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Nonconcatenative Morphology
Nonconcatenative morphology, also called discontinuous morphology and introflection, is a form of word formation and inflection in which the root is modified and which does not involve stringing morphemes together sequentially. Types Apophony (including Ablaut and Umlaut) In English, for example, while plurals are usually formed by adding the suffix -s, certain words use nonconcatenative processes for their plural forms: *foot → feet ; Many irregular verbs form their past tenses, past participles, or both in this manner: *freeze → froze , frozen . This specific form of nonconcatenative morphology is known as ''base modification'' or ''ablaut,'' a form in which part of the root undergoes a phonological change without necessarily adding new phonological material. In traditional Indo-Europeanist usage, these changes are termed ''ablaut'' only when they result from vowel gradations in Proto-Indo-European. An example is the English stem ''s⌂ng'', resulting in the four ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Consonant Mutation
Consonant mutation is change in a consonant in a word according to its morphological or syntactic environment. Mutation occurs in languages around the world. A prototypical example of consonant mutation is the initial consonant mutation of all modern Celtic languages. Initial consonant mutation is also found in Indonesian or Malay, in Nivkh, in Southern Paiute and in several West African languages such as Fula. The Nilotic language Dholuo, spoken in Kenya, shows mutation of stem-final consonants, as does English to a small extent. Mutation of initial, medial and final consonants is found in Modern Hebrew. Also, Japanese exhibits word medial consonant mutation involving voicing, '' rendaku'', in many compounds. Uralic languages like Finnish show consonant gradation, a type of consonant mutation. Similar sound changes Initial consonant mutation must not be confused with sandhi, which can refer to word-initial alternations triggered by their phonological environm ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Spoken Language
A spoken language is a form of communication produced through articulate sounds or, in some cases, through manual gestures, as opposed to written language. Oral or vocal languages are those produced using the vocal tract, whereas sign languages are produced with the body and hands. Definition The term "spoken language" is sometimes used to mean only oral languages, especially by linguists, excluding sign languages and making the terms 'spoken', 'oral', 'vocal language' synonymous. Others refer to sign language as "spoken", especially in contrast to written transcriptions of signs. Relation between spoken and written language The relationship between spoken language and written language is complex. Within the fields of linguistics, the current consensus is that speech is an innate human capability, and written language is a cultural invention. However, some linguists, such as those of the Prague school, argue that written and spoken language possess distinct qualities which would ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Disfix
In linguistic morphology, a disfix is a subtractive morpheme, a morpheme manifest through the subtraction of segments from a root or stem. Although other forms of disfixation exist, the element subtracted is usually the final segment of the stem. Productive disfixation is extremely rare among the languages of the world but is important in the Muskogean languages of the southeastern United States. Similar subtractive morphs in languages such as French and Portuguese are marginal.Hardy & Montler, 1988, "Alabama H-infix and Disfixation", in Haas, ed., ''In Honor of Mary Haas: From the Haas Festival Conference On Native American Linguistics'', p. 399. Terminology The terms "disfix" and "disfixation" were proposed by Hardy and Timothy Montler in a 1988 paper on the morphology of the Alabama language. The process had been previously described by Leonard Bloomfield who called it a ''minus feature'', and Zellig Harris who called it a "minus morpheme". Other terms for the same or ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Adjective
An adjective (abbreviations, abbreviated ) is a word that describes or defines a noun or noun phrase. Its semantic role is to change information given by the noun. Traditionally, adjectives are considered one of the main part of speech, parts of speech of the English language, although historically they were classed together with Noun, nouns. Nowadays, certain words that usually had been classified as adjectives, including ''the'', ''this'', ''my'', etc., typically are classed separately, as Determiner (class), determiners. Examples: * That's a ''funny'' idea. (Prepositive attributive) * That idea is ''funny''. (Predicate (grammar), Predicative) * * The ''good'', the ''bad'', and the ''funny''. (Substantive adjective, Substantive) * Clara Oswald, completely ''fictional'', died three times. (Apposition, Appositive) Etymology ''Adjective'' comes from Latin ', a calque of (whence also English ''epithet''). In the grammatical tradition of Latin and Greek, because adjectives were I ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Sakha Language
Sakha may refer to: * Sakha Republic, a federal subject of Russia * Sakha language, or Yakut, a Turkic language * Sakha people, also Yakuts, a Turkic people * Sakha scripts, writing systems for the Sakha language * Sakha, Egypt, a town also known as Xois * Sakha, Iran, a village in Zanjan Province, Iran * Sakha Consulting Wings, a taxi service provided by women for women in Delhi, India See also * Saha (other) * Saka (other) * Sakhi (other) * Sakhavu (other) {{Disambiguation, geo ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Reduplication
In linguistics, reduplication is a Morphology (linguistics), morphological process in which the Root (linguistics), root or Stem (linguistics), stem of a word, part of that, or the whole word is repeated exactly or with a slight change. The classic observation on the semantics of reduplication is Edward Sapir, Edward Sapir's: "Generally employed, with self-evident symbolism, to indicate such concepts as distribution, plurality, repetition, customary activity, increase of size, added intensity, continuance." It is used in inflections to convey a grammatical function, such as plurality or intensification, and in Lexicon, lexical Derivation (linguistics), derivation to create new words. It is often used when a speaker adopts a tone more expressive or figurative than ordinary speech and is also often, but not exclusively, Iconicity, iconic in meaning. It is found in a wide range of languages and language groups, though its level of Productivity (linguistics), linguistic productivit ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Lugbara Language
Lugbara, or Lugbarati, is the language of the Lugbara people. It is spoken in the West Nile region in northwestern Uganda, as well as the Democratic Republic of the Congo's Orientale Province with a little extension to the South Sudan as the Zande or Azande people. Classification and dialects The Aringa language, also known as Low Lugbara, is closely related, and sometimes considered a dialect of Lugbara. In fact, among the Lugbara of Uganda, it is one of the five clans (Ayivu clan, Vurra clan, Terego clan, Maracha clan, and Aringa clan). Some scholars classify the Lugbara language itself as a dialect of the Maʼdi language, though this is not generally accepted. An SIL survey report concluded that the Okollo, Ogoko, and Rigbo dialects, called "Southern Maʼdi", should be classified as dialects of Lugbara. Phonology Vowels * /ɛ, ɔ/ can also be heard as , oas a result of vowel harmony. * /a/ can have an allophone of �when after sounds /k, ɡ/. Consonants * /l/ ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Nilo-Saharan
The Nilo-Saharan languages are a proposed family of around 210 African languages spoken by somewhere around 70 million speakers, mainly in the upper parts of the Chari and Nile rivers, including historic Nubia, north of where the two tributaries of the Nile meet. The languages extend through 17 nations in the northern half of Africa: from Algeria to Benin in the west; from Libya to the Democratic Republic of the Congo in the centre; and from Egypt to Tanzania in the east. As indicated by its hyphenated name, Nilo-Saharan is a family of the African interior, including the greater Nile Basin and the Central Sahara Desert. Eight of its proposed constituent divisions (excluding Kunama, Kuliak, and Songhay) are found in the modern countries of Sudan and South Sudan, through which the Nile River flows. In his book '' The Languages of Africa'' (1963), Joseph Greenberg named the group and argued it was a genetic family. It contained all the languages that were not included in the ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Afro-Asiatic
The Afroasiatic languages (also known as Afro-Asiatic, Afrasian, Hamito-Semitic, or Semito-Hamitic) are a language family (or "phylum") of about 400 languages spoken predominantly in West Asia, North Africa, the Horn of Africa, and parts of the Sahara and Sahel. Over 500 million people are native speakers of an Afroasiatic language, constituting the fourth-largest language family after Indo-European, Sino-Tibetan, and Niger–Congo. Most linguists divide the family into six branches: Berber (Amazigh), Chadic, Cushitic, Egyptian, Omotic, and Semitic. The vast majority of Afroasiatic languages are considered indigenous to the African continent, including all those not belonging to the Semitic branch (which originated in West Asia). The five most spoken languages are; Arabic (of all varieties) which is by far the most widely spoken within the family, with around 411 million native speakers concentrated primarily in West Asia and North Africa, the Chadic Hausa language w ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Ranking
A ranking is a relationship between a set of items, often recorded in a list, such that, for any two items, the first is either "ranked higher than", "ranked lower than", or "ranked equal to" the second. In mathematics, this is known as a weak order or total preorder of objects. It is not necessarily a total order of objects because two different objects can have the same ranking. The rankings themselves are totally ordered. For example, materials are totally preordered by hardness, while degrees of hardness are totally ordered. If two items are the same in rank it is considered a tie. By reducing detailed measures to a sequence of ordinal numbers, rankings make it possible to evaluate complex information according to certain criteria. Thus, for example, an Internet search engine may rank the pages it finds according to an estimation of their relevance, making it possible for the user quickly to select the pages they are likely to want to see. Analysis of data obtained by ra ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
John McCarthy (linguist)
John Joseph McCarthy (born 1953) is an American linguist and the Provost and Senior Vice Chancellor for Academic Affairs at the University of Massachusetts Amherst since July 2017. In July 2018, he assumed office as the Provost. McCarthy is best-known for his work on Optimality Theory in phonology: with Alan Prince, he devised Correspondence Theory and alignment constraints, although he has subsequently renounced the latter.McCarthy, John. OT Constraints are Categorical. ''Phonology'' 20 75--138. 2003 He has since written textbooks like '' Doing Optimality Theory: Applying Theory to Data''. Earlier in his career, McCarthy was responsible, along with Prince, for extending autosegmental phonology, and later Optimality Theory, to morphology, in particular to solve the problem of nonconcatenative morphology in Semitic languages. Career HHe completed his A.B. in linguistics and Near Eastern languages at Harvard College and obtained his Ph.D. from MIT in 1979. He was a professor a ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
