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Stative
According to some linguistics theories, a stative verb is a verb that describes a state of being, in contrast to a dynamic verb, which describes an action. The difference can be categorized by saying that stative verbs describe situations that are static or unchanging throughout their entire duration, whereas dynamic verbs describe processes that entail change over time. Many languages distinguish between these two types in terms of how they can be used grammatically. Contrast to dynamic Some languages use the same verbs for dynamic and stative situations, and others use different (but often related) verbs with some kind of qualifiers to distinguish between them. Some verbs may act as either stative or dynamic. A phrase like "he plays the piano" may be either stative or dynamic, according to the context. When, in a given context, the verb "play" relates to a state (an interest or a profession), he could be an amateur who enjoys music or a professional pianist. The dynamic interpr ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Rukai Language
Rukai is a Formosan language spoken by the Rukai people in Taiwan. It is a member of the Austronesian language family. The Rukai language comprises six dialects, which are Budai, Labuan, Maga, Mantauran, Tanan and Tona. The number of speakers of the six Rukai dialects is estimated to be about 10,000. Some of them are monolingual. There are varying degrees of mutual intelligibility among the Rukai dialects. Rukai is notable for its distinct grammatical voice system among the Formosan languages. Classification Paul Jen-kuei Li considers Rukai to be the first language to have split from the Proto-Austronesian language. Below are the estimated divergence dates of various Formosan languages from Li (2008:215). # Proto-Austronesian: 4,500 BCE # Rukai: 3,000 BCE # Tsouic: 2,500 BCE (split into Tsou and Southern Tsouic around 1,000 BCE) # Most other splits: 2,000 to 0 BCE # Western Plains: 1,000 CE Classifications by various scholars repeatedly find that Rukai is one of the, and ofte ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Verb Types
A verb () is a word (part of speech) that in syntax generally conveys an action (''bring'', ''read'', ''walk'', ''run'', ''learn''), an occurrence (''happen'', ''become''), or a state of being (''be'', ''exist'', ''stand''). In the usual description of English, the basic form, with or without the particle ''to'', is the infinitive. In many languages, verbs are inflected (modified in form) to encode tense, aspect, mood, and voice. A verb may also agree with the person, gender or number of some of its arguments, such as its subject, or object. Verbs have tenses: present, to indicate that an action is being carried out; past, to indicate that an action has been done; future, to indicate that an action will be done. For some examples: * I ''washed'' the car yesterday. * The dog ''ate'' my homework. * John ''studies'' English and French. * Lucy ''enjoys'' listening to music. *Barack Obama ''became'' the President of the United States in 2009. ''(occurrence)'' *Mike Trout ''is'' a ... [...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 of Eng ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Dynamic Verb
A dynamic or fientive verb is a verb that shows continued or progressive action on the part of the subject. This is the opposite of a stative verb. Overview Actions denoted by dynamic verbs have duration. They occur over a span of time. This time span may or may not have a defined endpoint, and may or may not yet have occurred. These distinctions lead to various forms related to tense and aspect. For example, a dynamic verb may be said to have a durative aspect if there is not a defined endpoint or a punctual aspect if there is a defined endpoint. Examples of dynamic verbs in English are 'to run', 'to hit', 'to intervene', 'to savour' and 'to go'. A striking feature of modern English is its limited use of the simple present tense of dynamic verbs. Generally, the tense is required to express an action taking place in the present (I am going). The simple present usually refers to a habitual action (I go every day), a general rule (water runs downhill), a future action in some ... [...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 Philosophy (from , ) is the systematized study of general and fundamental questions, such as those about existence, reason, knowledge, values, mind, and language. Such questions are often posed as problems to be studied or resolved. Some ..., 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 ter ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Lexical Aspect
In linguistics, the lexical aspect or Aktionsart (, plural ''Aktionsarten'' ) of a verb is part of the way in which that verb is structured in relation to time. For example, the English verbs ''arrive'' and ''run'' differ in their lexical aspect since the former describes an event which has a natural endpoint while the latter does not. Lexical aspect differs from grammatical aspect in that it is an inherent semantic property of a predicate, while grammatical aspect is a syntactic or morphological property. Although lexical aspect need not be marked morphologically, it has downstream grammatical effects, for instance that ''arrive'' can be modified by "in an hour" while ''believe'' cannot. Theories of aspectual class Although all theories of lexical aspect recognize that verbs divide into different classes, the details of the classification differ. An early attempt by Vendler recognized four classes, which has been modified several times. Vendler's classification Zeno Vendler c ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Clause
In language, a clause is a constituent that comprises a semantic predicand (expressed or not) and a semantic predicate. A typical clause consists of a subject and a syntactic predicate, the latter typically a verb phrase composed of a verb with any objects and other modifiers. However, the subject is sometimes unvoiced if it is retrievable from context, especially in null-subject language but also in other languages, including English instances of the imperative mood. A complete simple sentence includes a single clause with a finite verb. Complex sentences contain multiple clauses including at least one ''independent clause'' (meaning, a clause that can stand alone as a simple sentence) coordinated either with at least one dependent clause (also called an embedded clause) or with one or more independent clauses. Two major distinctions A primary division for the discussion of clauses is the distinction between independent clauses and dependent clauses. An independent clause can s ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Cleft Sentence
A cleft sentence is a complex sentence (one having a main clause and a dependent clause) that has a meaning that could be expressed by a simple sentence. Clefts typically put a particular Constituent (linguistics), constituent into Focus (linguistics), focus. In spoken language, this focusing is often accompanied by a special Intonation (linguistics), intonation. In English language, English, a cleft sentence can be constructed as follows: :''it'' + conjugated form of ''to be'' + ''X'' + subordinate clause where ''it'' is a cleft pronoun and ''X'' is usually a noun phrase (although it can also be a prepositional phrase, and in some cases an adjectival or adverbial phrase). The focus is on ''X'', or else on the subordinate clause or some element of it. For example: *''It's Joey (whom) we're looking for.'' *''It's money that I love.'' *''It was from John that she heard the news.'' Furthermore, one might also describe a cleft sentence as inverted. That is to say, it has its dependen ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Inchoative
Inchoative aspect (abbreviated or ) is a grammatical aspect, referring to the beginning of a state. It can be found in conservative Indo-European languages such as Latin and Lithuanian, and also in Finnic languages or European derived languages with high percentage of Latin-based words like Esperanto. It should not be confused with the prospective, which denotes actions that are about to start. The English language can approximate the inchoative aspect through the verbs "to become" or "to get" combined with an adjective. Since inchoative is a grammatical aspect and not a tense, it can be combined with tenses to form past inchoative, frequentative past inchoative and future inchoative, all used in Lithuanian. In Russian, inchoatives are regularly derived from unidirectional imperfective verbs of motion by adding the prefix по- ''po-'', e.g. ''bezhát''', ''pobezhát''': "to run", "to start running". Also compare ''shli'' (normal past tense plural of ''idtí'', "t ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Lambda-calculus
Lambda calculus (also written as ''λ''-calculus) is a formal system in mathematical logic for expressing computation based on function abstraction and application using variable binding and substitution. It is a universal model of computation that can be used to simulate any Turing machine. It was introduced by the mathematician Alonzo Church in the 1930s as part of his research into the foundations of mathematics. Lambda calculus consists of constructing § lambda terms and performing § reduction operations on them. In the simplest form of lambda calculus, terms are built using only the following rules: * x – variable, a character or string representing a parameter or mathematical/logical value. * (\lambda x.M) – abstraction, function definition (M is a lambda term). The variable x becomes bound in the expression. * (M\ N) – application, applying a function M to an argument N. M and N are lambda terms. The reduction operations include: * (\lambda x.M \rightarrow(\lam ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Logic
Logic is the study of correct reasoning. It includes both formal and informal logic. Formal logic is the science of deductively valid inferences or of logical truths. It is a formal science investigating how conclusions follow from premises in a topic-neutral way. When used as a countable noun, the term "a logic" refers to a logical formal system that articulates a proof system. Formal logic contrasts with informal logic, which is associated with informal fallacies, critical thinking, and argumentation theory. While there is no general agreement on how formal and informal logic are to be distinguished, one prominent approach associates their difference with whether the studied arguments are expressed in formal or informal languages. Logic plays a central role in multiple fields, such as philosophy, mathematics, computer science, and linguistics. Logic studies arguments, which consist of a set of premises together with a conclusion. Premises and conclusions are usually un ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
David Dowty
David Roach Dowty (born 1945) is a linguist known primarily for his work in semantic and syntactic theory, and especially in Montague grammar and Categorial grammar. Dowty is a professor emeritus of linguistics at the Ohio State University, and his research interests mainly lie in Semantic and Syntactic Theory, Lexical semantics and Thematic roles, Categorial grammar, and Semantics of Tense and Aspect. Life David Dowty received his PhD from the University of Texas at Austin, with a thesis supervised by Robert Wall and Emmon Bach on the temporal semantics of verbs. Dowty was editor-in-chief of the journal ''Linguistics and Philosophy'' from 1988 to 1992, and associate editor of ''Language''. For several years he was chairman of the Department of Linguistics at the Ohio State University. A one-day symposium was held at the University of Groningen in honour of his sixtieth birthday, subsequently published as ''Theory and Evidence in Semantics''. Major Publications * ''Word Mean ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
