Pomo Indians, he’s built a database of Kashaya words, sounds, and stories.

Michele W. Berger

Mapping words to color
fanned out color sample sheets depicting a rainbow of shades

A Penn study has looked at the communicative needs that drive similarities and differences in how languages develop vocabularies for color. 

Mapping words to color

Researchers led by postdoc Colin Twomey and professor Joshua Plotkin developed an algorithm that can infer the communicative needs different linguistic communities place on colors.

Katherine Unger Baillie

TikTok talk
Two people sitting together looking at a phone with a TikTok logo

In linguistics, “whoever’s cool leads the change,” which explains why trends come and go via TikTok, says linguistics professor Nicole Holliday.

  • Q&A

    • TikTok talk

    Largely characterized as a Gen Z phenomenon, TikTok is a video-sharing app with more than 100 million active users in the U.S. alone—and it’s changing the way that we speak, says sociolinguist Nicole Holliday.

    Kristina Linnea García

    The intonation Black/biracial men use to speak about race
    A black-and-white drawing of a head with lines signifying the person is speaking.

    The intonation Black/biracial men use to speak about race

    In a study of college-educated biracial men, ages 18 to 32, sociolinguist Nicole Holliday found that, when asked about race, this group frequently brought up law enforcement unprompted and discussed the subject using vocal tone more generally associated with white speakers.

    Michele W. Berger