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Alienable Possession
In linguistics, inalienable possession (abbreviated ) is a type of possession in which a noun is obligatorily possessed by its possessor. Nouns or nominal affixes in an inalienable possession relationship cannot exist independently or be "alienated" from their possessor. Inalienable nouns include body parts (such as ''leg'', which is necessarily "someone's leg" even if it is severed from the body), kinship terms (such as ''mother''), and part-whole relations (such as ''top''). Many languages reflect the distinction but vary in how they mark inalienable possession. Cross-linguistically, inalienability correlates with many morphological, syntactic, and semantic properties. In general, the alienable–inalienable distinction is an example of a binary possessive class system in which a language distinguishes two kinds of possession (alienable and inalienable). The alienability distinction is the most common kind of binary possessive class system, but it is not the only one. Some ... [...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] |
Grammatical 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. #Gender contras ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
South American Language
The languages of South America can be divided into three broad groups: * the languages of the (in most cases, former) colonial powers; * many indigenous languages, some of which are co-official alongside the colonial languages; * and various pockets of other languages spoken by immigrant populations. Main languages Spanish is the most spoken language of South America with Portuguese as a close second. Other official languages with substantial number of speakers are: * English in Guyana, Trinidad and Tobago and the Falkland Islands * Spanish in Colombia, Venezuela, Ecuador, Peru, Bolivia, Chile, Argentina, Paraguay, and Uruguay * Portuguese in Brazil and Uruguay * Dutch in Suriname * French in French Guiana * Aymara in Bolivia and Peru * Guaraní in Bolivia and Paraguay * Quechua in Bolivia, Ecuador, and Peru Indigenous languages Indigenous languages of South America include, among several others, the Quechua languages in Bolivia, Ecuador, and Peru and to a lesser e ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Prenominal Possessor
Pre-nominal letters are a title which is placed ''before'' the name of a person as distinct from a post-nominal title which is placed ''after'' the name. Examples of pre-nominal titles, for instance professional titles include: Doctor, Captain, EUR ING (European Engineer), Ir (Ingenieur), CA (Indian Chartered Accountant) and Professor; whilst other common social titles are Mr., Master, The Honorable, Ms., Mrs. and Miss. Pre-nominal letters are generally social, but can be professional in nature (e.g. EUR ING). Academic degrees In some Continental European countries all academic degrees were traditionally pre-nominal. Pre-nominal academic degrees in German-speaking countries include: ''Dipl.-Ing.'' (Master's degree in Engineering), '' Dipl.-Kfm.'' (master's degree in management), ''Dipl.-Phys.'' (master's degree in physics), ''Dipl.-Inf.'' or ''Dipl.-Inform.'' (master's degree in computer science), ''Dr.-Ing.'' (German doctorate in engineering), ''Dr. med.'' (German doctorate in ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Postnominal DP Structure - French
Post-nominal letters, also called post-nominal initials, post-nominal titles, designatory letters or simply post-nominals, are letters placed after a person's name to indicate that the individual holds a position, academic degree, accreditation, office, military decoration, or honour, or is a member of a religious institute or fraternity. An individual may use several different sets of post-nominal letters, but in some contexts it may be customary to limit the number of sets to one or just a few. The order in which post-nominals are listed after a name is based on rules of precedence and what is appropriate for a given situation. Post-nominal letters are one of the main types of name suffix. In contrast, pre-nominal letters precede the name rather than following it, such as addressing a physician or professor as "Dr. Smith". List Different awards and post-nominal letters are in use in the English-speaking countries. Usage Listing order The order in which post-nominal lette ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Determiner Phrase
In linguistics, a determiner phrase (DP) is a type of phrase headed by a determiner such as ''many''. Controversially, many approaches, take a phrase like ''not very many apples'' to be a DP, headed, in this case, by the determiner ''many''. This is called the DP analysis or the DP hypothesis. Others reject this analysis in favor of the more traditional NP (noun phrase or nominal phrase) analysis where ''apples'' would be the head of the phrase in which the DP ''not very many'' is merely a dependent. Thus, there are competing analyses concerning heads and dependents in nominal groups. The DP analysis developed in the late 1970s and early 1980s, and it is the majority view in generative grammar today. In the example determiner phrases below, the determiners are in boldface: * a little dog, the little dogs (indefinite or definite articles) * my little dog, your little dogs (possessives) * this little dog, those little dogs (demonstratives) * every little dog, each little dog, no dog ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Linguistic Typology
Linguistic typology (or language typology) is a field of linguistics that studies and classifies languages according to their structural features to allow their comparison. Its aim is to describe and explain the structural diversity and the common properties of the world's languages. Its subdisciplines include, but are not limited to phonological typology, which deals with sound features; syntactic typology, which deals with word order and form; lexical typology, which deals with language vocabulary; and theoretical typology, which aims to explain the universal tendencies. Linguistic typology is contrasted with genealogical linguistics on the grounds that typology groups languages or their grammatical features based on formal similarities rather than historic descendence. The issue of genealogical relation is however relevant to typology because modern data sets aim to be representative and unbiased. Samples are collected evenly from different language families, emphasizing t ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Word Order
In linguistics, word order (also known as linear order) is the order of the syntactic constituents of a language. Word order typology studies it from a cross-linguistic perspective, and examines how different languages employ different orders. Correlations between orders found in different syntactic sub-domains are also of interest. The primary word orders that are of interest are * the ''constituent order'' of a clause, namely the relative order of subject, object, and verb; * the order of modifiers (adjectives, numerals, demonstratives, possessives, and adjuncts) in a noun phrase; * the order of adverbials. Some languages use relatively fixed word order, often relying on the order of constituents to convey grammatical information. Other languages—often those that convey grammatical information through inflection—allow more flexible word order, which can be used to encode pragmatic information, such as topicalisation or focus. However, even languages with flexible word ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Morphophonological
Morphophonology (also morphophonemics or morphonology) is the branch of linguistics that studies the interaction between morphology (linguistics), morphological and phonology, phonological or phonetic processes. Its chief focus is the sound changes that take place in morphemes (minimal meaningful units) when they combine to form words. Morphophonological analysis often involves an attempt to give a series of formal Phonological rule, rules or Optimality Theory, constraints that successfully predict the regular sound changes occurring in the morphemes of a given language. Such a series of rules converts a theoretical underlying representation into a surface form that is actually heard. The units of which the underlying representations of morphemes are composed are sometimes called morphophonemes. The surface form produced by the morphophonological rules may consist of phonemes (which are then subject to ordinary phonological rules to produce speech sounds or ''phone (phonetics), p ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Morphosyntactic
In linguistics, morphology () is the study of words, how they are formed, and their relationship to other words in the same language. It analyzes the structure of words and parts of words such as stems, root words, prefixes, and suffixes. Morphology also looks at parts of speech, intonation and stress, and the ways context can change a word's pronunciation and meaning. Morphology differs from morphological typology, which is the classification of languages based on their use of words, and lexicology, which is the study of words and how they make up a language's vocabulary. While words, along with clitics, are generally accepted as being the smallest units of syntax, in most languages, if not all, many words can be related to other words by rules that collectively describe the grammar for that language. For example, English language, English speakers recognize that the words ''dog'' and ''dogs'' are closely related, differentiated only by the plurality morpheme "-s", only found ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Language Change
Language change is variation over time in a language's features. It is studied in several subfields of linguistics: historical linguistics, sociolinguistics, and evolutionary linguistics. Traditional theories of historical linguistics identify three main types of change: systematic change in the pronunciation of phonemes, or sound change; borrowing, in which features of a language or dialect are altered as a result of influence from another language or dialect; and analogical change, in which the shape or grammatical behavior of a word is altered to more closely resemble that of another word. All living languages are continually undergoing change. Some commentators use derogatory labels such as "corruption" to suggest that language change constitutes a degradation in the quality of a language, especially when the change originates from human error or is a prescriptively discouraged usage. Modern linguistics rejects this concept, since from a scientific point of view such inn ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Bernd Heine
Bernd Heine (born 25 May 1939) is a German linguist and specialist in African studies. From 1978 to 2004 Heine held the chair for African Studies at the University of Cologne, Germany, now being a Professor Emeritus. His main focal points in research and teaching are African linguistics, sociolinguistics, grammaticalization theory and language contact and discourse grammar. The grammaticalisation theory, which deals with the changes in grammar, and to which he contributed 7 books and numerous articles, is his main focal point. Jointly with Tania Kuteva and Gunther Kaltenböck, Heine is the founder of the framework of discourse grammar. Early years and education Heine was born in Mohrungen, East Prussia (now Morąg, Poland). During the Second World War, in 1944 his parents fled to Austria and later took up residence in Bavaria, before settling in Leverkusen in 1948. From 1949 to 1959 Heine attended the Landrat-Lucas-Gymnasium in Opladen. Afterwards, he studied at the Universi ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
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