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 ...

WASHINGTON, Nov. 12, 2024 – There are an estimated 7,000 languages spoken worldwide, each offering unique ways to express human emotion. But do certain emotions show regularities in their vocal ...

We all know what words we might shout out when we stub a toe or touch something hot. For those of us who speak English, it's probably "ouch." But what kinds of "pain words" (or "interjections") do ...

What would you say if you suddenly stubbed your toe on a doorframe? Depending on how much it hurt, you might yelp in pain, unleash a stream of expletives—or utter a very specific exclamation such as ...

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 ...

AI doesn't register internal states. There is no "work in progress." There is a prompt, and it does its thing, and gives you its response. You can look at the output and redirect as you see fit, but ...

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').