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Apophony
In linguistics, apophony (also known as ablaut, (vowel) gradation, (vowel) mutation, alternation, internal modification, stem modification, stem alternation, replacive morphology, stem mutation, or internal inflection) is an alternation of vowel (quality) within a word that indicates grammatical information (often inflectional). Description Apophony is exemplified in English as the ''internal'' vowel alternations that produce such related words as * sng, sng, sng, sng * bnd, bnd * bld, bld * brd, brd * dm, dm * fd, fd * l, l * rse, rse, rsen * wve, wve * ft, ft * gse, gse * tth, tth The difference in these vowels marks variously a difference in tense or aspect (e.g. ''sing/sang/sung''), transitivity (''rise/raise''), part of speech (''sing/song''), or grammatical number (''goose/geese''). That these sound alternations function grammatically can be seen as they are often equivalent to grammatical suffixes (an ''external modification''). Compare the following: The vowe ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Indo-European Ablaut
In linguistics, the Indo-European ablaut ( , from Standard High German, German ) is a system of apophony (regular vowel variations) in the Proto-Indo-European language (PIE). An example of ablaut in English is the Germanic strong verb, strong verb ''sing, sang, sung'' and its related noun ''song'', a paradigm inherited directly from the Proto-Indo-European stage of the language. Traces of ablaut are found in all modern Indo-European languages, though its prevalence varies greatly. History of the concept The phenomenon of Indo-European ablaut was first recorded by Sanskrit grammarians in the later Vedic period (roughly 8th century BCE), and was codified by Pāṇini in his ''Aṣṭādhyāyī'' (4th century BCE), where the terms ' and ''vṛddhi, '' were used to describe the phenomena now known respectively as the ''full grade'' and ''lengthened grade''.Burrow, §2.1. In the context of European languages, the phenomenon was first described in the early 18th century by the D ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Alternation (linguistics)
In linguistics, an alternation is the phenomenon of a morpheme exhibiting variation in its phonological realization. Each of the various realizations is called an alternant. The variation may be conditioned by the phonological, morphological, and/or syntactic environment in which the morpheme finds itself. Alternations provide linguists with data that allow them to determine the allophones and allomorphs of a language's phonemes and morphemes and to develop analyses determining the distribution of those allophones and allomorphs. The term "sound change" refers to diachronic changes, which occur in a language's sound system. On the other hand, "alternation" refers to changes that happen synchronically (within the language of an individual speaker, depending on the neighbouring sounds) and do not change the language's underlying system. Phonologically conditioned alternation An example of a phonologically conditioned alternation is the English plural marker commonly spel ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Grammatical Number
In linguistics, grammatical number is a Feature (linguistics), feature of nouns, pronouns, adjectives and verb agreement (linguistics), agreement that expresses count distinctions (such as "one", "two" or "three or more"). English and many other languages present number categories of singular or plural. Some languages also have a Dual (grammatical number), dual, #Trial, trial and #Paucal, paucal number or other arrangements. The word "number" is also used in linguistics to describe the distinction between certain grammatical aspects that indicate the number of times an event occurs, such as the semelfactive aspect, the iterative aspect, etc. For that use of the term, see "Grammatical aspect". Overview Most languages of the world have formal means to express differences of number. One widespread distinction, found in English and many other languages, involves a simple two-way contrast between singular and plural number (''car''/''cars'', ''child''/''children'', etc.). Discussion ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Inflectional
In linguistic morphology, inflection (less commonly, inflexion) is a process of word formation in which a word is modified to express different grammatical categories such as tense, case, voice, aspect, person, number, gender, mood, animacy, and definiteness. The inflection of verbs is called ''conjugation'', while the inflection of nouns, adjectives, adverbs, etc. can be called ''declension''. An inflection expresses grammatical categories with affixation (such as prefix, suffix, infix, circumfix, and transfix), apophony (as Indo-European ablaut), or other modifications. For example, the Latin verb ', meaning "I will lead", includes the suffix ', expressing person (first), number (singular), and tense-mood (future indicative or present subjunctive). The use of this suffix is an inflection. In contrast, in the English clause "I will lead", the word ''lead'' is not inflected for any of person, number, or tense; it is simply the bare form of a verb. The inflected form of a ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Inflection
In linguistic Morphology (linguistics), morphology, inflection (less commonly, inflexion) is a process of word formation in which a word is modified to express different grammatical category, grammatical categories such as grammatical tense, tense, grammatical case, case, grammatical voice, voice, grammatical aspect, aspect, grammatical person, person, grammatical number, number, grammatical gender, gender, grammatical mood, mood, animacy, and definiteness. The inflection of verbs is called ''grammatical conjugation, conjugation'', while the inflection of nouns, adjectives, adverbs, etc. can be called ''declension''. An inflection expresses grammatical categories with affixation (such as prefix, suffix, infix, circumfix, and transfix), apophony (as Indo-European ablaut), or other modifications. For example, the Latin verb ', meaning "I will lead", includes the suffix ', expressing person (first), number (singular), and tense-mood (future indicative or present subjunctive). Th ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Tone (linguistics)
Tone is the use of pitch (music), pitch in language to distinguish lexical or grammatical meaning—that is, to distinguish or to inflection, inflect words. All oral languages use pitch to express emotional and other para-linguistic information and to convey emphasis, contrast and other such features in what is called intonation (linguistics), intonation, but not all languages use tones to distinguish words or their inflections, analogously to consonants and vowels. Languages that have this feature are called tonal languages; the distinctive tone patterns of such a language are sometimes called tonemes, by analogy with ''phoneme''. Tonal languages are common in East Asia, East and Southeast Asia, Africa, the Americas, and the Pacific islands, Pacific. Tonal languages are different from pitch-accent languages in that tonal languages can have each syllable with an independent tone whilst pitch-accent languages may have one syllable in a word or morpheme that is more prominent t ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Syllable Length
In linguistics, syllable weight is the concept that syllables pattern together according to the number and/or duration of segments in the rime. In classical Indo-European verse, as developed in Greek, Sanskrit, and Latin, distinctions of syllable weight were fundamental to the meter of the line. Linguistics A heavy syllable is a syllable with a branching nucleus or a branching rime, although not all such syllables are heavy in every language. A branching nucleus generally means the syllable has a long vowel or a diphthong; this type of syllable is abbreviated as CVV. A syllable with a branching rime is a ''closed syllable'', that is, one with a coda (one or more consonants at the end of the syllable); this type of syllable is abbreviated CVC. In some languages, both CVV and CVC syllables are heavy, while a syllable with a short vowel as the nucleus and no coda (a CV syllable) is a light syllable. In other languages, only CVV syllables are heavy, while CVC and CV syllables are ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Nasalization
In phonetics, nasalization (or nasalisation in British English) is the production of a sound while the velum is lowered, so that some air escapes through the nose during the production of the sound by the mouth. An archetypal nasal sound is . In the International Phonetic Alphabet, nasalization is indicated by printing a tilde diacritic above the symbol for the sound to be nasalized: is the nasalized equivalent of , and is the nasalized equivalent of . A subscript diacritic , called an or , is sometimes seen, especially when the vowel bears tone marks that would interfere with the superscript tilde. For example, are more legible in most fonts than . Nasal vowels Many languages have nasal vowels to different degrees, but only a minority of world languages around the world have nasal vowels as contrasting phonemes. That is the case, among others, of French, Portuguese, Hindustani, Nepali, Breton, Gheg Albanian, Hmong, Hokkien, Yoruba, and Cherokee. Those nasal vo ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Derivation (linguistics)
Morphological derivation, in linguistics, is the process of forming a new word from an existing word, often by adding a prefix or suffix, such as For example, ''unhappy'' and ''happiness'' derive from the root word ''happy.'' It is differentiated from inflection, which is the modification of a word to form different grammatical categories without changing its core meaning: ''determines'', ''determining'', and ''determined'' are from the root ''determine''. Derivational patterns Derivational morphology often involves the addition of a derivational suffix or other affix. Such an affix usually applies to words of one lexical category (part of speech) and changes them into words of another such category. For example, one effect of the English language, English derivational suffix ''-ly'' is to change an adjective into an adverb (''slow'' → ''slowly''). Here are examples of English derivational patterns and their suffixes: * adjective-to-noun: ''-ness'' (''slow'' → ''slowness ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Linguistics
Linguistics is the scientific study of language. The areas of linguistic analysis are syntax (rules governing the structure of sentences), semantics (meaning), Morphology (linguistics), morphology (structure of words), phonetics (speech sounds and equivalent gestures in sign languages), phonology (the abstract sound system of a particular language, and analogous systems of sign languages), and pragmatics (how the context of use contributes to meaning). Subdisciplines such as biolinguistics (the study of the biological variables and evolution of language) and psycholinguistics (the study of psychological factors in human language) bridge many of these divisions. Linguistics encompasses Outline of linguistics, many branches and subfields that span both theoretical and practical applications. Theoretical linguistics is concerned with understanding the universal grammar, universal and Philosophy of language#Nature of language, fundamental nature of language and developing a general ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Prosodic
In linguistics, prosody () is the study of elements of speech, including intonation (linguistics), intonation, stress (linguistics), stress, Rhythm (linguistics), rhythm and loudness, that occur simultaneously with individual phonetic segments: vowels and consonants. Often, prosody specifically refers to such elements, known as ''suprasegmentals'', when they extend across more than one phonetic segment. Prosody reflects the nuanced emotional features of the speaker or of their utterances: their obvious or underlying emotional state, the form of utterance (statement, question, or command), the presence of irony or sarcasm, certain emphasis on words or morphemes, Contrast (linguistics), contrast, focus (linguistics), focus, and so on. Prosody displays elements of language that are not encoded by grammar, punctuation or choice of vocabulary. Attributes of prosody In the study of prosodic aspects of speech, it is usual to distinguish between Auditory phonetics, auditory measures (Su ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Dinka Language
Dinka (natively , or simply ) is a Nilotic dialect cluster spoken by the Dinka people, a major ethnic group of South Sudan. There are several main varieties, such as Padang, Rek, Agaar, Ciec, Malual, Apaak, Aliab, Bor, Hol, Nyarweng, Twic East and Twic Mayardit, which are distinct enough (though mutually intelligible) to require separate literary standards. Jaang, Jieng or Muonyjieng is used as a general term to cover all Dinka languages. Recently ''Akutmɛ̈t Latueŋ Thuɔŋjäŋ'' (the Dinka Language Development Association) has proposed a unified written grammar of Dinka. The language most closely related to Dinka is the Nuer language. The Luo languages are also closely related. The Dinka vocabulary shows considerable proximity to Nubian, which is probably due to medieval interactions between the Dinka people and the kingdom of Alodia. The Dinka are found mainly along the Nile, specifically the west bank of the White Nile, a major tributary flowing north from Uganda, no ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
