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Mass Noun
In linguistics, a mass noun, uncountable noun, non-count noun, uncount noun, or just uncountable, is a noun with the syntactic property that any quantity of it is treated as an undifferentiated unit, rather than as something with discrete elements. Non-count nouns are distinguished from count nouns. Given that different languages have different grammatical features, the actual test for which nouns are mass nouns may vary between languages. In English, mass nouns are characterized by the impossibility of being directly modified by a numeral without specifying a unit of measurement and by the impossibility of being combined with an indefinite article (''a'' or ''an''). Thus, the mass noun "water" is quantified as "20 litres of water" while the count noun "chair" is quantified as "20 chairs". However, both mass and count nouns can be quantified in relative terms without unit specification (e.g., "so much water", "so many chairs"). Mass nouns have no concept of singular and plural ... [...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 social con ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Finnish Language
Finnish ( endonym: or ) is a Uralic language of the Finnic branch, spoken by the majority of the population in Finland and by ethnic Finns outside of Finland. Finnish is one of the two official languages of Finland (the other being Swedish). In Sweden, both Finnish and Meänkieli (which has significant mutual intelligibility with Finnish) are official minority languages. The Kven language, which like Meänkieli is mutually intelligible with Finnish, is spoken in the Norwegian county Troms og Finnmark by a minority group of Finnish descent. Finnish is typologically agglutinative and uses almost exclusively suffixal affixation. Nouns, adjectives, pronouns, numerals and verbs are inflected depending on their role in the sentence. Sentences are normally formed with subject–verb–object word order, although the extensive use of inflection allows them to be ordered differently. Word order variations are often reserved for differences in information structure. Finnish orth ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Japanese Language
is spoken natively by about 128 million people, primarily by Japanese people and primarily in Japan, the only country where it is the national language. Japanese belongs to the Japonic or Japanese- Ryukyuan language family. There have been many attempts to group the Japonic languages with other families such as the Ainu, Austroasiatic, Koreanic, and the now-discredited Altaic, but none of these proposals has gained widespread acceptance. Little is known of the language's prehistory, or when it first appeared in Japan. Chinese documents from the 3rd century AD recorded a few Japanese words, but substantial Old Japanese texts did not appear until the 8th century. From the Heian period (794–1185), there was a massive influx of Sino-Japanese vocabulary into the language, affecting the phonology of Early Middle Japanese. Late Middle Japanese (1185–1600) saw extensive grammatical changes and the first appearance of European loanwords. The basis of the standard dialect moved f ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Chinese (language)
Chinese (, especially when referring to written Chinese) is a group of languages spoken natively by the ethnic Han Chinese majority and many minority ethnic groups in Greater China. About 1.3 billion people (or approximately 16% of the world's population) speak a variety of Chinese as their first language. Chinese languages form the Sinitic branch of the Sino-Tibetan languages family. The spoken varieties of Chinese are usually considered by native speakers to be variants of a single language. However, their lack of mutual intelligibility means they are sometimes considered separate languages in a family. Investigation of the historical relationships among the varieties of Chinese is ongoing. Currently, most classifications posit 7 to 13 main regional groups based on phonetic developments from Middle Chinese, of which the most spoken by far is Mandarin (with about 800 million speakers, or 66%), followed by Min (75 million, e.g. Southern Min), Wu (74 million, e.g. Shanghai ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Generative Linguistics In The Old World
GLOW is an international organization to further the study of generative grammar, founded in 1977 and based in the Netherlands. Its activities include its annual spring linguistics conference and periodic summer schools. In the past, GLOW published a newsletter that discusses current intellectual (and organizational) issues in the study of generative grammar. The GLOW name originally stood for "Generative Linguistics in the Old World." It was founded in an attempt to provide an annual meeting for European researchers in Generative Grammar who felt themselves largely excluded from other organizations in the late 1970s. Its founding document, the so-called ''GLOW Manifesto'' authored by Jan Koster, Henk van Riemsdijk and Jean-Roger Vergnaud, declared that "generative linguistics acquired a new momentum in Europe after Chomsky's 973 paper'Conditions on transformations'" and sought to reflect that momentum with a new organization. By the beginning of the 21st century, GLOW had eme ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Fire
Fire is the rapid oxidation of a material (the fuel) in the exothermic chemical process of combustion, releasing heat, light, and various reaction Product (chemistry), products. At a certain point in the combustion reaction, called the ignition point, flames are produced. The ''flame'' is the visible portion of the fire. Flames consist primarily of carbon dioxide, water vapor, oxygen and nitrogen. If hot enough, the gases may become ionized to produce Plasma (physics), plasma. Depending on the substances alight, and any impurities outside, the color of the flame and the fire's Intensity (heat transfer), intensity will be different. Fire in its most common form can result in conflagration, which has the potential to cause physical damage through burning. Fire is an important process that affects ecological systems around the globe. The positive effects of fire include stimulating growth and maintaining various ecological systems. Its negative effects include hazard to life and pr ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Collective Noun
In linguistics, a collective noun is a word referring to a collection of things taken as a whole. Most collective nouns in everyday speech are not specific to one kind of thing. For example, the collective noun "group" can be applied to people ("a group of people"), or dogs ("a group of dogs"), or objects ("a group of stones"). Some collective nouns are specific to one kind of thing, especially terms of venery, which identify groups of specific animals. For example, "pride" as a term of venery always refers to lions, never to dogs or cows. Other examples come from popular culture such as a group of owls, which is called a "parliament". Different forms of English handle verb agreement with collective count nouns differently. For example, users of British English generally accept that collective nouns take either singular or plural verb forms depending on context and the metonymic shift that it implies. Derivation Morphological derivation accounts for many collective words and ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Renate Bartsch
Renate Irmtraut Bartsch (born 12 December 1939) is a German philosopher of language. She was a professor at the University of Amsterdam between 1974 and 2004. Career Bartsch was born on 12 December 1939 in Königsberg. She earned her Doctor title at Heidelberg University in 1967 with a thesis titled: "Grundzüge einer empiristischen Bedeutungstheorie". Bartsch worked as professor of philosophy of language at the University of Amsterdam from 1974 until she retired in 2004. Bartsch became a member of the Royal Netherlands Academy of Arts and Sciences The Royal Netherlands Academy of Arts and Sciences ( nl, Koninklijke Nederlandse Akademie van Wetenschappen, abbreviated: KNAW) is an organization dedicated to the advancement of science and literature in the Netherlands. The academy is housed ... in 2000. References 1939 births Living people Heidelberg University alumni Members of the Royal Netherlands Academy of Arts and Sciences Writers from Königsberg Philosophers ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Cumulativity
In linguistic semantics, an expression X is said to have cumulative reference if and only if the following holds: If X is true of both of ''a'' and ''b'', then it is also true of the combination of ''a'' and ''b''. Example: If two separate entities can be said to be "water", then combining them into one entity will yield more "water". If two separate entities can be said to be "a house", their combination cannot be said to be "a house". Hence, "water" has cumulative reference, while the expression "a house" does not. The plural form "houses", however, ''does'' have cumulative reference. If two (groups of) entities are both "houses", then their combination will still be "houses". Cumulativity has proven relevant to the linguistic treatment of the mass/count distinction and for the characterization of grammatical telicity. Formally, a cumulative predicate ''CUM'' can be defined as follows, where capital ''X'' is a variable over sets, ''U'' is the universe of discourse, ''p'' ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Quantization (linguistics)
In formal semantics, a predicate is quantized if it being true of an entity requires that it is ''not'' true of any proper subparts of that entity. For example, if something is an "apple", then no proper subpart of that thing is an "apple". If something is "water", then many of its subparts will also be "water". Hence, the predicate "apple" is quantized, while "water" is not. Formally, a quantization predicate ''QUA'' can be defined as follows, where U is the universe of discourse, F is a variable over sets, and p is a mereological part structure on U with <_p the mereological part-of : ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
