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Topic Marker
A topic marker is a grammatical particle used to mark the topic of a sentence. It is found in Japanese, Korean, Quechua, Ryukyuan, Imonda and, to a limited extent, Classical Chinese. It often overlaps with the subject of a sentence, causing confusion for learners, as most other languages lack it. It differs from a subject in that it puts more emphasis on the item and can be used with words in other roles as well. Korean: 은/는 The topic marker is one of many Korean particles. It comes in two varieties based on its phonetic environment: 은 (''eun'') is used after words that end in a consonant, and 는 (''neun'') is used after words that end in a vowel. Example In the following example, "school" () is the subject, and it is marked as the topic. Japanese: は The topic marker is one of many Japanese particles. It is written with the hiragana は, which is normally pronounced ''ha'', but when used as a particle is pronounced ''wa''. If what is to be the topic would have ha ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Grammatical Particle
In grammar, the term ''particle'' (abbreviated ) has a traditional meaning, as a part of speech that cannot be inflected, and a modern meaning, as a function word associated with another word or phrase, generally in order to impart meaning. Although a particle may have an intrinsic meaning, and indeed may fit into other grammatical categories, the fundamental idea of the particle is to add context to the sentence, expressing a mood or indicating a specific action. In English, for instance, the phrase "oh well" has no purpose in speech other than to convey a mood. The word 'up' would be a particle in the phrase to 'look up' (as in the phrase ''"''look up this topic''"''), implying that one researches something, rather than literally gazing skywards. Many languages use particles, in varying amounts and for varying reasons. In Hindi, for instance, they may be used as honorifics, or to indicate emphasis or negation. In some languages they are more clearly defined, such as Chinese, whic ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Japanese Grammar
Japanese is an agglutinative, synthetic, mora-timed language with simple phonotactics, a pure vowel system, phonemic vowel and consonant length, and a lexically significant pitch-accent. Word order is normally subject–object–verb with particles marking the grammatical function of words, and sentence structure is topic–comment. Its phrases are exclusively head-final and compound sentences are exclusively left-branching. Sentence-final particles are used to add emotional or emphatic impact, or make questions. Nouns have no grammatical number or gender, and there are no articles. Verbs are conjugated, primarily for tense and voice, but not person. Japanese adjectives are also conjugated. Japanese has a complex system of honorifics with verb forms and vocabulary to indicate the relative status of the speaker, the listener, and persons mentioned. In language typology, it has many features different from most European languages. Distinctive aspects of modern Japanese senten ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
James Clackson
James Peter Timothy Clackson (born 13 September 1966) is a British linguist and Indo-Europeanist. He is a professor of Comparative Philology at the Faculty of Classics, University of Cambridge, and a Fellow and Director of Studies at Jesus College, Cambridge. Biography Clackson was born on 13 September 1966 in Gloucester. His father is Andrew Peter Clackson and his mother is Anne Claire Clackson (''née'' Bramley). He attended Loughborough Grammar School and then Trinity College, Cambridge, where he received his BA in 1988, his MA, and his PhD in 1992. While at the University of Cambridge, Clackson studied under Robert Coleman. His Ph.D. thesis served as a basis for his 1994 book ''The Linguistic Relationship between Armenian and Greek''. His research interests include ancient languages of the Italian peninsula (Latin, Sabellian, Etruscan), Indo-European linguistics, Latin linguistics, Greek linguistics and Armenian. He was a junior research fellow at Trinity College, Cambrid ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Topic-prominent Language
A topic-prominent language is a language that organizes its syntax to emphasize the topic–comment structure of the sentence. The term is best known in American linguistics from Charles N. Li and Sandra Thompson (linguist), Sandra Thompson, who distinguished topic-prominent languages, such as Korean language, Korean and Japanese language, Japanese, from subject-prominent languages, such as English language, English. In Li and Thompson's (1976) view, topic-prominent languages have morphology or syntax that highlights the distinction between the topic (linguistics), topic and the comment (what is said about the topic). Topic–comment structure may be independent of the word order, syntactic ordering of subject (grammar), subject, verb and object (grammar), object. Common features Many topic-prominent languages share several syntactic features that have arisen because the languages have sentences that are structured around topics, rather than subjects and objects: *They tend t ... [...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] |
Records Of The Grand Historian
''Records of the Grand Historian'', also known by its Chinese name ''Shiji'', is a monumental history of China that is the first of China's 24 dynastic histories. The ''Records'' was written in the early 1st century by the ancient Chinese historian Sima Qian, whose father Sima Tan had begun it several decades earlier. The work covers a 2,500-year period from the age of the legendary Yellow Emperor to the reign of Emperor Wu of Han in the author's own time, and describes the world as it was known to the Chinese of the Western Han dynasty. The ''Records'' has been called a "foundational text in Chinese civilization". After Confucius and the First Emperor of Qin, "Sima Qian was one of the creators of Imperial China, not least because by providing definitive biographies, he virtually created the two earlier figures." The ''Records'' set the model for all subsequent dynastic histories of China. In contrast to Western historical works, the ''Records'' do not treat history as "a cont ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Okinawan Language
The Okinawan language (, , , ) or Central Okinawan, is a Northern Ryukyuan languages, Ryukyuan language spoken primarily in the southern half of the Okinawa Island, island of Okinawa, as well as in the surrounding islands of Kerama Islands, Kerama, Kumejima, Okinawa, Kumejima, Tonaki, Okinawa, Tonaki, Aguni, Okinawa, Aguni and a number of smaller peripheral islands. Central Okinawan distinguishes itself from the speech of Northern Okinawa, which is classified independently as the Kunigami language. Both languages are listed by UNESCO as Atlas of the World's Languages in Danger, endangered. Though Okinawan encompasses a number of local dialects, the Shuri, Okinawa, Shuri–Naha variant is generally recognized as the ''de facto'' standard, as it had been used as the official language of the Ryukyu Kingdom since the reign of King Shō Shin (1477–1526). Moreover, as the former capital of Shuri was built around the royal palace, the language used by the royal court became the regio ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Direct Object
In linguistics, an object is any of several types of arguments. In subject-prominent, nominative-accusative languages such as English, a transitive verb typically distinguishes between its subject and any of its objects, which can include but are not limited to direct objects, indirect objects, and arguments of adpositions ( prepositions or postpositions); the latter are more accurately termed ''oblique arguments'', thus including other arguments not covered by core grammatical roles, such as those governed by case morphology (as in languages such as Latin) or relational nouns (as is typical for members of the Mesoamerican Linguistic Area). In ergative-absolutive languages, for example most Australian Aboriginal languages, the term "subject" is ambiguous, and thus the term "agent" is often used instead to contrast with "object", such that basic word order is often spoken of in terms such as Agent-Object-Verb (AOV) instead of Subject-Object-Verb (SOV). Topic-prominent language ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Hiragana
is a Japanese syllabary, part of the Japanese writing system, along with ''katakana'' as well as ''kanji''. It is a phonetic lettering system. The word ''hiragana'' literally means "flowing" or "simple" kana ("simple" originally as contrasted with kanji). Hiragana and katakana are both kana systems. With few exceptions, each mora in the Japanese language is represented by one character (or one digraph) in each system. This may be either a vowel such as ''"a"'' (hiragana あ); a consonant followed by a vowel such as ''"ka"'' (か); or ''"n"'' (ん), a nasal sonorant which, depending on the context, sounds either like English ''m'', ''n'' or ''ng'' () when syllable-final or like the nasal vowels of French, Portuguese or Polish. Because the characters of the kana do not represent single consonants (except in the case of ん "n"), the kana are referred to as syllabic symbols and not alphabetic letters. Hiragana is used to write ''okurigana'' (kana suffixes following a kanji ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Japanese Particles
Japanese particles, or , are suffixes or short words in Japanese grammar that immediately follow the modified noun, verb, adjective, or sentence. Their grammatical range can indicate various meanings and functions, such as speaker affect and assertiveness. Orthography and diction Japanese particles are written in hiragana in modern Japanese, though some of them also have kanji forms ( or for ''te'' ; for ''ni'' ; or for ''o'' ; and for ''wa'' ). Particles follow the same rules of phonetic transcription as all Japanese words, with the exception of (written ''ha'', pronounced ''wa'' as a particle), (written ''he'', pronounced ''e'') and (written using a hiragana character with no other use in modern Japanese, originally assigned as ''wo'', now usually pronounced ''o'', though some speakers render it as ''wo''). These exceptions are a relic of historical kana usage. Types of particles There are eight types of particles, depending on what function they serve. : : ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Phonetic Environment
In phonetics and linguistics the phonetic environment refers to the surrounding sounds of a target speech sound, or target phone, in a word. The phonetic environment of a phone can sometimes determine the allophonic or phonemic qualities of a sound in a given language. For example, the English vowel 'a' /æ/ in the word 'mat' /mæt/ has the consonants /m/ preceding it and /t/ following it. In linguistic notation it is written as /m__t, where the slash can be read as "in the environment", and the underscore represents the target phone's position relative to its neighbours. The expression therefore reads "in the environment after m and before t". See also * Allophone * Complementary distribution * Contrastive distribution * Free variation * List of phonetics topics * Minimal pair * Phoneme In phonology and linguistics, a phoneme () is a unit of sound that can distinguish one word from another in a particular language. For example, in most dialects of English, with the notable e ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Topic (linguistics)
In linguistics, the topic, or theme, of a sentence is what is being talked about, and the comment (rheme or focus) is what is being said about the topic. This division into old vs. new content is called information structure. It is generally agreed that clauses are divided into topic vs. comment, but in certain cases the boundary between them depends on which specific grammatical theory is being used to analyze the sentence. Topic, which is defined by pragmatic considerations, is a distinct concept from grammatical subject, which is defined by syntax. In any given sentence these may be the same, but they need not be. For example, in the sentence "As for the little girl, the dog bit her", the subject is "the dog" but the topic is "the little girl". Topic and subject are also distinct concepts from agent (or actor)—the "doer", which is defined by semantics. In English clauses with a verb in the passive voice, for instance, the topic is typically the subject, while the agent ma ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
