Compound (linguistics)In linguistics, a compound is a lexeme (less precisely, a word or sign) that consists of more than one stem. Compounding, composition or nominal composition is the process of word formation that creates compound lexemes. Compounding occurs when two or more words or signs are joined to make a longer word or sign. Consequently, a compound is a unit composed of more than one stem, forming words or signs.
Morphology (linguistics)In linguistics, morphology is the study of how words are formed, and how they relate to one another within a language. Most approaches to morphology investigate the structure of words in terms of morphemes, which are the smallest units in a language with some independent meaning or grammatical function. Morphemes include roots that can exist as words by themselves, but also categories such as affixes that can only appear as part of a larger word.
AgglutinationIn linguistics, agglutination is a morphological process in which words are formed by stringing together morphemes (word parts), each of which corresponds to a single syntactic feature. Languages that use agglutination widely are called agglutinative languages. For example, in the agglutinative Turkish, the word evlerinizden ("from your houses") consists of the morphemes ev-ler-i-n-iz-den.
AphorismAn aphorism (from Greek ἀφορισμός: aphorismos, denoting 'delimitation', 'distinction', and 'definition') is a concise, terse, laconic, or memorable expression of a general truth or principle. Aphorisms are often handed down by tradition from generation to generation.LinguisticsScientific study of languageLinguistics is the scientific study of language.
SyntaxIn linguistics, syntax ( ) is the study of how words and morphemes combine to form well-formed larger units such as phrases and sentences. Central concerns in this area of linguistics include word order, grammatical relations, hierarchical sentence structure (constituency), agreement, cross-linguistic variation, and the relationship between structure and meaning (semantics).
WordA word is a basic element of language that carries meaning, can be used on its own, and is uninterruptible. Despite the fact that language speakers often have an intuitive grasp of what a word is, there is no consensus among linguists on its definition and numerous attempts to find specific criteria of the concept remain controversial.
CollocationIn corpus linguistics, a collocation is a series of words or terms that co-occur more often than would be expected by chance. In phraseology, a collocation is a type of compositionalphraseme, meaning that it can be understood from the words that make it up. This contrasts with an idiom, where the meaning of the whole cannot be inferred from its parts, and may be completely unrelated.CrasisCrasis (; from the Greek κρᾶσις, lit.'mixing' or 'blending') is a type of contraction in which two vowels or diphthongs merge into one new vowel or diphthong, making one word out of two (univerbation). Crasis occurs in many languages, including French, Italian, Portuguese, and Spanish; it was first described in Ancient Greek. In some cases, as in the French examples, crasis involves the grammaticalization of two individual lexical items into one.
Language changeModification or development of a language Language change is the process of alteration in the features of a single language, or of languages in general, over time. It is studied in several subfields of linguistics: historical linguistics, sociolinguistics, and evolutionary linguistics.Thomas GivonThomas Givon (born 22 June 1936), also known as Talmy Givón, is an American linguist and writer. He is one of the founders of "West Coast Functionalism", today classified as a usage-based model of language, and of the linguistics department at the University of Oregon. Givón advocates an evolutionary approach to language and communication. EducationGivón earned his bachelor of science degree cum laude in agriculture from the Hebrew University of Jerusalem in 1959.*As an Amazon Associate I earn from qualifying purchases.