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Pseudoscientific Language Comparison
Pseudoscientific language comparison is a form of pseudo-scholarship that aims at establishing historical associations between languages by naïve postulations of similarities between them. While comparative linguistics also studies the historical relationships of languages, linguistic comparisons are deemed pseudoscientific when they are not based on the established practices. Pseudoscientific language comparison is usually performed by people with little or no specialization in the field of comparative linguistics. It is a widespread type of linguistic pseudoscience. The most common method applied in pseudoscientific language comparisons is to search two or more languages for words that seem similar in their sound and meaning. While such similarities often seem convincing to laypeople, linguistic scientists see this kind of comparison as unreliable for two primary reasons. First, the method applied is not well-defined: the criterion of similarity is subjective and thus not subjec ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Pseudo-scholarship
Pseudo-scholarship (from pseudo- and scholarship) is a term used to describe work (e.g., publication, lecture) or a body of work that is presented as, but is not, the product of rigorous and objective study or research; the act of producing such work; or the pretended learning upon which it is based. Examples of pseudo-scholarship include: *Pseudoarchaeology *Pseudohistory *Pseudolinguistics *Pseudomathematics *Pseudophilosophy *PseudoscienceJeremy Bernstein, ''A Comprehensible World: On Modern Science and Its Origins'', 2nd ed. (New York: Random House, 1967) p. 193 See also *Chaos magic *Conspiracy theory *Counterknowledge *Crank (person) *Fallacy *Fringe science *Fringe theory *Ignoratio elenchi *Junk science *Predatory journal *Proto-science __NOTOC__ In the philosophy of science, there are several definitions of protoscience. Its simplest meaning (most closely reflecting its roots of ''proto-'' + ''science'') involves the earliest eras of the history of science, when the sc ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Scientific Method
The scientific method is an empirical method for acquiring knowledge that has characterized the development of science since at least the 17th century (with notable practitioners in previous centuries; see the article history of scientific method for additional detail.) It involves careful observation, applying rigorous skepticism about what is observed, given that cognitive assumptions can distort how one interprets the observation. It involves formulating hypotheses, via induction, based on such observations; the testability of hypotheses, experimental and the measurement-based statistical testing of deductions drawn from the hypotheses; and refinement (or elimination) of the hypotheses based on the experimental findings. These are ''principles'' of the scientific method, as distinguished from a definitive series of steps applicable to all scientific enterprises. Although procedures vary from one field of inquiry to another, the underlying process is frequently the sa ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Altaic Languages
Altaic (; also called Transeurasian) is a controversial proposed language family that would include the Turkic languages, Turkic, Mongolic languages, Mongolic and Tungusic languages, Tungusic language families and possibly also the Japonic languages, Japonic and Koreanic languages. Speakers of these languages are currently scattered over most of Asia north of 35th parallel north, 35° N and in some eastern parts of Europe, extending in longitude from Turkey to Japan. The group is named after the Altai Mountains, Altai mountain range in the center of Asia. The hypothetical language family has long been rejected by most Comparative linguistics, comparative linguists, although it continues to be supported by a small but stable scholarly minority. The research on their supposedly common linguistics origin has inspired various comparative studies on the folklore and mythology among the Turkic people, Turks, Proto-Mongols and Tungus people, Tungus people. The Altaic family was first ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Uralic Languages
The Uralic languages (; sometimes called Uralian languages ) form a language family of 38 languages spoken by approximately 25million people, predominantly in Northern Eurasia. The Uralic languages with the most native speakers are Hungarian (which alone accounts for more than half of the family's speakers), Finnish, and Estonian. Other significant languages with fewer speakers are Erzya, Moksha, Mari, Udmurt, Sami, Komi, and Vepsian, all of which are spoken in northern regions of Scandinavia and the Russian Federation. The name "Uralic" derives from the family's original homeland (''Urheimat'') commonly hypothesized to have been somewhere in the vicinity of the Ural Mountains. Finno-Ugric is sometimes used as a synonym for Uralic, though Finno-Ugric is widely understood to exclude the Samoyedic languages. Scholars who do not accept the traditional notion that Samoyedic split first from the rest of the Uralic family may treat the terms as synonymous. History Homeland ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Language Family
A language family is a group of languages related through descent from a common ''ancestral language'' or ''parental language'', called the proto-language of that family. The term "family" reflects the tree model of language origination in historical linguistics, which makes use of a metaphor comparing languages to people in a biological family tree, or in a subsequent modification, to species in a phylogenetic tree of evolutionary taxonomy. Linguists therefore describe the ''daughter languages'' within a language family as being ''genetically related''. According to '' Ethnologue'' there are 7,151 living human languages distributed in 142 different language families. A living language is defined as one that is the first language of at least one person. The language families with the most speakers are: the Indo-European family, with many widely spoken languages native to Europe (such as English and Spanish) and South Asia (such as Hindi and Bengali); and the Sino-Tibetan famil ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Areal Feature
In geolinguistics, areal features are elements shared by languages or dialects in a geographic area, particularly when such features are not descended from a proto-language, or, common ancestor language. That is, an areal feature is contrasted to lingual-genealogically determined similarity within the same language family. Features may diffuse from one dominant language to neighbouring languages (see "sprachbund"). Genetic relationships are represented in the family tree model of language change, and areal relationships are represented in the wave model. Characteristics Resemblances between two or more languages (whether in typology or in vocabulary) have been observed to result from several mechanisms, including lingual genealogical relation (descent from a common ancestor language, not principally related to biological genetics) ; borrowing between languages ; retention of features when a population adopts a new language ; and chance coincidence. When little or no direct do ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Sami People
Acronyms * SAMI, ''Synchronized Accessible Media Interchange'', a closed-captioning format developed by Microsoft * Saudi Arabian Military Industries, a government-owned defence company * South African Malaria Initiative, a virtual expertise network of malaria researchers People * Samee, also spelled Sami, a male given name * Sami (name), including lists of people with the given name or surname * Sámi people, indigenous people of the Scandinavian Peninsula, the Kola Peninsula, Karelia and Finland ** Sámi cuisine ** Sámi languages, of the Sami people ** Sámi shamanism, a faith of the Sami people Places * Sápmi, a cultural region in Northern Europe * Sami (ancient city), in Elis, Greece * Sami Bay, east of Sami, Cephalonia * Sami District, Gambia * Sami, Burkina Faso, a district of the Banwa Province * Sami, Cephalonia, a municipality in Greece * Sami, Gujarat, a town in Patan district of Gujarat, India * Sami, Paletwa, a town in Chin State, Myanmar * Sämi, a village in Là ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Racism
Racism is the belief that groups of humans possess different behavioral traits corresponding to inherited attributes and can be divided based on the superiority of one race over another. It may also mean prejudice, discrimination, or antagonism directed against other people because they are of a different race or ethnicity. Modern variants of racism are often based in social perceptions of biological differences between peoples. These views can take the form of social actions, practices or beliefs, or political systems in which different races are ranked as inherently superior or inferior to each other, based on presumed shared inheritable traits, abilities, or qualities. There have been attempts to legitimize racist beliefs through scientific means, such as scientific racism, which have been overwhelmingly shown to be unfounded. In terms of political systems (e.g. apartheid) that support the expression of prejudice or aversion in discriminatory practices or laws, racist ideology ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Sweden
Sweden, formally the Kingdom of Sweden,The United Nations Group of Experts on Geographical Names states that the country's formal name is the Kingdom of SwedenUNGEGN World Geographical Names, Sweden./ref> is a Nordic country located on the Scandinavian Peninsula in Northern Europe. It borders Norway to the west and north, Finland to the east, and is connected to Denmark in the southwest by a bridgetunnel across the Öresund. At , Sweden is the largest Nordic country, the third-largest country in the European Union, and the fifth-largest country in Europe. The capital and largest city is Stockholm. Sweden has a total population of 10.5 million, and a low population density of , with around 87% of Swedes residing in urban areas in the central and southern half of the country. Sweden has a nature dominated by forests and a large amount of lakes, including some of the largest in Europe. Many long rivers run from the Scandes range through the landscape, primarily ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Mongolian Language
Mongolian is the official language of Mongolia and both the most widely spoken and best-known member of the Mongolic language family. The number of speakers across all its dialects may be 5.2 million, including the vast majority of the residents of Mongolia and many of the ethnic Mongol residents of the Inner Mongolia Autonomous Region of the People's Republic of China.Estimate from Svantesson ''et al.'' (2005): 141. In Mongolia, Khalkha Mongolian is predominant, and is currently written in both Cyrillic and traditional Mongolian script. In Inner Mongolia, the language is dialectally more diverse and is written in the traditional Mongolian script. However, Mongols in both countries often use the Latin script for convenience on the Internet. In the discussion of grammar to follow, the variety of Mongolian treated is the standard written Khalkha formalized in the writing conventions and in grammar as taught in schools, but much of what is to be said is also valid for vernacular ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Sami Languages
Acronyms * SAMI, ''Synchronized Accessible Media Interchange'', a closed-captioning format developed by Microsoft * Saudi Arabian Military Industries, a government-owned defence company * South African Malaria Initiative, a virtual expertise network of malaria researchers People * Samee, also spelled Sami, a male given name * Sami (name), including lists of people with the given name or surname * Sámi people, indigenous people of the Scandinavian Peninsula, the Kola Peninsula, Karelia and Finland ** Sámi cuisine ** Sámi languages, of the Sami people ** Sámi shamanism, a faith of the Sami people Places * Sápmi, a cultural region in Northern Europe * Sami (ancient city), in Elis, Greece * Sami Bay, east of Sami, Cephalonia * Sami District, Gambia * Sami, Burkina Faso, a district of the Banwa Province * Sami, Cephalonia, a municipality in Greece * Sami, Gujarat, a town in Patan district of Gujarat, India * Sami, Paletwa, a town in Chin State, Myanmar * Sämi, a village in Là ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Turanian Languages
Turanian is an obsolete language-family proposal subsuming most of the languages of Eurasia not included in Indo-European, Semitic and Chinese. During the 19th century, inspired by the establishment of the Indo-European family, scholars looked for similarly widespread families elsewhere. Building on the work of predecessors such as Rasmus Rask and Matthias Castrén, Max Müller proposed the Turanian grouping primarily on the basis of the incidence of agglutinative morphology, naming it after Turan, an ancient Persian term for the lands of Central Asia. The languages he included are now generally assigned to nine separate language families. Classification Müller viewed the structure of the family as follows: * Northern Division (Ural-Altaic) ** Tungusic ** Mongolic ** Turkic ** Samoyedic ** Finnic * Southern Division ** Taic ** Malaic (Malayo-Polynesian) ** Bhotîya (Tibeto-Burman) *** Gangetic *** Lohitic ** Munda ** Tamulic ( Dravidian) He left Japonic, Koreanic, Korya ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
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