Linguistic Distance
Linguistic distance is the measure of how different one language (or dialect) is from another. Although they lack a uniform approach to quantifying linguistic distance between languages, linguists apply the concept to a variety of linguistic contexts, such as second-language acquisition, historical linguistics, language-based conflicts, and the effects of language differences on trade. Measures Lexicostatistics The proposed measures used for linguistic distance reflect varying understandings of the term itself. One approach is based on mutual intelligibility, i.e. the ability of speakers of one language to understand the other language. With this, the higher the linguistic distance, the lower is the level of mutual intelligibility. Because cognate words play an important role in mutual intelligibility between languages, these figure prominently in such analyses. The higher the percentage of cognate (as opposed to non-cognate) words in the two languages with respect to one ano ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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Measurement
Measurement is the quantification of attributes of an object or event, which can be used to compare with other objects or events. In other words, measurement is a process of determining how large or small a physical quantity is as compared to a basic reference quantity of the same kind. The scope and application of measurement are dependent on the context and discipline. In natural sciences and engineering, measurements do not apply to nominal properties of objects or events, which is consistent with the guidelines of the International Vocabulary of Metrology (VIM) published by the International Bureau of Weights and Measures (BIPM). However, in other fields such as statistics as well as the social and behavioural sciences, measurements can have multiple levels, which would include nominal, ordinal, interval and ratio scales. Measurement is a cornerstone of trade, science, technology and quantitative research in many disciplines. Historically, many measurement syste ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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Levenshtein Distance
In information theory, linguistics, and computer science, the Levenshtein distance is a string metric for measuring the difference between two sequences. The Levenshtein distance between two words is the minimum number of single-character edits (insertions, deletions or substitutions) required to change one word into the other. It is named after Soviet mathematician Vladimir Levenshtein, who defined the metric in 1965. Levenshtein distance may also be referred to as ''edit distance'', although that term may also denote a larger family of distance metrics known collectively as edit distance. It is closely related to pairwise string alignments. Definition The Levenshtein distance between two strings a, b (of length , a, and , b, respectively) is given by \operatorname(a, b) where : \operatorname(a, b) = \begin , a, & \text , b, = 0, \\ , b, & \text , a, = 0, \\ \operatorname\big(\operatorname(a),\operatorname(b)\big) & \text \operatorname(a)= \operatorname(b), \\ 1 ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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Tandy Warnow
Tandy Warnow is an American computer scientist and Grainger Distinguished Chair in Engineering at the University of Illinois at Urbana–Champaign.Tandy Warnow's , retrieved 2020-09-10. She is known for her work on the reconstruction of evolutionary trees, both in biology and in historical linguistics, and also for multiple sequence alignment methods. Biography Warnow did both her undergraduate and graduate studies in mathematics at the University of California, Berkeley, earning a bachelor's degree in 1984 and a PhD in 1991 under the supervision of Eugene Lawler. The other members of her dissertation committee were Richard Karp, Manuel Blum, Dan Gusfield, and David Gale. Research and career After postdoctoral research at the University of Southern California from 1991 to 1992 (postdoctoral supervisors Michael Waterman and Simon Tavare) and at Sandia National Laboratories in Albuquerque from 1992 to 1993, she took a faculty position at the University of Pennsylvania, where sh ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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Donald Ringe
Donald Ringe () is an American linguist and Indo-Europeanist. He has been described as a historical linguist and as a mathematical linguist. He is multi-lingual. His work is on language family trees and the Proto-Indo-European language, and he uses mathematics in this. Ringe graduated from University of Kentucky and received a Master of Philosophy in linguistics as a Marshall Scholar from the University of Oxford. He received a Ph.D. in linguistics at Yale University in 1984, under the supervision of Warren Cowgill. He taught Classics at Bard College from 1983 to 1985. Since 1985, he has been on the Faculty in Linguistics at the University of Pennsylvania, where he has been a full professor since 1996. He is the author of numerous articles and books, chiefly on historical Indo-European linguistics, especially Ancient Greek Ancient Greek (, ; ) includes the forms of the Greek language used in ancient Greece and the classical antiquity, ancient world from around ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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Syntax
In linguistics, syntax ( ) is the study of how words and morphemes combine to form larger units such as phrases and sentences. Central concerns of syntax include word order, grammatical relations, hierarchical sentence structure (constituency), agreement, the nature of crosslinguistic variation, and the relationship between form and meaning (semantics). Diverse approaches, such as generative grammar and functional grammar, offer unique perspectives on syntax, reflecting its complexity and centrality to understanding human language. Etymology The word ''syntax'' comes from the ancient Greek word , meaning an orderly or systematic arrangement, which consists of (''syn-'', "together" or "alike"), and (''táxis'', "arrangement"). In Hellenistic Greek, this also specifically developed a use referring to the grammatical order of words, with a slightly altered spelling: . The English term, which first appeared in 1548, is partly borrowed from Latin () and Greek, though the L ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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Samoyedic Languages
The Samoyedic () or Samoyed languages () are spoken around the Ural Mountains, in northernmost Eurasia, by approximately 25,000 people altogether, accordingly called the Samoyedic peoples. They derive from a common ancestral language called Proto-Samoyedic, and form a branch of the Uralic languages. Having separated perhaps in the last centuries BC, they are not a diverse group of languages, and are traditionally considered to be an outgroup, branching off first from the other Uralic languages. Etymology The term ''Samoyedic'' is derived from the Russian term ''samoyed'' () originally applied only to the Nenets people and later extended to other related peoples. One of the theories supposes that the term is interpreted by some ethnologists as originating somewhat derogatorily from Russian ''samo-yed'', literally meaning "self-eater" (the word has been interpreted by foreign travelers as an allegation of cannibalism). Another suggestion for the term's origin is a corrup ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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Hungarian Language
Hungarian, or Magyar (, ), is an Ugric language of the Uralic language family spoken in Hungary and parts of several neighboring countries. It is the official language of Hungary and one of the 24 official languages of the European Union. Outside Hungary, it is also spoken by Hungarians, Hungarian communities in southern Slovakia, western Ukraine (Zakarpattia Oblast, Transcarpathia), central and western Romania (Transylvania), northern Serbia (Vojvodina), northern Croatia, northeastern Slovenia (Prekmurje), and eastern Austria (Burgenland). It is also spoken by Hungarian diaspora communities worldwide, especially in North America (particularly the Hungarian Americans, United States and Canada) and Israel. With 14 million speakers, it is the Uralic family's most widely spoken language. Classification Hungarian is a member of the Uralic language family. Linguistic connections between Hungarian and other Uralic languages were noticed in the 1670s, and the family's existenc ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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Saami Languages
The Sporting Arms and Ammunition Manufacturers' Institute (SAAMI, pronounced "Sammy") is an association of American manufacturers of firearms, ammunition, and components. SAAMI is an accredited standards developer that publishes several American National Standards that provide safety, reliability, and interchangeability standards for commercial manufacturers of firearms, ammunition, and components. In addition, SAAMI publishes information on the safe and responsible transportation, storage, and use of those products. History The origins of SAAMI date back to World War I and the Society of American Manufacturers of Small Arms and Ammunition (SAMSAA). In 1913, the US War Department encouraged the firearms and ammunition industry to establish an organization to share new technology and establish common standards for small arms and ammunition. SAMSAA was officially formed in 1918, however became inactive by the early 1920s. By the mid-1920s, the United States was still su ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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Finnic Languages
The Finnic or Baltic Finnic languages constitute a branch of the Uralic language family spoken around the Baltic Sea by the Baltic Finnic peoples. There are around 7 million speakers, who live mainly in Finland and Estonia. Traditionally, eight Finnic languages have been recognized. The major modern representatives of the family are Finnish language, Finnish and Estonian language, Estonian, the official languages of their respective nation states. ''ö'' after front-harmonic vowels. The lack of ''õ'' in these languages as an innovation rather than a retention has been proposed, and recently resurrected. Germanic loanwords found throughout Northern Finnic but absent in Southern are also abundant, and even several Baltic examples of this are known. Northern Finnic in turn divides into two main groups. The most Eastern Finnic group consists of the East Finnish dialects as well as Ingrian, Karelian and Veps; the proto-language of these was likely spoken in the vicinity of Lake ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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Language Contact
Language contact occurs when speakers of two or more languages or varieties interact with and influence each other. The study of language contact is called contact linguistics. Language contact can occur at language borders, between adstratum languages, or as the result of migration, with an intrusive language acting as either a superstratum or a substratum. When speakers of different languages interact closely, it is typical for their languages to influence each other. Intensive language contact may result in language convergence or relexification. In some cases a new contact language may be created as a result of the influence, such as a pidgin, creole, or mixed language. In many other cases, contact between speakers occurs with smaller-scale lasting effects on the language; these may include the borrowing of loanwords, calques, or other types of linguistic material. Multilingualism has been common throughout much of human history, and today most people in the world ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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East Baltic Languages
The East Baltic languages are a group of languages that along with the extinct West Baltic languages belong to the Baltic branch of the Indo-European language family. The East Baltic branch primarily consists of two extant languages— Latvian and Lithuanian. Occasionally, Latgalian and Samogitian are viewed as distinct languages, though they are traditionally regarded as dialects. It also includes now-extinct Selonian, Semigallian, and possibly Old Curonian. Lithuanian is the most-spoken East Baltic language, with more than 3 million speakers worldwide, followed by Latvian, with 1.75 million native speakers, then Samogitan with 500,000 native speakers, and lastly Latgalian with 150,000 native speakers. History Originally, East Baltic was presumably native to the north of Eastern Europe, which included modern Latvia, Lithuania, northern parts of current European Russia and Belarus. Dnieper Balts lived in the current territory of Moscow, which was the furthest undisput ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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Romani Language
Romani ( ; also Romanes , Romany, Roma; ) is an Indo-Aryan languages, Indo-Aryan macrolanguage of the Romani people. The largest of these are Vlax Romani language, Vlax Romani (about 500,000 speakers), Balkan Romani (600,000), and Sinte Romani (300,000). Some Romani communities speak mixed languages based on the surrounding language with retained Romani-derived vocabulary – these are known by linguists as Para-Romani varieties, rather than dialects of the Romani language itself. The differences between the various varieties can be as large as, for example, the differences between the Slavic languages. Name Speakers of the Romani language usually refer to the language as ' "the Romani language" or '' (adverb)'' "in a Rom way". This derives from the Romani word ', meaning either "a member of the (Romani) group" or "husband". This is also the origin of the term "Roma" in English, although some Roma groups refer to themselves using other demonyms (e.g. 'Kaale', 'Sinti'). C ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |