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Elision
In linguistics, an elision or deletion is the omission of one or more sounds (such as a vowel, a consonant, or a whole syllable) in a word or phrase. However, these terms are also used to refer more narrowly to cases where two words are run together by the omission of a final sound. An example is the elision of word-final /t/ in English if it is preceded and followed by a consonant: "first light" is often pronounced /fɜ:s laɪt/. Many other terms are used to refer to particular cases where sounds are omitted. Citation forms and contextual forms A word may be spoken individually in what is called the citation form. This corresponds to the pronunciation given in a dictionary. However, when words are spoken in context, it often happens that some sounds that belong to the citation form are omitted. Elision is not an all-or-nothing process: elision is more likely to occur in some styles of speaking and less likely in others. Many writers have described the styles of speech in which ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Poetic Contraction
Poetic contractions are contractions of words found in poetry but not commonly used in everyday modern English. Also known as elision or syncope, these contractions are usually used to lower the number of syllables in a particular word in order to adhere to the meter of a composition. In languages like French, elision removes the end syllable of a word that ends with a vowel sound when the next begins with a vowel sound, in order to avoid hiatus, or retain a consonant-vowel-consonant-vowel rhythm. Many of these poetic contractions originate from archaic English. By the end of the 18th century, contractions were generally looked down upon in standardized formal writing. This development may have been influenced by the publication of Samuel Johnson's ''A Dictionary of the English Language ''A Dictionary of the English Language'', sometimes published as ''Johnson's Dictionary'', was published on 15 April 1755 and written by Samuel Johnson. It is among the most influential dic ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Contraction (grammar)
A contraction is a shortened version of the spoken and written forms of a word, syllable, or word group, created by omission of internal letters and sounds. In linguistic analysis, contractions should not be confused with crasis, abbreviations and initialisms (including acronyms), with which they share some semantic and phonetic functions, though all three are connoted by the term "abbreviation" in layman’s terms. Contraction is also distinguished from morphological clipping, where beginnings and endings are omitted. The definition overlaps with the term portmanteau (a linguistic ''blend''), but a distinction can be made between a portmanteau and a contraction by noting that contractions are formed from words that would otherwise appear together in sequence, such as ''do'' and ''not'', whereas a portmanteau word is formed by combining two or more existing words that all relate to a singular concept that the portmanteau describes. English English has a number of co ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Apostrophe
The apostrophe ( or ) is a punctuation mark, and sometimes a diacritical mark, in languages that use the Latin alphabet and some other alphabets. In English, the apostrophe is used for two basic purposes: * The marking of the omission of one or more letters, e.g. the contraction of "do not" to "don't". * The marking of possessive case of nouns (as in "the eagle's feathers", "in one month's time", "at your parents' ome). The word "apostrophe" comes ultimately from Greek (, 'he accent ofturning away or elision'), through Latin and French. For use in computer systems, Unicode has code points for three different forms of apostrophe. Usage in English Historical development The apostrophe was first used by Pietro Bembo in his edition of '' De Aetna'' (1496). It was introduced into English in the 16th century in imitation of French practice. French practice Introduced by Geoffroy Tory (1529), the apostrophe was used in place of a vowel letter to indicate elision ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Generative Phonology
Generative grammar, or generativism , is a linguistic theory that regards linguistics as the study of a hypothesised innate grammatical structure. It is a biological or biologistic modification of earlier structuralist theories of linguistics, deriving ultimately from glossematics. Generative grammar considers grammar as a system of rules that generates exactly those combinations of words that form grammatical sentences in a given language. It is a system of explicit rules that may apply repeatedly to generate an indefinite number of sentences which can be as long as one wants them to be. The difference from structural and functional models is that the object is base-generated within the verb phrase in generative grammar. This purportedly cognitive structure is thought of as being a part of a universal grammar, a syntactic structure which is caused by a genetic mutation in humans. Generativists have created numerous theories to make the NP VP (NP) analysis work in natural la ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Compensatory Lengthening
Compensatory lengthening in phonology and historical linguistics is the lengthening of a vowel sound that happens upon the loss of a following consonant, usually in the syllable coda, or of a vowel in an adjacent syllable. Lengthening triggered by consonant loss may be considered an extreme form of fusion (Crowley 1997:46). Both types may arise from speakers' attempts to preserve a word's moraic count. Examples English An example from the history of English is the lengthening of vowels that happened when the voiceless velar fricative and its palatal allophone were lost from the language. For example, in the Middle English of Chaucer's time the word ''night'' was phonemically ; later the was lost, but the was lengthened to to compensate, causing the word to be pronounced . (Later the became by the Great Vowel Shift.) Both the Germanic spirant law and the Ingvaeonic nasal spirant law show vowel lengthening compensating for the loss of a nasal. Non-rhotic forms of Engli ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Paragoge
Paragoge (; from grc-gre, παραγωγή ''additional'': παρα- prefix ''para-'' 'extra', ἀγωγή ''agogē'' 'bringing in') is the addition of a sound to the end of a word. Often caused by nativization, it is a type of epenthesis, most commonly vocalic epenthesis. Paragoge is particularly common in Brazilian Portuguese, not only in loanwords but also in word derivation. It is also present in the accents of many Brazilians while speaking foreign languages such as English. Some languages have undergone paragoge as a sound change, and modern forms are longer than the historical forms they are derived from. Italian ''sono'' 'I am', from Latin ''sum'', is an example. Sometimes, as above, the paragogic vowel is an echo vowel, such as Proto-Oceanic ''*saqat'' "bad" > Uneapa ''zaɣata''. In loanwords Some languages add a sound to the end of a loanword when it would otherwise end in a forbidden sound. Some languages add a grammatical ending to the end of a loanword to make ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Partitive Case
The partitive case ( abbreviated , , or more ambiguously ) is a grammatical case which denotes "partialness", "without result", or "without specific identity". It is also used in contexts where a subgroup is selected from a larger group, or with numbers. Finnic languages In the Finnic languages, such as Finnish and Estonian, this case is often used to express unknown identities and irresultative actions. For example, it is found in the following circumstances, with the characteristic ending of ''-a'' or ''-ta'': * After numbers, in singular: "kolme taloa" → "three houses" (cf. plural, where both are used, e.g. ''sadat kirjat'' "the hundreds of books", ''sata kirjaa'' "hundred books" as an irresultative object.) * For atelic actions (possibly incomplete) and ongoing processes: "luen kirjaa" → "I'm reading a book" ** Compare with telic actions in accusative case: "luen kirjan" → "I will read the (entire) book" * With atelic verbs, particularly those indicating emotions: ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Rhoticity In English
Rhoticity in English is the pronunciation of the historical rhotic consonant by English speakers. The presence or absence of rhoticity is one of the most prominent distinctions by which varieties of English can be classified. In rhotic varieties, the historical English sound is preserved in all pronunciation contexts. In non-rhotic varieties, speakers no longer pronounce in postvocalic environments—that is, when it is immediately after a vowel and not followed by another vowel. For example, in isolation, a rhotic English speaker pronounces the words ''hard'' and ''butter'' as and , whereas a non-rhotic speaker "drops" or "deletes" the sound, pronouncing them as and . When an ''r'' is at the end of a word but the next word begins with a vowel, as in the phrase "bette''r a''pples", most non-rhotic speakers will pronounce the in that position (the linking R), since it is followed by a vowel in this case. The rhotic varieties of English include the dialects of South We ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Of Mice And Men
''Of Mice and Men'' is a novella written by John Steinbeck. Published in 1937, it narrates the experiences of George Milton and Lennie Small, two displaced migrant ranch workers, who move from place to place in California in search of new job opportunities during the Great Depression in the United States. Steinbeck based the novella on his own experiences working alongside migrant farm workers as a teenager in the 1910s (before the arrival of the Okies that he would describe in ''The Grapes of Wrath''). The title is taken from Robert Burns' poem " To a Mouse", which reads: "The best laid schemes o' mice an' men / Gang aft agley". (The best laid schemes of mice and men / Often go awry.) While it is a book taught in many schools, ''Of Mice and Men'' has been a frequent target of censors for vulgarity, and what some consider offensive and racist language; consequently, it appears on the American Library Association's list of the ''Most Challenged Books of the 21st Century''. Pl ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
John Steinbeck
John Ernst Steinbeck Jr. (; February 27, 1902 – December 20, 1968) was an American writer and the 1962 Nobel Prize in Literature winner "for his realistic and imaginative writings, combining as they do sympathetic humor and keen social perception." He has been called "a giant of American letters." During his writing career, he authored 33 books, with one book coauthored alongside Edward Ricketts, including 16 novels, six non-fiction books, and two collections of short stories. He is widely known for the comic novels ''Tortilla Flat'' (1935) and ''Cannery Row'' (1945), the multi-generation epic '' East of Eden'' (1952), and the novellas ''The Red Pony'' (1933) and '' Of Mice and Men'' (1937). The Pulitzer Prize–winning ''The Grapes of Wrath'' (1939) is considered Steinbeck's masterpiece and part of the American literary canon. In the first 75 years after it was published, it sold 14 million copies. Most of Steinbeck's work is set in central California, particularl ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Brothel
A brothel, bordello, ranch, or whorehouse is a place where people engage in sexual activity with prostitutes. However, for legal or cultural reasons, establishments often describe themselves as massage parlors, bars, strip clubs, body rub parlours, studios, or by some other description. Sex work in a brothel is considered safer than street prostitution. Legal status On 2 December 1949, the United Nations General Assembly approved the Convention for the Suppression of the Traffic in Persons and of the Exploitation of the Prostitution of Others. The Convention came into effect on 25 July 1951 and by December 2013 had been ratified by 82 states. The Convention seeks to combat prostitution, which it regards as "incompatible with the dignity and worth of the human person." Parties to the Convention agreed to abolish regulation of individual prostitutes, and to ban brothels and procuring. Some countries not parties to the convention also ban prostitution or the operation of br ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Devoiced
Voice or voicing is a term used in phonetics and phonology to characterize speech sounds (usually consonants). Speech sounds can be described as either voiceless (otherwise known as ''unvoiced'') or voiced. The term, however, is used to refer to two separate concepts: *Voicing can refer to the ''articulatory process'' in which the vocal folds vibrate, its primary use in phonetics to describe phones, which are particular speech sounds. *It can also refer to a classification of speech sounds that tend to be associated with vocal cord vibration but may not actually be voiced at the articulatory level. That is the term's primary use in phonology: to describe phonemes; while in phonetics its primary use is to describe phones. For example, voicing accounts for the difference between the pair of sounds associated with the English letters "s" and "z". The two sounds are transcribed as and to distinguish them from the English letters, which have several possible pronunciations, depe ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
