{"id":4580,"date":"2016-02-02T23:35:25","date_gmt":"2016-02-03T04:35:25","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/sciencemediacentre.ca\/site\/?p=4580"},"modified":"2016-02-05T14:39:35","modified_gmt":"2016-02-05T19:39:35","slug":"shared-semantic-structure-between-human-languages","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/sciencemediacentre.ca\/site\/shared-semantic-structure-between-human-languages\/","title":{"rendered":"Shared semantic structure between human languages"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><a href=\"http:\/\/sciencemediacentre.ca\/site\/wp-content\/uploads\/2013\/12\/SMCC-english2.jpg\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"aligncenter size-full wp-image-110\" src=\"http:\/\/sciencemediacentre.ca\/site\/wp-content\/uploads\/2013\/12\/SMCC-english2.jpg\" alt=\"SMCC-english2\" width=\"255\" height=\"126\" \/><\/a><\/p>\n<p><strong><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Human languages share a common semantic structure regardless of the regional environment in which a language evolved, according a study of 81 languages. <\/span><\/strong><\/p>\n<p><strong><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">The authors believe concepts expressed in language may arise from universal properties of human cognition. Examining how words are related to other words in a language revealed a universal semantic network. For example the researchers found that \u201csalt\u201d and \u201csea\u201d or \u201cocean\u201d are more closely related to each other than they are to the word \u201cSun\u201d, and are more likely to share common origins or roots.<\/span><\/strong><\/p>\n<p><strong><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Further they found the relationship between these and other words that could be strongly affected by the environment (e.g. stone and stand, lake and river) held between languages. <\/span><\/strong><\/p>\n<p><a href=\"http:\/\/www.pnas.org\/cgi\/doi\/10.1073\/pnas.1520752113\" target=\"_blank\"><span style=\"text-decoration: underline;\">Original research paper<\/span><\/a>\u00a0published in\u00a0<em>Proceedings of the National Academy of Science<\/em><em>\u00a0<\/em>on <strong>February 1<\/strong><span class=\"aBn\" tabindex=\"0\" data-term=\"goog_453723367\"><span class=\"aQJ\"><strong>, 2015<\/strong>.<\/span><\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"text-decoration: underline;\"><em><strong>Names and affiliations of selected\u00a0authors<\/strong><\/em><\/span><\/p>\n<h4><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Hyejin Youn, Mathematical Institute, University of Oxford, United Kingdom<\/span><\/h4>\n<h4><strong><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Tanmoy Bhattacharya, Santa Fe Institute, Los Alamos, New Mexico, U.S.A.<\/span><\/strong><\/h4>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Human languages share a common semantic structure regardless of the regional environment in which a language evolved, according a study of 81 languages. The authors believe concepts expressed in language may arise from universal properties of human cognition. Examining how words are related to other words in a language revealed a universal semantic network. For [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[25],"tags":[1647,1722,200],"class_list":["post-4580","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-paper-of-interest","tag-human-behaviour","tag-language","tag-neurology"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p4DqbN-1bS","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/sciencemediacentre.ca\/site\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4580","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/sciencemediacentre.ca\/site\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/sciencemediacentre.ca\/site\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/sciencemediacentre.ca\/site\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/sciencemediacentre.ca\/site\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=4580"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"http:\/\/sciencemediacentre.ca\/site\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4580\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":4591,"href":"http:\/\/sciencemediacentre.ca\/site\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4580\/revisions\/4591"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/sciencemediacentre.ca\/site\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=4580"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/sciencemediacentre.ca\/site\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=4580"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/sciencemediacentre.ca\/site\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=4580"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}