Linguistics

Humans are able to communicate with each other in ways that are unique to our species because of the properties of human language. Regardless of how different human language may sound across...

A lexeme represents the most basic building block of a language. If you open a typical dictionary, the entries there are lexemes. Most lexemes have variations which build upon its most basic form....

In the context of phonetics, “to articulate” means “to produce speech sounds.” “Articulators” are the parts of the mouth, tongue, and throat that we use to articulate. Exactly which articulators...

Let's begin by defining “system.” According to Merriam-Webster, a system is a group of objects, ideas, principles, or elements that work together for a common purpose. It is an organized network or...

Assimilation occurs when one sound becomes completely like or more like a neighboring sound. Pronounce the phrase “good night” quickly as though you were speaking normally without thinking much...

Morphology is a study of words. It basically deals with word formation, examines the relationship between words, and analyzes their constituent elements. Morpheme is the smallest unit of a word,...

Let's begin by defining “science.” According to the Collins dictionary, science is “systematized knowledge derived from observation, study, and experimentation carried on to determine the nature or...

Actions verbs can describes two different kinds of movement: that of the physical kind, which involves movement that can be seen; and that of the mental kind, which describes movement that cannot...

In the field of linguistics the study of semantics pertains to the analysis of the meaning of lexical items. Within semantics there exist 7 different types of understanding of the meaning of words....

Intonation is the rise and fall of a speaker's voice while speaking a sentence. When a speaker's voice rises at the end of the sentence, for example, it often indicates a question is being asked....

Morphology is a Greek word. Morph means “shape” or “form,” and “ology” means study. With morphology, in the context of linguistics, a person studies the shape and form of words. One of the answers...

In his Course in General Linguistics, Ferdinand de Saussure identifies two aspects of linguistic study: the diachronic and the synchronic. Diachronic linguistics seeks to explain the development of...

A word in linguistics is the smallest content that can convey meaning. A word can always stand on its own and maintain its meaning. For example the word “historical” can stand alone and has the...

The English language uses many processes of word formation, so probably your question refers to the main processes, plural. These include compounding, blending and the related analogy, and...

In morphology, morphemes are the smallest, indivisible units of a word that have lexical and grammatical meaning. Morphs and allomorphs are the phonological manifestation of a morpheme. A morph...

Macrolinguistics and microlinguistics both involve the study and usage of language. While they are often interrelated concepts, they each approach the topic from a different level. Macrolinguistics...

Bases, stems, and roots are the main components of words, just like cells, atoms, and protons are the main components of matter. In linguistics, the words "roots" is the core of the word. It is the...

The concept of language as a system of systems is from an article by the same title, "Language as a System of Systems," by Mulder and Hervey (1975). Their work is taken from the previous work of...

Although learning and using language is inherent to every culture culture, anthropologists have debated over its magnitude, since every person’s linguistic knowledge, capabilities, and usage vary...

Typically, developing children acquire the language that is spoken and heard in their homes, making that their first language (or L1). In a home where only English is spoken and heard, English will...

Before I can tell you about the implications of linguist Stephen Krashen's monitor theory, I should probably tell you about his acquisition-learning theory. For Krashen, a person gains the ability...

English has become a global language for a few different reasons. First, the British Empire visited, colonized, or began many of the populations over the world. Therefore, their language impacted...

Lamendella's Neurofunctional theory of second language acquisition (1979) states that the acquisition of second and foreign languages is mainly the product of neural (brain-based) processes. In...

Sophisticated brain research, like fMRI and the even more sophisticated positron emission tomography, have shown that early theories of distinctly hierarchical divisions of brain function areas,...

The basic problem with defining a speech community is that it is very hard to decide where such a community begins and ends. Scholars have a hard time defining speech communities because it is an...

It may be said that English consonants are phonemes that create meaning. Consider, for example, the change in meaning when the phoneme /m/ is switched with the phoneme /c/: {man} becomes {can} and...

Spoken or written verbal language (what we usually think of as "language"), besides such linguistic properties called "grammar" (tense, number, gender, etc.), shares the properties of all...

Diglossia is a linguistic term that is also used in sociology. Diglossia is the coexistence of language codes that are either (1) two varieties of one language or (2) two distinct languages....

Speaking in phonetic terms, a phone is quite simply a speech sound. This can be absolutely any sound or gesture, and it is the broadest of these terms since its meaning does not hinge on whether or...

A speech community is a group that decides how language will be used. This community may be comprised of professionals familiar with language (linguistics, etymologies, etc.) that have a developed,...

The Variable Competence Model proposed by Rod Ellis (1984) is divided into two categories: the process of language and the product of language. According to Ellis, the process of language is more...

Slang is a major contributor to changing languages. The word "cool" used to only refer to temperature but, thanks to youth culture, it now means that something is good. Slang words fall in and out...

There is one major difference used in describing the criteria for classifying consonants. To do so, one must examine the forming of both consonants and vowels. To form a vowel, the flow of air over...

Cardinal vowels are a linguistic construction devised by Daniel Jones to organize a consistent vowel sound classification. The classification of vowel sounds in the cardinal organization is...

Morphology is an area of linguistics that focuses on words. The morpheme is the basic unit of morphology, and morphology is divided into two branches: inflectional and derivational. The other main...

Let us first explain what a morpheme actually is. A morpheme is a representative unit of grammar that cannot be broken down into smaller meaningful parts. A morpheme is to language what an atom is...

The English language is divided into three historical versions, each of which is significantly different from the other to the point that it is considered its own language. The first recorded use...

These terms—“signifier” and “signified”-- used by Ferdinand de Saussure to discuss his theory of linguistics (actually a philosophy of epistemology—how we know things--differing from Plato’s),...

The main difference between the concepts is the amount of flexibility that each conveys about human abilities. As the term suggests, “linguistic determinism” indicates that certain features within...

ELT stands for English Language Teaching. The teaching of English can be for it to be used as a second language, foreign language, international language, or for specific purposes. In the field of...

The unitary system hypothesis and separate system hypothesis are two theories that describe how language develops in children who are exposed to two different languages, most often in the home....

The etymology of these words (pedantic and pedantical) is a little confusing because of the forms in which they entered English from Old French. PEDANTICAL: The original form from which pedantical...

Structuralism refers to the idea that the components of a thing must be understood in order to fully comprehend the entirety of the thing. As this applies to linguistics, it suggests that...

The idea of grammatical variation in linguistics is the idea that there can be differences in grammatical usage across populations of speakers of a given language. In other words, different people...

The concept of Langue (language) and Parole (speech) was given by the Swiss linguist Ferdinand de Saussure. These terms appeared first in the book “A Course In General Linguistics” (Cours de...

Traditionally, all linguistic study was diachronic: all language study focused on language's change over time. For example, a predominant question asked in diachronic study is how did Old English...

Phonology, syntax, and semantics are three important areas of study in linguistics. Phonology is all about the sounds of a language. Remember the lyrics of that old song, “You say to-mā-to; I say...

Dell Hymes, in the year 1966, introduced the concept of Communicative competence, which in simple terms, is nothing but the potential of a language user/learner to communicate effectively or in the...

Morphology is the branch of linguistics that studies the formation and components of words. Words are built of morphemes, which are the smallest units of language that have meaning. Some morphemes...

Theta theory—also known as theta role or thematic relations—is mostly concerned with verbs. At the center of theta theory lies the belief that the most important part of a sentence is the verb....