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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 ...
Half a glass of water, illustration of two different mental attitudes, optimism (half full) and pessimism (half empty). Optimism is an attitude reflecting a belief or hope that the outcome of some specific endeavor, or outcomes in general, will be positive, favorable, and desirable.
The Sapir-Whorf hypothesis branches out into two theories: linguistic determinism and linguistic relativity. Linguistic determinism is viewed as the stronger form – because language is viewed as a complete barrier, a person is stuck with the perspective that the language enforces – while linguistic relativity is perceived as a weaker form of the theory because language is discussed as a ...
The term "bow-wow theory" was introduced in English-language literature by the German philologist Max Müller, who was critical of this idea. [4] Despite its simplicity, this theory highlights the human tendency to mimic natural sounds. [5] Bow-wow theories have been widely discredited as an explanation for the origin of language.
Language acquisition is the process by which humans acquire the capacity to perceive and comprehend language. In other words, it is how human beings gain the ability to be aware of language, to understand it, and to produce and use words and sentences to communicate. Language acquisition involves structures, rules, and representation.
Specific language impairment (SLI) is a disorder where the patient has a lack of language acquisition skills, despite a seemingly normal intelligence level in other areas. [12] Stuttering is a fairly common disorder where speech flow is interrupted by involuntary repetitions of syllables .
Almost all names a human language attributes an object are thus arbitrary: the word "car" is nothing like an actual car. Spoken words are really nothing like the objects they represent. This is further demonstrated by the fact that different languages attribute very different names to the same object.
The word 'typology' was proposed by Georg von der Gabelentz in his Sprachwissenschaft (1891). Louis Hjelmslev proposed typology as a large-scale empirical-analytical endeavour of comparing grammatical features to uncover the essence of language. Such a project began from the 1961 conference on language universals at Dobbs Ferry.