The brain will occasionally change language in order to make communication as precise and concise as possible, new research shows. The findings should come as good news for linguistic purists terrified about the corruption of their mother tongue, say scientists who used an artificial language for their study, which is published in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. “Our research shows that humans choose to reshape language when the structure is either overly redundant or confusing,” says T. Florian Jaeger, assistant professor of the sciences at the University of Rochester. “This study suggests that we prefer languages that on average convey information efficiently, striking a balance between effort and clarity.”
