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Variation is a characteristic of language: there is more than one way of saying the same thing in a given language. Variation can exist in domains such as pronunciation (e.g., more than one way of pronouncing the same phoneme or the same word), lexicon (e.g., multiple words with the same meaning), grammar (e.g., different syntactic constructions expressing the same grammatical function), and ...
The use of the word variety to refer to the different forms avoids the use of the term language, which many people associate only with the standard language, and the term dialect, which is often associated with non-standard language forms thought of as less prestigious or "proper" than the standard. [3]
However, some linguists consider the borrowing of words or morphemes from another language to be different from other types of code-switching. [2] [3] Code-switching can occur when there is a change in the environment in which one is speaking, or in the context of speaking a different language or switching the verbiage to match that of the ...
Repetition uses the same word, or synonyms, antonyms, etc. For example, "Which dress are you going to wear?" – "I will wear my green frock," uses the synonyms "dress" and "frock" for lexical cohesion. Collocation uses related words that typically go together or tend to repeat the same meaning. An example is the phrase "once upon a time".
Two different word forms can actually be different "faces" of one and the same word . An example is the English indefinite articles a and an . The usages an aardvark and a bear are grammatical, but the usages *a aardvark and *an bear are ungrammatical (as is marked with "*" in linguistics).
Some of the properties that define human language as opposed to other communication systems are: the arbitrariness of the linguistic sign, meaning that there is no predictable connection between a linguistic sign and its meaning; the duality of the linguistic system, meaning that linguistic structures are built by combining elements into larger ...
Lexicology, the study of words; Syntax, the principles and rules for constructing phrases, clauses, and the like in human languages; Semantics, the meaningful content of words, sentences, or other language elements; and; Pragmatics, the ways in which context contributes to meaning in natural language use. This division varies among linguists ...
A heteronym (also known as a heterophone) is a word that has a different pronunciation and meaning from another word but the same spelling. These are homographs that are not homophones . Thus, lead ( /ˈlɛd/ the metal) and lead ( /ˈliːd/ a leash) are heteronyms, but mean ( /ˈmin/ average) and mean ( /ˈmin/ intend) are not, since they are ...