English vocabulary is designed to help children learn according to research led by the UK’s Lancaster University.
From obvious examples, like “woof” representing the sound of a dog to sounds with similar meanings having similar structures (for example, the “sl” sound at the beginning of a word often has negative properties as in “slime, slur, slum, slug”), English is full of hints.
An international team led by Professor Padraic Monaghan from the Department of Psychology at Lancaster University analyzed the sound meaning structure using statistical techniques from biology and genetics. More…
