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Egophoricity
In linguistics, egophoricity refers to a grammatical category that marks one's personal involvement in an event. In languages with this category, an egophoric form is used for expressing information to which the self has "privileged access" as opposed to an allophoric (or non-egophoric) form. Egophoric forms are typically associated with first-person subject declarative sentences and second-person subject interrogative sentences (egophoric distribution). The concept of egophoricity was originally developed in descriptive studies on Tibeto-Burman languages spoken in the Himalayas such as Newar and Tibetan; however, the category has also been found in languages of Northwestern China, the Andean region, Caucasus, New Guinea, and elsewhere. Terminology " Ego-" refers to "self" and " -phor" means "to carry". The term "egophoric" was coined by French linguist Nicolas Tournadre in his description of Lhasa Tibetan although his former supervisor Claude Hagège had used "égophore" in a ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Evidentiality
In linguistics, evidentiality is, broadly, the indication of the nature of evidence for a given statement; that is, whether evidence exists for the statement and if so, what kind. An evidential (also verificational or validational) is the particular grammatical element (affix, clitic, or particle) that indicates evidentiality. Languages with only a single evidential have had terms such as mediative, médiatif, médiaphorique, and indirective used instead of ''evidential''. Introduction All languages have some means of specifying the source of information. European languages (such as Germanic and Romance languages) often indicate evidential-type information through modal verbs ( es, deber de, nl, zouden, da, skulle, german: sollen) or other lexical words ( adverbials, en, reportedly) or phrases (English: ''it seems to me''). Some languages have a distinct grammatical category of evidentiality that is required to be expressed at all times. The elements in European languages ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Linguistics
Linguistics is the scientific study of human language. It is called a scientific study because it entails a comprehensive, systematic, objective, and precise analysis of all aspects of language, particularly its nature and structure. Linguistics is concerned with both the cognitive and social aspects of language. It is considered a scientific field as well as an academic discipline; it has been classified as a social science, natural science, cognitive science,Thagard, PaulCognitive Science, The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy (Fall 2008 Edition), Edward N. Zalta (ed.). or part of the humanities. Traditional areas of linguistic analysis correspond to phenomena found in human linguistic systems, such as 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 soc ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Semantics
Semantics (from grc, σημαντικός ''sēmantikós'', "significant") is the study of reference, meaning, or truth. The term can be used to refer to subfields of several distinct disciplines, including philosophy, linguistics and computer science. History In English, the study of meaning in language has been known by many names that involve the Ancient Greek word (''sema'', "sign, mark, token"). In 1690, a Greek rendering of the term ''semiotics'', the interpretation of signs and symbols, finds an early allusion in John Locke's ''An Essay Concerning Human Understanding'': The third Branch may be called [''simeiotikí'', "semiotics"], or the Doctrine of Signs, the most usual whereof being words, it is aptly enough termed also , Logick. In 1831, the term is suggested for the third branch of division of knowledge akin to Locke; the "signs of our knowledge". In 1857, the term '' semasiology'' (borrowed from German ''Semasiologie'') is attested in Josiah W. Gibbs ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Gallong Language
The Galo language is a Sino-Tibetan language of the Tani group, spoken by the Galo people. Its precise position within Tani is not yet certain, primarily because of its central location in the Tani area and the strong effects of intra-Tani contacts on the development of Tani languages. It is an endangered language according to the general definitions, but prospects for its survival are better than many similarly-placed languages in the world. Dialects The major Galo dialects are Pugo, spoken around the district capital Aalo; Lare, spoken to the south of Aalo; and a dialect that can be called Kargu kardi, pertaining to the dialect spoken in the northwest near the Tagin area. There may be additional Galo dialects further north, which remains largely unresearched. There are numerous subdialects that often correspond to regional or clan groupings. Neighbouring languages include Assamese, Nepali, Bodo, Mising, Minyong, Hills Miri, Tagin, Nishi, Bori, Pailibo, Ramo and Bokar. ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Sichuan Province
Sichuan (; zh, c=, labels=no, ; zh, p=Sìchuān; alternatively romanized as Szechuan or Szechwan; formerly also referred to as "West China" or "Western China" by Protestant missions) is a province in Southwest China occupying most of the Sichuan Basin and the easternmost part of the Tibetan Plateau between the Jinsha River on the west, the Daba Mountains in the north and the Yungui Plateau to the south. Sichuan's capital city is Chengdu. The population of Sichuan stands at 83 million. Sichuan neighbors Qinghai to the northwest, Gansu to the north, Shaanxi to the northeast, Chongqing to the east, Guizhou to the southeast, Yunnan to the south, and the Tibet Autonomous Region to the west. In antiquity, Sichuan was the home of the ancient states of Ba and Shu. Their conquest by Qin strengthened it and paved the way for Qin Shi Huang's unification of China under the Qin dynasty. During the Three Kingdoms era, Liu Bei's state of Shu was based in Sichuan. The area ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Rgyalrongic Languages
The Gyalrongic languages (also known as Rgyalrongic or Jiarongic) constitute a branch of the Qiangic languages of Sino-Tibetan, although some propose that it may be part of a larger Rung languages group, and do not consider it to be particularly closely related to Qiangic, suggesting that similarities between Gyalrongic and Qiangic may be due to areal influence. However, other work suggests that Qiangic as a whole may in fact be paraphyletic, with the only commonalities of the supposed "branch" being shared archaisms and areal features that were encouraged by contact. Jacques & Michaud (2011) propose that Qiangic including Gyalrongic may belong to a larger Burmo-Qiangic group based on some lexical innovations. Geographical distribution The Gyalrongic languages are spoken in Sichuan in China, mainly in the autonomous Tibetan and Qiang prefectures of Karmdzes and Rngaba. These languages are distinguished by their conservative morphology and their phonological archaisms, which mak ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Japhug Language
Japhug is a Gyalrong language spoken in Barkam County, Rngaba, Sichuan, China, in the three townships of Gdong-brgyad (, Japhug ), Gsar-rdzong (, Japhug ) and Da-tshang (, Japhug ). The endonym of the Japhug language is . The name Japhug (; Tibetan: ''ja phug''; ) refers in Japhug to the area comprising Gsar-rdzong and Da-tshang, while that of Gdong-brgyad is also known as (Jacques 2004), but speakers of Situ Gyalrong use this name to refer to the whole Japhug-speaking area. Phonology Japhug is the only toneless Gyalrong language. It has 49 consonants and seven vowels. Consonants The phoneme /w/ has the allophones �and The phoneme is realized as an epiglottal fricative in the coda or preceding another consonant. The prenasalized consonants are analyzed as units for two reasons. First, there is a phoneme /ɴɢ/, as in /ɴɢoɕna/ "large spider", but neither /ɴ/ nor /ɢ/ exist as independent phonemes. Second, there are clusters of fricatives and prenasalized v ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Mirativity
In linguistics, mirativity, initially proposed by Scott DeLancey, is a grammatical category in a language, independent of evidentiality, that encodes the speaker's surprise or the unpreparedness of their mind. Grammatical elements that encode the semantic category of mirativity are called miratives (abbreviated ). DeLancey (1997) first promoted the mirative as a cross-linguistic category, identifying Turkish, Hare, Sunwar, Lhasa Tibetan, and Korean as languages exhibiting this category. Citing DeLancey as a predecessor, many researchers have reported miratives in other languages, especially Tibeto-Burman languages. However, Lazard (1999) and Hill (2012) question the validity of this category, Lazard finding that the category cannot be distinguished from a mediative, and Hill finds the evidence given by DeLancey and by Aikhenvald (2004) either incorrect or insufficient. DeLancey (2012) promotes Hare, Kham, and Magar as clear cases of miratives, conceding that his analysis of ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Akha Language
Akha is the language spoken by the Akha people of southern China (Yunnan Province), eastern Burma (Shan State), northern Laos, and northern Thailand. Western scholars group Akha, Hani and Honi into the Hani languages, treating all three as separate mutually unintelligible, but closely related, languages. The Hani languages are, in turn, classified in the Southern Loloish subgroup of Loloish. Loloish and the Mru languages are closely related and are grouped within Tibeto-Burman as the Lolo-Burmese languages. In accordance with China's official classification of ethnic groups, which groups all speakers of Hani languages into one ethnicity, Chinese linguists consider all Hani languages, including Akha, to be dialects of a single language. Speakers of Akha live in remote mountainous areas where it has developed into a wide-ranging dialect continuum. Dialects from villages separated by as little as ten kilometers may show marked differences. The isolated nature of Akha communiti ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Copula (linguistics)
In linguistics, a copula (plural: copulas or copulae; abbreviated ) is a word or phrase that links the subject of a sentence to a subject complement, such as the word ''is'' in the sentence "The sky is blue" or the phrase ''was not being'' in the sentence "It was not being co-operative." The word ''copula'' derives from the Latin noun for a "link" or "tie" that connects two different things. A copula is often a verb or a verb-like word, though this is not universally the case. A verb that is a copula is sometimes called a copulative or copular verb. In English primary education grammar courses, a copula is often called a linking verb. In other languages, copulas show more resemblances to pronouns, as in Classical Chinese and Guarani, or may take the form of suffixes attached to a noun, as in Korean, Beja, and Inuit languages. Most languages have one main copula, although some (like Spanish, Portuguese and Thai) have more than one, while others have none. In the case ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Tibeto-Burman
The Tibeto-Burman languages are the non- Sinitic members of the Sino-Tibetan language family, over 400 of which are spoken throughout the Southeast Asian Massif ("Zomia") as well as parts of East Asia and South Asia. Around 60 million people speak Tibeto-Burman languages. The name derives from the most widely spoken of these languages, Burmese and the Tibetic languages, which also have extensive literary traditions, dating from the 12th and 7th centuries respectively. Most of the other languages are spoken by much smaller communities, and many of them have not been described in detail. Though the division of Sino-Tibetan into Sinitic and Tibeto-Burman branches (e.g. Benedict, Matisoff) is widely used, some historical linguists criticize this classification, as the non-Sinitic Sino-Tibetan languages lack any shared innovations in phonology or morphology to show that they comprise a clade of the phylogenetic tree. History During the 18th century, several scholars noticed para ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
