Language
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Words, grammar and how people make meaning.
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Why everyone agrees which blob is 'bouba' and which is 'kiki'
Show people a soft blob and a spiky star and ask which one is bouba and which is kiki. The words are made up, yet in the classic version of the test about 95%…
Why the most common words are the shortest: Zipf's two laws of language
Count the words in almost any long text and a strange pattern appears: the most common word turns up about twice as often as the second, three times as often…