Noam Chomsky has endured many attempts to disprove his widely respected theories of language, but never have any of them come from a 3-ounce bird. Subscribe to read this story ad-free Get unlimited ...

The "round" in "Silent Night" might call up imagery of the soft, maternal kind, but in the phrase "round yon virgin," it simply means "around." "Yon" is an antiquated word for "that one" or "over ...

To the casual human listener, the love song of a humpback whale sounds magnificently free-flowing and improvised. But fresh mathematical analysis of the song shows there are complex grammatical rules.

The “round” in “Silent Night” might call up imagery of the soft, maternal kind, but in the phrase “round yon virgin,” it simply means “around.” “Yon” is an antiquated word for “that one” or “over ...

Now that Weird Al week is long past, we can mull over the merits — and demerits — of Al Yankovic's new mishmash of novelty music: Mandatory Fun. For word nerds, there is no question that Word Crimes, ...