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The Indo-European and Semitic languages are the most typically cited examples of fusional languages. [1] However, others have been described. For example, Navajo is sometimes categorized as a fusional language because its complex system of verbal affixes has become condensed and irregular enough that discerning individual morphemes is rarely ...
If A is a set of symbols, and A * is the set of all strings built from symbols in A, then a string set L ⊆ A * is called a formal language over the alphabet A. The language L is called cyclic if ∀w∈A *. ∀n>0. w ∈ L ⇔ w n ∈ L, and; ∀v,w∈A *. vw ∈ L ⇔ wv ∈ L,
Chiastic structure, or chiastic pattern, is a literary technique in narrative motifs and other textual passages. An example of chiastic structure would be two ideas, A and B, together with variants A' and B', being presented as A,B,B',A'. Chiastic structures that involve more components are sometimes called "ring structures" or "ring compositions".
The generation of the English plural dogs from dog is an inflectional rule, and compound phrases and words like dog catcher or dishwasher are examples of word formation. Informally, word formation rules form "new" words (more accurately, new lexemes), and inflection rules yield variant forms of the "same" word (lexeme).
For example, in some languages with bound case markings for nouns, such as Language X, varying degrees of freedom in constituent order are observed. These languages exhibit more flexible word orders, allowing for variations like Subject-Verb-Object (SVO) structure, as in 'The cat ate the mouse,' and Object-Subject-Verb (OSV) structure, as in ...
The effect of phonological change can trigger morphological reanalysis, which can then engender changes in syntactic structures. Syntactic change is a phenomenon creating a shift in language patterns over time and is subject to cyclic drift. [1] The morphological idiosyncrasies of today are seen as the outcome of yesterday's regular syntax. [2]
Cyclic drift is the mechanism of long-term evolution that changes the functional characteristics of a language over time, such as the reversible drifts from SOV word order to SVO and from synthetic inflection to analytic observable as typological parameters in the syntax of language families and of areal groupings of languages open to investigation over long periods of time.
Collins COBUILD – English Grammar London: Collins ISBN 0-00-370257-X second edition, 2005 ISBN 0-00-718387-9. Huddleston and Pullman say they found this grammar 'useful' in their Cambridge Grammar of the English Language, p. 1765. A CD-Rom version of the 1st edition is available in the Collins COBUILD Resource Pack ISBN 0-00-716921-3