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Western Baltic Languages
The Western Baltic languages were a group of Baltic languages that were spoken by Western Baltic peoples. Western Baltic is one of the two primary branches of Baltic languages, along with Eastern Baltic. It includes Old Prussian, Sudovian, Western Galindian, possibly Skalvian and Old Curonian. Attestation The only properly attested Western Baltic language of which texts are known is Old Prussian, although there are a few short remnants of Old Curonian and Sudovian in the form of isolated words and short phrases. Many Western Baltic languages went extinct in the 16th century while Old Prussian ceased to be spoken in the early 18th century. Classification The only languages securely classified as Western Baltic are Old Prussian and West Galindian, which could also be a dialect of Old Prussian. Most scholars consider Skalvian to be a Westen Baltic language or dialect. Another possible classification is a transitional language between Western and Eastern Baltic. Sudovian ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Central Europe
Central Europe is an area of Europe between Western Europe and Eastern Europe, based on a common historical, social and cultural identity. The Thirty Years' War (1618–1648) between Catholicism and Protestantism significantly shaped the area's history. The concept of "Central Europe" appeared in the 19th century. Central Europe comprised most of the territories of the Holy Roman Empire and those of the two neighboring kingdoms of Poland and Hungary. Hungary and parts of Poland were later part of the Habsburg monarchy, which also significantly shaped the history of Central Europe. Unlike their Western European (Portugal, Spain et al.) and Eastern European (Russia) counterparts, the Central European nations never had any notable colonies (either overseas or adjacent) due to their inland location and other factors. It has often been argued that one of the contributing causes of both World War I and World War II was Germany's lack of original overseas colonies. After Wor ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Poland
Poland, officially the Republic of Poland, is a country in Central Europe. It is divided into 16 administrative provinces called voivodeships, covering an area of . Poland has a population of over 38 million and is the fifth-most populous member state of the European Union. Warsaw is the nation's capital and largest metropolis. Other major cities include Kraków, Wrocław, Łódź, Poznań, Gdańsk, and Szczecin. Poland has a temperate transitional climate and its territory traverses the Central European Plain, extending from Baltic Sea in the north to Sudeten and Carpathian Mountains in the south. The longest Polish river is the Vistula, and Poland's highest point is Mount Rysy, situated in the Tatra mountain range of the Carpathians. The country is bordered by Lithuania and Russia to the northeast, Belarus and Ukraine to the east, Slovakia and the Czech Republic to the south, and Germany to the west. It also shares maritime boundaries with Denmark a ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Oeconym
An oeconym, also econym, or oikonym (from el, οἶκος, , 'house, dwelling' and , , 'name') is a specific type of toponym that designates a proper name of a house or any other residential building, and in the broader sense, the term also refers to the proper name of any inhabited settlement, like village, town or city.Gornostay, Tatiana, & Inguna Skadiņa. 2009. Pattern-Based English-Latvian Toponym Translation. ''Proceedings of the 17th Nordic Conference on Computational Linguistics NODALIDA'', May 14–16, 2009, Odense, Denmark, NEALT Proceedings Series, 4: 41–47. Within the toponomastic classification, main types of oeconyms (econyms, oikonyms) are: ''astionyms'' (proper names of towns or cities), and ''comonyms'' (proper names of villages). Other terminology Sometimes the term ''ecodomonym'' is used to refer specifically to a building as an inhabited place.Room, Adrian. 1996. ''An Alphabetical Guide to the Language of Name Studies.'' Lanham, MD: Scarecrow Press. Compare ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Hydronym
A hydronym (from el, ὕδρω, , "water" and , , "name") is a type of toponym that designates a proper name of a body of water. Hydronyms include the proper names of rivers and streams, lakes and ponds, swamps and marshes, seas and oceans. As a subset of toponymy, a distinctive discipline of ''hydronymy'' (or ''hydronomastics'') studies the proper names of all bodies of water, the origins and meanings of those names, and their development and transmission through history. Classification by water types Within the onomastic classification, main types of hydronyms are (in alphabetical order): * helonyms: proper names of swamps, marshes and bogs, * limnonyms: proper names of lakes and ponds, * oceanonyms: proper names of oceans, * pelagonyms: proper names of seas and maritime bays, * potamonyms: proper names of rivers and streams. Linguistic phenomena Often a given body of water will have several entirely different names given to it by different peoples living along its s ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Neuter (grammar)
In linguistics, grammatical gender system is a specific form of noun class system, where nouns are assigned with gender categories that are often not related to their real-world qualities. In languages with grammatical gender, most or all nouns inherently carry one value of the grammatical category called ''gender''; the values present in a given language (of which there are usually two or three) are called the ''genders'' of that language. Whereas some authors use the term "grammatical gender" as a synonym of "noun class", others use different definitions for each; many authors prefer "noun classes" when none of the inflections in a language relate to sex. Gender systems are used in approximately one half of the world's languages. According to one definition: "Genders are classes of nouns reflected in the behaviour of associated words." Overview Languages with grammatical gender usually have two to four different genders, but some are attested with up to 20. Common gender ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Feminine Gender
In linguistics, grammatical gender system is a specific form of noun class system, where nouns are assigned with gender categories that are often not related to their real-world qualities. In languages with grammatical gender, most or all nouns inherently carry one value of the grammatical category called ''gender''; the values present in a given language (of which there are usually two or three) are called the ''genders'' of that language. Whereas some authors use the term "grammatical gender" as a synonym of "noun class", others use different definitions for each; many authors prefer "noun classes" when none of the inflections in a language relate to sex. Gender systems are used in approximately one half of the world's languages. According to one definition: "Genders are classes of nouns reflected in the behaviour of associated words." Overview Languages with grammatical gender usually have two to four different genders, but some are attested with up to 20. Common gender ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Masculine Gender
In linguistics, grammatical gender system is a specific form of noun class system, where nouns are assigned with gender categories that are often not related to their real-world qualities. In languages with grammatical gender, most or all nouns inherently carry one value of the grammatical category called ''gender''; the values present in a given language (of which there are usually two or three) are called the ''genders'' of that language. Whereas some authors use the term "grammatical gender" as a synonym of "noun class", others use different definitions for each; many authors prefer "noun classes" when none of the inflections in a language relate to sex. Gender systems are used in approximately one half of the world's languages. According to one definition: "Genders are classes of nouns reflected in the behaviour of associated words." Overview Languages with grammatical gender usually have two to four different genders, but some are attested with up to 20. Common gende ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Palatalization (phonetics)
In phonetics, palatalization (, also ) or palatization is a way of pronouncing a consonant in which part of the tongue is moved close to the hard palate. Consonants pronounced this way are said to be palatalized and are transcribed in the International Phonetic Alphabet by affixing the letter ⟨ʲ⟩ to the base consonant. Palatalization cannot minimally distinguish words in most dialects of English, but it may do so in languages such as Russian, Mandarin, and Irish. Types In technical terms, palatalization refers to the secondary articulation of consonants by which the body of the tongue is raised toward the hard palate and the alveolar ridge during the articulation of the consonant. Such consonants are phonetically palatalized. "Pure" palatalization is a modification to the articulation of a consonant, where the middle of the tongue is raised, and nothing else. It may produce a laminal articulation of otherwise apical consonants such as and . Phonetically palatalized cons ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Accusative Case
The accusative case ( abbreviated ) of a noun is the grammatical case used to mark the direct object of a transitive verb. In the English language, the only words that occur in the accusative case are pronouns: 'me,' 'him,' 'her,' 'us,' and ‘them’. The spelling of those words will change depending on how they are used in a sentence. For example, the pronoun ''they'', as the subject of a sentence, is in the nominative case ("They wrote a book"); but if the pronoun is instead the object, it is in the accusative case and ''they'' becomes ''them'' ("The book was written by them"). The accusative case is used in many languages for the objects of (some or all) prepositions. It is usually combined with the nominative case (for example in Latin). The English term, "accusative", derives from the Latin , which, in turn, is a translation of the Greek . The word may also mean "causative", and this may have been the Greeks' intention in this name, but the sense of the Roman translation h ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Archaic (linguistics)
Historical linguistics, also termed diachronic linguistics, is the scientific study of language change over time. Principal concerns of historical linguistics include: # to describe and account for observed changes in particular languages # to reconstruct the pre-history of languages and to determine their relatedness, grouping them into language families (comparative linguistics) # to develop general theories about how and why language changes # to describe the history of speech communities # to study the history of words, i.e. etymology Historical linguistics is founded on the Uniformitarian Principle, which is defined by linguist Donald Ringe as: History and development Western modern historical linguistics dates from the late-18th century. It grew out of the earlier discipline of philology, the study of ancient texts and documents dating back to antiquity. At first, historical linguistics served as the cornerstone of comparative linguistics, primarily as a tool ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Lithuania
Lithuania (; lt, Lietuva ), officially the Republic of Lithuania ( lt, Lietuvos Respublika, links=no ), is a country in the Baltic region of Europe. It is one of three Baltic states and lies on the eastern shore of the Baltic Sea. Lithuania shares land borders with Latvia to the north, Belarus to the east and south, Poland to the south, and Russia to the southwest. It has a Maritime boundary, maritime border with Sweden to the west on the Baltic Sea. Lithuania covers an area of , with a population of 2.8 million. Its capital and largest city is Vilnius; other major cities are Kaunas and Klaipėda. Lithuanians belong to the ethno-linguistic group of the Balts and speak Lithuanian language, Lithuanian, one of only a few living Baltic languages. For millennia the southeastern shores of the Baltic Sea were inhabited by various Balts, Baltic tribes. In the 1230s, Lithuanian lands were united by Mindaugas, Monarchy of Lithuania, becoming king and founding the Kingdom of Lithuania ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Latvia
Latvia ( or ; lv, Latvija ; ltg, Latveja; liv, Leţmō), officially the Republic of Latvia ( lv, Latvijas Republika, links=no, ltg, Latvejas Republika, links=no, liv, Leţmō Vabāmō, links=no), is a country in the Baltic region of Northern Europe. It is one of the Baltic states; and is bordered by Estonia to the north, Lithuania to the south, Russia to the east, Belarus to the southeast, and shares a maritime border with Sweden to the west. Latvia covers an area of , with a population of 1.9 million. The country has a temperate seasonal climate. Its capital and largest city is Riga. Latvians belong to the ethno-linguistic group of the Balts; and speak Latvian, one of the only two surviving Baltic languages. Russians are the most prominent minority in the country, at almost a quarter of the population. After centuries of Teutonic, Swedish, Polish-Lithuanian and Russian rule, which was mainly executed by the local Baltic German aristocracy, the independent ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
