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Linguistics is the scientific study of language. [1] [2] [3] The areas of linguistic analysis are syntax (rules governing the structure of sentences), semantics (meaning), morphology (structure of words), phonetics (speech sounds and equivalent gestures in sign languages), phonology (the abstract sound system of a particular language), and pragmatics (how the context of use contributes to ...
Language change happens at all levels from the phonological level to the levels of vocabulary, morphology, syntax, and discourse. Even though language change is often initially evaluated negatively by speakers of the language who often consider changes to be "decay" or a sign of slipping norms of language usage, it is natural and inevitable. [119]
The Chomsky hierarchy in the fields of formal language theory, computer science, and linguistics, is a containment hierarchy of classes of formal grammars. A formal grammar describes how to form strings from a language's vocabulary (or alphabet) that are valid according to the language's syntax.
In the domain of field research, Daniel Everett has claimed that the Pirahã language is a counterexample to the basic tenets of universal grammar because it lacks clausal embedding. According to Everett, this trait results from Pirahã culture emphasizing present-moment concrete matters. [ 29 ]
Four overarching language ideologies are proposed to explain motivations and decisions. [5] Internationalization the adoption of a non-indigenous language as a means of wider communication, as an official language or in a particular domain, such as the use of English in India, Singapore, the Philippines, Papua New Guinea, and South Africa.
In linguistics, stratification is the idea that language is organized in terms of hierarchically ordered strata (such as phonology, morphology, syntax, and semantics).This notion can be traced back to Saussure's dichotomy between signified and signifier and Hjelmslev's expression plane and content plane, [1] but has been explicictly explored as a theoretical concept in stratificational ...
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 ...
Linguistic typology (or language typology) is a field of linguistics that studies and classifies languages according to their structural features to allow their comparison. Its aim is to describe and explain the structural diversity and the common properties of the world's languages. [ 1 ]