As a refresher, syntax describes sentence structure—how words are arranged grammatically and what parts of speech they use. Semantics describes the actual meaning those words convey, which can vary ...

Figure 1: Timing of syntactic processing following different strategies. The colored circles refer to the nodes of the syntactic structure that are built at the time point the word in the same color ...

Do speakers of different languages build sentence structure in the same way? In a neuroimaging study, scientists recorded the brain activity of participants listening to Dutch stories. In contrast to ...

“Avoid the passive voice” is a favorite maxim of writing teachers. But for young learners, exposure to passive construction—and other more complex sentences in spoken language—may help children ...

Sign up for the daily CJR newsletter. Years ago, a copy editor working on a reporter’s story changed some of the “whiches” to “thats” when they were being ...

The film follows a young student named Jimmy as he learns about sentences in school. Through various examples, he discovers the difference between telling sentences, which end with a period, and ...

You probably hardly pay any attention to it, as it is natural to us. You are doing it right now and you are very talented at it. You also do it when you talk on the phone. When you hang out with your ...