1.
Phonology (journal)
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Phonology is a British peer-reviewed journal of phonology published by Cambridge University Press, the only journal devoted exclusively to this subfield of linguistics. The current editors are Prof. Colin J. Ewen and Prof. Ellen Kaisse, the volumes from 1997 on are available electronically with subscription via the site of the publisher. Now published three times a year, in its first three years it appeared once a year under the name Phonology Yearbook, as of January 2011, the top 5 most cited articles were, Clements, G. N. Kaye, J. Lowenstamm, J. Vergnaud, J. R, the internal structure of phonological elements, a theory of charm and government. Browman, C. P. Goldstein, L. Articulatory gestures as phonological units
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Linguistics
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Linguistics is the scientific study of language, and involves an analysis of language form, language meaning, and language in context. Linguists traditionally analyse human language by observing an interplay between sound and meaning, phonetics is the study of speech and non-speech sounds, and delves into their acoustic and articulatory properties. While the study of semantics typically concerns itself with truth conditions, Grammar is a system of rules which governs the production and use of utterances in a given language. These rules apply to sound as well as meaning, and include componential sub-sets of rules, such as those pertaining to phonology, morphology, modern theories that deal with the principles of grammar are largely based within Noam Chomskys ideological school of generative grammar. In the early 20th century, Ferdinand de Saussure distinguished between the notions of langue and parole in his formulation of structural linguistics. According to him, parole is the utterance of speech, whereas langue refers to an abstract phenomenon that theoretically defines the principles. This distinction resembles the one made by Noam Chomsky between competence and performance in his theory of transformative or generative grammar. According to Chomsky, competence is an innate capacity and potential for language, while performance is the specific way in which it is used by individuals, groups. The study of parole is the domain of sociolinguistics, the sub-discipline that comprises the study of a system of linguistic facets within a certain speech community. Discourse analysis further examines the structure of texts and conversations emerging out of a speech communitys usage of language, Stylistics also involves the study of written, signed, or spoken discourse through varying speech communities, genres, and editorial or narrative formats in the mass media. In the 1960s, Jacques Derrida, for instance, further distinguished between speech and writing, by proposing that language be studied as a linguistic medium of communication in itself. Palaeography is therefore the discipline that studies the evolution of scripts in language. Linguistics also deals with the social, cultural, historical and political factors that influence language, through which linguistic, research on language through the sub-branches of historical and evolutionary linguistics also focus on how languages change and grow, particularly over an extended period of time. Language documentation combines anthropological inquiry with linguistic inquiry, in order to describe languages, lexicography involves the documentation of words that form a vocabulary. Such a documentation of a vocabulary from a particular language is usually compiled in a dictionary. Computational linguistics is concerned with the statistical or rule-based modeling of natural language from a computational perspective, specific knowledge of language is applied by speakers during the act of translation and interpretation, as well as in language education – the teaching of a second or foreign language. Policy makers work with governments to implement new plans in education, related areas of study also includes the disciplines of semiotics, literary criticism, translation, and speech-language pathology. Before the 20th century, the philology, first attested in 1716, was commonly used to refer to the science of language
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Generative grammar
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Generative grammar is a linguistic theory that regards grammar as a system of rules that generates exactly those combinations of words that form grammatical sentences in a given language. Noam Chomsky first used the term in relation to the linguistics of grammar that he developed in the late 1950s. Linguists who follow the approach have been called generativists. The generative school has focused on the study of syntax, but has also addressed other aspects of a languages structure, early versions of Chomskys theory were called transformational grammar, which is still used as a general term that includes his subsequent theories. There are a number of versions of generative grammar currently practiced within linguistics, a contrasting approach is that of constraint-based grammars. Where a generative grammar attempts to list all the rules that result in all well-formed sentences, in stochastic grammar, grammatical correctness is taken as a probabilistic variable, rather than a discrete property. There are a number of different approaches to generative grammar, common to all is the effort to come up with a set of rules or principles that formally defines each and every one of the members of the set of well-formed expressions of a natural language. Chomsky, in an acceptance speech delivered in India in 2001. Generative grammar has been under development since the late 1950s, and has many changes in the types of rules. In tracing the development of ideas within generative grammar, it is useful to refer to various stages in the development of the theory. The so-called standard theory corresponds to the model of generative grammar laid out by Chomsky in 1965. A core aspect of standard theory is the distinction between two different representations of a sentence, called deep structure and surface structure, the two representations are linked to each other by transformational grammar. The so-called extended standard theory was formulated in the late 1960s, features are, syntactic constraints generalized phrase structures The so-called revised extended standard theory was formulated between 1973 and 1976. It contains restrictions upon X-bar theory, move α An alternative model of syntax based on the idea that notions like subject, direct object, and indirect object play a primary role in grammar. Chomskys Lectures on Government and Binding and Barriers, generative grammars can be described and compared, with the aid of the Chomsky hierarchy in the 1950s. This sets out a series of types of formal grammars with increasing expressive power, at a higher level of complexity are the context-free grammars. The derivation of a sentence by such a grammar can be depicted as a derivation tree, linguists working within generative grammar often view such trees as a primary object of study. According to this view, a sentence is not merely a string of words, such a tree diagram is also called a phrase marker
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Syntax
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In linguistics, syntax is the set of rules, principles, and processes that govern the structure of sentences in a given language, specifically word order. The term syntax is used to refer to the study of such principles and processes. The goal of many syntacticians is to discover the syntactic rules common to all languages, in mathematics, syntax refers to the rules governing the behavior of mathematical systems, such as formal languages used in logic. The word syntax comes from Ancient Greek, σύνταξις coordination, which consists of σύν syn, together, and τάξις táxis, a basic feature of a languages syntax is the sequence in which the subject, verb, and object usually appear in sentences. Over 85% of languages usually place the subject first, either in the sequence SVO or the sequence SOV, the other possible sequences are VSO, VOS, OVS, and OSV, the last three of which are rare. In the West, the school of thought came to be known as traditional grammar began with the work of Dionysius Thrax. For centuries, work in syntax was dominated by a known as grammaire générale. This system took as its premise the assumption that language is a direct reflection of thought processes and therefore there is a single. It became apparent that there was no such thing as the most natural way to express a thought, the Port-Royal grammar modeled the study of syntax upon that of logic. Syntactic categories were identified with logical ones, and all sentences were analyzed in terms of Subject – Copula – Predicate, initially, this view was adopted even by the early comparative linguists such as Franz Bopp. The central role of syntax within theoretical linguistics became clear only in the 20th century, there are a number of theoretical approaches to the discipline of syntax. One school of thought, founded in the works of Derek Bickerton, sees syntax as a branch of biology, other linguists take a more Platonistic view, since they regard syntax to be the study of an abstract formal system. Yet others consider syntax a taxonomical device to reach broad generalizations across languages, the hypothesis of generative grammar is that language is a structure of the human mind. The goal of grammar is to make a complete model of this inner language. This model could be used to all human language and to predict the grammaticality of any given utterance. This approach to language was pioneered by Noam Chomsky, most generative theories assume that syntax is based upon the constituent structure of sentences. Generative grammars are among the theories that focus primarily on the form of a sentence and this complex category is notated as instead of V. NP\S is read as a category that searches to the left for an NP and outputs a sentence. The category of verb is defined as an element that requires two NPs to form a sentence
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Pragmatics
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Pragmatics is a subfield of linguistics and semiotics that studies the ways in which context contributes to meaning. Pragmatics encompasses speech act theory, conversational implicature, talk in interaction and other approaches to language behavior in philosophy, sociology, linguistics and anthropology. In this respect, pragmatics explains how language users are able to overcome apparent ambiguity, since meaning relies on the manner, place, the ability to understand another speakers intended meaning is called pragmatic competence. The sentence You have a light is ambiguous. Without knowing the context, the identity of the speaker, and his or her intent, for example, It could mean that the space that belongs to you has green ambient lighting. It could mean that you are driving through a traffic signal. It could mean that you no longer have to wait to continue driving and it could mean that you are permitted to proceed in a non-driving context. It could mean that your body has a green glow and it could mean that you possess a light bulb that is tinted green. Similarly, the sentence Sherlock saw the man with binoculars could mean that Sherlock observed the man by using binoculars, the meaning of the sentence depends on an understanding of the context and the speakers intent. This suggests that sentences do not have meaning intrinsically, there is not an associated with a sentence or word. The cat sat on the mat is a sentence in English, if someone were to say to someone else, The cat sat on the mat, this is an example of an utterance. Thus, there is no such thing as a sentence, term, expression or word symbolically representing a true meaning, it is underspecified. The meaning of an utterance, on the hand, is inferred based on linguistic knowledge and knowledge of the non-linguistic context of the utterance. In mathematics with Berrys paradox there arose a systematic ambiguity with the word definable, the ambiguity with words shows that the descriptive power of any human language is limited. Pragmatics was a reaction to structuralist linguistics as outlined by Ferdinand de Saussure, in many cases, it expanded upon his idea that language has an analyzable structure, composed of parts that can be defined in relation to others. Pragmatics first engaged only in study, as opposed to examining the historical development of language. However, it rejected the notion that all meaning comes from signs existing purely in the space of langue. Meanwhile, historical pragmatics has also come into being, the study of the speakers meaning, not focusing on the phonetic or grammatical form of an utterance, but instead on what the speakers intentions and beliefs are
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Semiotics
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Semiotics is the study of meaning-making, the study of sign processes and meaningful communication. This includes the study of signs and sign processes, indication, designation, likeness, analogy, allegory, metonymy, metaphor, symbolism, signification, the semiotic tradition explores the study of signs and symbols as a significant part of communications. As different from linguistics, however, semiotics also studies non-linguistic sign systems, some semioticians focus on the logical dimensions of the science, however. They examine areas belonging also to the life sciences—such as how organisms make predictions about, in general, semiotic theories take signs or sign systems as their object of study, the communication of information in living organisms is covered in biosemiotics. John Locke used the term semiotike in book four, chapter 21 of An Essay Concerning Human Understanding, an intelligence capable of learning by experience, and which is philosophical logic pursued in terms of signs and sign processes. The Peirce scholar and editor Max H. Fisch claimed in 1978 that semeiotic was Peirces own preferred rendering of Lockes σημιωτική, Charles W. Morris followed Peirce in using the term semiotic and in extending the discipline beyond human communication to animal learning and use of signals. Ferdinand de Saussure, however, founded his semiotics, which he called semiology, in the social sciences, possible to conceive of a science which studies the role of signs as part of social life. It would form part of psychology, and hence of general psychology. It would investigate the nature of signs and the laws governing them, since it does not yet exist, one cannot say for certain that it will exist. But it has a right to exist, a ready for it in advance. Linguistics is only one branch of general science. The laws which semiology will discover will be applicable in linguistics. While the Saussurean semiotic is dyadic, the Peircean semiotic is triadic, Peircean semiotics further subdivides each of the three triadic elements into three sub-types. For example, signs can be icons, indices, and symbols, Thomas Sebeok assimilated semiology to semiotics as a part to a whole, and was involved in choosing the name Semiotica for the first international journal devoted to the study of signs. For Derrida, il ny a pas de hors-texte and he was in obvious opposition to materialists and marxists who argued that a sign has to point towards a real meaning, and cannot be controlled by the referents closed-loop references. The importance of signs and signification has been recognized much of the history of philosophy. Plato and Aristotle both explored the relationship between signs and the world, and Augustine considered the nature of the sign within a conventional system and these theories have had a lasting effect in Western philosophy, especially through scholastic philosophy. In contrast to this, human understanding adds to the animal Umwelt a relation of self-identity within objects which transforms objects experienced into things as well as +, –,0 objects, Peirces distinguished between the interpretant and the interpreter
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Sociolinguistics
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Sociolinguistics overlaps to a considerable degree with pragmatics. It is historically related to linguistic anthropology and the distinction between the two fields has even been questioned. As the usage of a language varies from place to place, language usage also varies among social classes, the study of the social motivation of language change, on the other hand, has its foundation in the wave model of the late 19th century. The first attested use of the term sociolinguistics was by Thomas Callan Hodson in the title of his 1939 article Sociolinguistics in India published in Man in India. Sociolinguistics in the West first appeared in the 1960s and was pioneered by such as William Labov in the US. For example, a sociolinguist might determine through study of attitudes that a particular vernacular would not be considered appropriate language use in a business or professional setting. Sociolinguists might also study the grammar, phonetics, vocabulary, the study of language variation is concerned with social constraints determining language in its contextual environment. Code-switching is the given to the use of different varieties of language in different social situations. William Labov is often regarded as the founder of the study of sociolinguistics and he is especially noted for introducing the quantitative study of language variation and change, making the sociology of language into a scientific discipline. Also, sociolinguistics can study a gradual transition of individual values of a word in the context its semantics which occur in some ethnic, altyntsev studied the semantics of the word love among the Ashkenazi Jews from Udmurtia and Tatarstan. Sociolinguistic interviews are a part of collecting data for sociolinguistic studies. There is an interviewer, who is conducting the study, and a subject, or informant, who is the interviewee. In order to get a grasp on a linguistic form and how it is used in the dialect of the subject. There are five different styles, ranging from formal to casual, the most formal style would be elicited by having the subject read a list of minimal pairs. Minimal pairs are pairs of words differ in only one phoneme. Having the subject read a word list will elicit a formal register, the reading passage style is next down on the formal register, and the interview style is when an interviewer can finally get into eliciting a more casual speech from the subject. Of course, the most sought after type of speech is the casual style and this type of speech is difficult if not impossible to elicit because of the Observers Paradox. The closest one might come to CS in an interview is when the subject is interrupted by a friend or family member
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Evolutionary linguistics
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Evolutionary linguistics is a subfield of psycholinguistics that studies the psychosocial and cultural factors involved in the origin of language and the development of linguistic universals. The main challenge in this research is the lack of empirical data, inspired by the natural sciences, especially by biology, August Schleicher became the first to compare changing languages to evolving species. He introduced the representation of language families as a tree in articles published in 1853. Stammbaumtheorie proved very productive for comparative linguistics, but did not solve the problem of studying the origin of language. Some scholars abandoned the question of the origin of language as unsolvable, famously, the Société Linguistique de Paris in 1866 refused to admit any further papers on the subject. Joseph Jastrow published a theory of the evolution of language in the seventh volume of Science,1886. The field re-appeared in 1988 in the Linguistic Bibliography as a subfield of psycholinguistics, in 1990, Steven Pinker and Paul Bloom published their paper Natural Language and Natural Selection which strongly argued for an adaptationist approach to language origins. Evolutionary linguistics as a field is rapidly emerging as a result of developments in neighboring disciplines, to what extent languages features are determined by genes, a hotly debated dichotomy in linguistics, has had new light shed upon it by the discovery of the FOXP2 gene. An English family with a severe, heritable language dysfunction was found to have a copy of this gene. Mutations of the gene in mice cause reductions in size. If both copies are damaged, the Purkinje layer develops abnormally, runting is more common, additionally, higher presence of FOXP2 in songbirds is correlated to song changes, with downregulation causing incomplete and inaccurate song imitation in zebra finches. In general, evidence suggests that the protein is vital to neuroplasticity, there is little support, however, for the idea that FOXP2 is the grammar gene or that it had much to do with the relatively recent emergence of syntactical speech. Another controversial dichotomy is the question of human language is solely human or on a continuum with animal communication systems. Studies in ethology have forced researchers to reassess many claims of human abilities for language. For instance, Tecumseh Fitch has argued that the larynx is not unique to humans. Similarly, once held uniquely human traits such as formant perception, combinatorial phonology, as it leaves no fossils, languages form and even its presence are extremely hard or impossible to deduce from physical evidence. Computational modeling is now accepted as an approach to assure the internal consistency of language-evolution scenarios. Approximately one-third of all papers presented at the 2010 Evolution of Language conference rely at least in part on computer simulations, one original researcher in the field is Luc Steels, head of the research units of Sony CSL in Paris and the AI Lab at the Vrije Universiteit Brussel
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Forensic linguistics
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It is a branch of applied linguistics. The discipline of linguistics is not homogenous, it involves a range of experts. The phrase forensic linguistics first appeared in 1968 when Jan Svartvik, during the early days of forensic linguistics in the United Kingdom, the legal defense for many criminal cases questioned the authenticity of police statements. At the time, customary police procedure for taking suspects statements dictated that it be in a specific format, statements by witnesses are very seldom made in a coherent or orderly fashion, with speculation and backtracking done out loud. The delivery is often too fast-paced, causing important details to be left out, early work of forensic linguistics in the United States concerned the rights of individuals with regard to understanding their Miranda rights during the interrogation process. An early application of linguistics in the United States was related to the status of trademarks as words or phrases in the language. In the 1980s, Australian linguists discussed the application of linguistics and sociolinguistics to legal issues and they discovered that a phrase such as the same language is open to interpretation. Aboriginal people have their own understanding and use of English, something that is not always appreciated by speakers of the dominant version of English, the Aboriginal people also bring their own culturally based, interactional styles to the interview. The range of topics within forensic linguistics is diverse, but research occurs in the following areas and that includes the study of text types and forms of analysis. Any text or item of spoken language can potentially be a text when it is used in a legal or criminal context. It can also refer to the attempts at making legal language more comprehensible to laypeople. Intonational emphasis, voice pitch and the extent to which there is cooperation between the caller and the recipient at any one time are very important in analysing an emergency call. Full cooperation includes frank and timely responses, urgency plays a role in emergency calls, so hesitations, signs of evasiveness, and incomplete or overly short answers indicate that the caller might be making a false or hoax call. A genuine call has distinctive interlocking and slight overlap of turns, the recipient trusts the caller to provide accurate information and the caller trusts the recipient to ask only pertinent questions. If the caller uses a pitch at the end of every turn, it might represent a lack of commitment. The call ideally moves from nil knowledge on the part of the recipient to an amount of knowledge in a minimum possible period of time. This makes the emergency call unlike any other kind of service encounter, threat is a counterpart of a promise and is an important feature in a ransom demand. Ransom demands are also examined to identify genuine and false threats
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Internet linguistics
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Internet linguistics is a domain of linguistics advocated by the English linguist David Crystal. It studies new language styles and forms that have arisen under the influence of the Internet and other New Media, studying the emerging language on the Internet can help improve conceptual organization, translation and web usability. This study is intended to both linguists and web users. The study of Internet linguistics can be effectively done through four main perspectives, sociolinguistics, education, stylistics, the Internet continues to play a significant role in both encouraging as well as diverting attention away from the usage of languages. David Crystal has identified four main perspectives for further investigation – the sociolinguistic perspective, the perspective, the stylistic perspective. The four perspectives are effectively interlinked and affect one another and this perspective deals with how society views the impact of Internet development on languages. The advent of the Internet has revolutionized communication in many ways, it changed the way people communicate, significant avenues include but are not limited to SMS text messaging, e-mails, chatgroups, virtual worlds and the Web. The evolution of these new mediums of communications has raised concern with regards to the way language is being used. At a personal level, CMC such as SMS Text Messaging, some examples include the iPhone and the BlackBerry. In schools, it is not uncommon for educators and students to be given personalized school e-mail accounts for communication and interaction purposes, classroom discussions are increasingly being brought onto the Internet in the form of discussion forums. These forms of social networking and media are slated to rise as educators from all over the world continue to seek new ways to better engage students. ”This will affect the way language is used as students. At a professional level, it is a sight for companies to have their computers and laptops hooked up onto the Internet. This greatly facilitates internal and external communication, mobile communications such as smart phones are increasingly making their way into the corporate world. In general, these new CMCs that are possible by the Internet have altered the way people use language – there is heightened informality. However, as David Crystal puts it, these should be seen positively as it reflects the power of the creativity of a language, the sociolinguistics of the Internet may also be examined through five interconnected themes. Multilingualism – It looks at the prevalence and status of languages on the Internet. Language change – From a sociolinguistic perspective, language change is influenced by the constraints of technology. It explores the changes over time, with emphasis on Internet lingo
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Language acquisition
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Language acquisition is the process by which humans acquire the capacity to perceive and comprehend language, as well as to produce and use words and sentences to communicate. Language acquisition is one of the human traits, because non-humans do not communicate by using language. Language acquisition usually refers to first-language acquisition, which studies infants acquisition of their native language and this is distinguished from second-language acquisition, which deals with the acquisition of additional languages. The capacity to use language requires one to acquire a range of tools including phonology, morphology, syntax, semantics. Language can be vocalized as in speech, or manual as in sign, human language capacity is represented in the brain. Even though human language capacity is finite, one can say and understand a number of sentences. Evidence suggests that individual has three recursive mechanisms that allow sentences to go indeterminately. These three mechanisms are, relativization, complementation and coordination, some early observation-based ideas about language acquisition were proposed by Plato, who felt that word-meaning mapping in some form was innate. In a more modern context, empiricists, like Thomas Hobbes and John Locke, proponents of behaviorism argued that language may be learned through a form of operant conditioning. In B. F. Skinners Verbal Behaviour, he suggested that the use of a sign, such as a word or lexical unit, given a certain stimulus. Some empiricist theories of language include the statistical learning theory. Charles F. Hockett of language acquisition, relational frame theory, functionalist linguistics, social interactionist theory, Skinners behaviourist idea was strongly attacked by Noam Chomsky in a review article in 1959, calling it largely mythology and a serious delusion. Arguments against Skinners idea of language acquisition through operant conditioning include the fact that children often ignore language corrections from adults. Instead, children follow a pattern of using an irregular form of a word correctly, making errors later on. For example, a child may learn the word gave. Eventually, the child will go back to learning the correct word. The pattern is difficult to attribute to Skinners idea of operant conditioning as the way that children acquire language. Chomsky argued that if language were solely acquired through behavioral conditioning, children would not likely learn the use of a word
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Language education
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Language education refers to the process and practice of acquiring a second or foreign language. It primarily is a branch of applied linguistics, however can be considered an interdisciplinary field, there are four main learning categories for language education, communicative competencies, proficiencies, cross-cultural experiences, and multiple literacies. Increasing globalization has created a large need for people in the workforce who can communicate in multiple languages, the uses of common languages are in areas such as trade, tourism, international relations, technology, media, and science. Many countries such as Korea, Japan and China frame education policies to teach at least one language at the primary and secondary school levels. However, some such as India, Singapore, Malaysia, Pakistan. According to GAO, China has recently been putting enormous importance on foreign language learning, although the need to learn foreign languages is older than human history itself, the origins of modern language education are in the study and teaching of Latin in the 17th century. John Amos Comenius was one of people who tried to reverse this trend. He composed a complete course for learning Latin, covering the school curriculum. In this work, Comenius also outlined his theory of language acquisition and he is one of the first theorists to write systematically about how languages are learned and about pedagogical methodology for language acquisition. He held that language acquisition must be allied with sensation and experience, the schoolroom should have models of things, and failing that, pictures of them. As a result, he published the worlds first illustrated childrens book. The study of Latin diminished from the study of a language to be used in the real world to a subject in the school curriculum. Such decline brought about a new justification for its study and it was then claimed that its study developed intellectual abilities, and the study of Latin grammar became an end in and of itself. Grammar schools from the 16th to 18th centuries focused on teaching the grammatical aspects of Classical Latin, advanced students continued grammar study with the addition of rhetoric. The study of modern languages did not become part of the curriculum of European schools until the 18th century, based on the purely academic study of Latin, students of modern languages did much of the same exercises, studying grammatical rules and translating abstract sentences. Oral work was minimal, and students were required to memorize grammatical rules. This tradition-inspired method became known as the grammar-translation method, innovation in foreign language teaching began in the 19th century and became very rapid in the 20th century. It led to a number of different and sometimes conflicting methods, the earliest applied linguists included Jean Manesca, Heinrich Gottfried Ollendorff, Henry Sweet, Otto Jespersen, and Harold Palmer
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Neurolinguistics
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Neurolinguistics is the study of the neural mechanisms in the human brain that control the comprehension, production, and acquisition of language. Researchers are drawn to the field from a variety of backgrounds, Neurolinguistics is historically rooted in the development in the 19th century of aphasiology, the study of linguistic deficits occurring as the result of brain damage. Aphasiology attempts to structure to function by analyzing the effect of brain injuries on language processing. The work of Broca and Wernicke established the field of aphasiology, harry Whitaker popularized neurolinguistics in the United States in the 1970s, founding the journal Brain and Language in 1974. The N400 was the first language-relevant brain response to be identified, much work in neurolinguistics involves testing and evaluating theories put forth by psycholinguists and theoretical linguists. Neurolinguistics research is carried out in all the areas of linguistics, the main linguistic subfields. Much work in neurolinguistics has, like Brocas and Wernickes early studies, another area of neurolinguistics literature involves the use of electrophysiological techniques to analyze the rapid processing of language in time. Another topic is the relationship between brain structures and language acquisition, ping Li, Jennifer Legault, Kaitlyn A. Litcofsky, May 2014. Since one of the focuses of this field is the testing of linguistic and psycholinguistic models, modern brain imaging techniques have contributed greatly to a growing understanding of the anatomical organization of linguistic functions. Brain imaging methods used in neurolinguistics may be classified into hemodynamic methods, electrophysiological methods, hemodynamic techniques take advantage of the fact that when an area of the brain works at a task, blood is sent to supply that area with oxygen. Such techniques include PET and fMRI, functional near-infrared spectroscopy is another hemodynamic method used in language tasks. Electrophysiological techniques take advantage of the fact that when a group of neurons in the fire together. The technique of EEG measures this electric current using sensors on the scalp, in addition to these non-invasive methods, electrocorticography has also been used to study language processing. On the other hand, the location of activity can be difficult to identify in EEG, consequently. Research using EEG and MEG generally focuses on event-related potentials, which are distinct brain responses elicited in response to a particular stimulus, studies using ERP may focus on each ERPs latency, amplitude, or topography. Some important and common ERP components include the N400, the negativity, the early left anterior negativity, the P600. Neurolinguists employ a variety of techniques in order to use brain imaging to draw conclusions about how language is represented and processed in the brain. These techniques include the subtraction paradigm, mismatch design, violation-based studies, various forms of priming, the mismatch negativity is a rigorously documented ERP component frequently used in neurolinguistic experiments
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Linguistic prescription
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Linguistic prescription is the practice of elevating one variety or manner of language use over another. It may imply that some forms are incorrect, improper, or illogical, or lack communicative effect, sometimes informed by linguistic purism, these normative practices may address such linguistic aspects as spelling, grammar, semantics, pronunciation, and syntax. They may also include judgments on socially proper and politically correct language use, Linguistic prescriptivism may aim to establish a standard language, teach what a particular society perceives as a correct form, or advise on effective communication. If usage preferences are conservative, prescription might appear resistant to change, if radical. Prescriptive approaches to language are often contrasted with linguistics, which observes. The basis of research is text analysis and field study. Description, however, may include researchers observations of their own language usage, the chief aim of linguistic prescription can be to specify standard language forms in a way that is easily taught and learned. Prescription may apply to most aspects of language, including spelling, grammar, semantics, pronunciation, syntax, while such a lingua franca may evolve by itself, the desire to formulate and define it is widespread in most parts of the world. Writers or communicators often adhere to prescriptive rules to make their communication clearer, similarly, stability of a language over time helps one to understand writings from the past. In addition, it is useful to have a standard so as to be able to decide whether or not a speaker or writer is using an educated form of the language. Linguistic prescription may also be used to impose a political ideology, during the second half of the 20th century, politically motivated efforts driven by various advocacy groups had considerable influence on language use under the broad banner of political correctness. These successfully imposed special rules for anti-sexist, anti-racist or generically anti-discriminatory language, george Orwell criticized the use of euphemisms and convoluted phrasing as a means of hiding insincerity in Politics and the English Language. His fictional Newspeak is a parody of ideologically motivated linguistic prescriptivism, prescription presupposes authorities whose judgment may be followed by other speakers and writers. The Duden grammar has a status for German. Although lexicographers often see their work as purely descriptive, dictionaries are widely regarded as prescriptive authorities, books such as Lynne Trusss Eats, Shoots & Leaves, which argues for stricter adherence to prescriptive punctuation rules, also seek to exert an influence. Linguistic prescription is regulated formally in some places, the Académie française in Paris is a French national body whose recommendations are widely respected, though not legally enforceable there. In Germany and the Netherlands, recent spelling reforms were devised by teams of linguists commissioned by the government, some met with significant dissent, for example the German orthography reform of 1996. Other kinds of authorities exist in specific settings, such as establishing a house style specifying preferred spellings or grammatical forms
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Origin of language
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The origin of language in the human species has been the topic of scholarly discussions for several centuries. In spite of this, there is no consensus on the origin or age of human language. The topic is difficult to study because of the lack of direct evidence, many argue that the origins of language probably relate closely to the origins of modern human behavior, but there is little agreement about the implications and directionality of this connection. This shortage of evidence has led many scholars to regard the entire topic as unsuitable for serious study. Today, there are numerous hypotheses about how, why, when, despite this, there is scarcely more agreement today than a hundred years ago, when Charles Darwins theory of evolution by natural selection provoked a rash of armchair speculation on the topic. Some theories see language mostly as an innate faculty—largely genetically encoded, other theories regard language as a mainly cultural system—learned through social interaction. Berwick, suggests it is compatible with modern biology. What we do not see is any kind of gradualism in new technologies or innovations like fire, shelters. Berwick and Chomsky therefore suggest language emerged approximately between 200,000 years ago and 60,000 years ago and that leaves us with about 130,000 years, or approximately 5, 000–6,000 generations of time for evolutionary change. This is not overnight in one generation as some have inferred—but neither is it on the scale of geological eons, a majority of linguistic scholars as of 2015 hold continuity-based theories, but they vary in how they envision language development. Others in this intellectual camp—notably Ib Ulbæk—hold that language evolved not from primate communication but from primate cognition, where vocal precursors are concerned, many continuity theorists envisage language evolving from early human capacities for song. Ritual/speech coevolution theory exemplifies this approach, scholars in this intellectual camp point to the fact that even chimpanzees and bonobos have latent symbolic capacities that they rarely—if ever—use in the wild. Because the emergence of language lies so far back in human prehistory, another approach inspects early human fossils, looking for traces of physical adaptation to language use. In some cases, when the DNA of extinct humans can be recovered, a further study by Q. D. Atkinson suggests that successive population bottlenecks occurred as our African ancestors migrated to other areas, leading to a decrease in genetic and phenotypic diversity. Atkinson argues that these bottlenecks also affected culture and language, suggesting that the further away a particular language is from Africa, the fewer phonemes it contains. By way of evidence, Atkinson claims that todays African languages tend to have large numbers of phonemes. Relying heavily on Atkinsons work, a subsequent study has explored the rate at which phonemes develop naturally, the results suggest that language first evolved around 350, 000–150,000 years ago, which is around the time when modern Homo sapiens evolved. In 1861, historical linguist Max Müller published a list of speculative theories concerning the origins of spoken language, the bow-wow or cuckoo theory, which Müller attributed to the German philosopher Johann Gottfried Herder, saw early words as imitations of the cries of beasts and birds
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Origin of speech
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The origin of speech in Homo sapiens is a widely debated and controversial topic. The problems relate to humans unprecedented use of the tongue, lips, other animals vocalise, but do not use the tongue to modulate sounds. The topic is a separate one because language is not necessarily spoken, Speech is in this sense optional, although it is the default modality for language. Uncontroversially, monkeys, apes and humans, like other animals, have evolved specialised mechanisms for producing sound for purposes of social communication. On the other hand, no monkey or ape uses its tongue for such purposes, the term modality means the chosen representational format for encoding and transmitting information. A striking feature of language is that it is modality-independent, should an impaired child be prevented from hearing or producing sound, its innate capacity to master a language may equally find expression in signing. Sign languages of the deaf are independently invented and have all the properties of spoken language except for the modality of transmission. From this it appears that the centres of the human brain must have evolved to function optimally irrespective of the selected modality. Animal communication systems routinely combine visible with audible properties and effects, no vocally impaired whale, dolphin or songbird, for example, could express its song repertoire equally in visual display. Indeed, in the case of communication, message and modality are not capable of being disentangled. Whatever message is being conveyed stems from intrinsic properties of the signal, modality independence should not be confused with the ordinary phenomenon of multimodality. Monkeys and apes rely on a repertoire of species-specific gesture-calls — emotionally expressive vocalisations inseparable from the visual displays which accompany them, humans also have species-specific gesture-calls — laughs, cries, sobs and so forth — together with involuntary gestures accompanying speech. Many animal displays are polymodal in that appears designed to exploit multiple channels simultaneously. The human linguistic property of modality independence is conceptually distinct from this and it allows the speaker to encode the informational content of a message in a single channel, while switching between channels as necessary. Modern city-dwellers switch effortlessly between the word and writing in its various forms — handwriting, typing, e-mail. Whichever modality is chosen, it can transmit the full message content without external assistance of any kind. When talking on the telephone, for example, any accompanying facial or manual gestures, when typing or manually signing, conversely, theres no need to add sounds. Then, when released from the taboo, these same individuals resume narrating stories by the fireside or in the dark, speaking is the default modality for language in all cultures
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Sound
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In physics, sound is a vibration that propagates as a typically audible mechanical wave of pressure and displacement, through a transmission medium such as air or water. In physiology and psychology, sound is the reception of such waves, humans can hear sound waves with frequencies between about 20 Hz and 20 kHz. Sound above 20 kHz is ultrasound and below 20 Hz is infrasound, other animals have different hearing ranges. Acoustics is the science that deals with the study of mechanical waves in gases, liquids, and solids including vibration, sound, ultrasound. A scientist who works in the field of acoustics is an acoustician, an audio engineer, on the other hand, is concerned with the recording, manipulation, mixing, and reproduction of sound. Auditory sensation evoked by the oscillation described in, sound can propagate through a medium such as air, water and solids as longitudinal waves and also as a transverse wave in solids. The sound waves are generated by a source, such as the vibrating diaphragm of a stereo speaker. The sound source creates vibrations in the surrounding medium, as the source continues to vibrate the medium, the vibrations propagate away from the source at the speed of sound, thus forming the sound wave. At a fixed distance from the source, the pressure, velocity, at an instant in time, the pressure, velocity, and displacement vary in space. Note that the particles of the medium do not travel with the sound wave and this is intuitively obvious for a solid, and the same is true for liquids and gases. During propagation, waves can be reflected, refracted, or attenuated by the medium, the behavior of sound propagation is generally affected by three things, A complex relationship between the density and pressure of the medium. This relationship, affected by temperature, determines the speed of sound within the medium, if the medium is moving, this movement may increase or decrease the absolute speed of the sound wave depending on the direction of the movement. For example, sound moving through wind will have its speed of propagation increased by the speed of the if the sound and wind are moving in the same direction. If the sound and wind are moving in opposite directions, the speed of the wave will be decreased by the speed of the wind. Medium viscosity determines the rate at which sound is attenuated, for many media, such as air or water, attenuation due to viscosity is negligible. When sound is moving through a medium that does not have constant physical properties, the mechanical vibrations that can be interpreted as sound can travel through all forms of matter, gases, liquids, solids, and plasmas. The matter that supports the sound is called the medium, sound cannot travel through a vacuum. Sound is transmitted through gases, plasma, and liquids as longitudinal waves and it requires a medium to propagate
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System
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A system is a set of interacting or interdependent component parts forming a complex or intricate whole. Every system is delineated by its spatial and temporal boundaries, surrounded and influenced by its environment, described by its structure and purpose and expressed in its functioning. Alternatively, and usually in the context of social systems. The term system comes from the Latin word systēma, in turn from Greek σύστημα systēma, whole compounded of several parts or members, system, according to Marshall McLuhan, System means something to look at. You must have a high visual gradient to have systematization. In philosophy, prior to Descartes, there was no system, in the 19th century the French physicist Nicolas Léonard Sadi Carnot, who studied thermodynamics, pioneered the development of the concept of a system in the natural sciences. In 1824 he studied the system which he called the substance in steam engines. The working substance could be put in contact with either a boiler, in 1850, the German physicist Rudolf Clausius generalized this picture to include the concept of the surroundings and began to use the term working body when referring to the system. The biologist Ludwig von Bertalanffy became one of the pioneers of the systems theory. Norbert Wiener and Ross Ashby, who pioneered the use of mathematics to study systems, in the 1980s John H. Holland, Murray Gell-Mann and others coined the term complex adaptive system at the interdisciplinary Santa Fe Institute. Environment and boundaries Systems theory views the world as a system of interconnected parts. One scopes a system by defining its boundary, this means choosing which entities are inside the system, one can make simplified representations of the system in order to understand it and to predict or impact its future behavior. These models may define the structure and behavior of the system, Natural and human-made systems There are natural and human-made systems. Natural systems may not have an apparent objective but their behavior can be interpreted as purposefull by an observer, human-made systems are made to satisfy an identified and stated need with purposes that are achieved by the delivery of wanted outputs. Their parts must be related, they must be designed to work as a coherent entity – otherwise they would be two or more distinct systems, Theoretical framework An open system exchanges matter and energy with its surroundings. Most systems are open systems, like a car, a coffeemaker, a closed system exchanges energy, but not matter, with its environment, like Earth or the project Biosphere2 or 3. An isolated system exchanges neither matter nor energy with its environment, a theoretical example of such system is the Universe. Inputs are consumed, outputs are produced, the concept of input and output here is very broad
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Phoneme
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A phoneme is one of the units of sound that distinguish one word from another in a particular language. The difference in meaning between the English words kill and kiss is a result of the exchange of the phoneme /l/ for the phoneme /s/, two words that differ in meaning through a contrast of a single phoneme form a minimal pair. In linguistics, phonemes are written between slashes like this, /p/, whereas when it is desired to show the exact pronunciation of any sound, linguists use square brackets. Within linguistics there are differing views as to exactly what phonemes are, however, a phoneme is generally regarded as an abstraction of a set of speech sounds which are perceived as equivalent to each other in a given language. For example, in English, the k sounds in the kit and skill are not identical. Different speech sounds that are realizations of the same phoneme are known as allophones, phonemes are conventionally placed between slashes in transcription, whereas speech sounds are placed between square brackets. Thus /pʊʃ/ represents a sequence of three phonemes /p/, /ʊ/, /ʃ/, while represents the sequence of sounds. The symbols used for particular phonemes are often taken from the International Phonetic Alphabet, however, descriptions of particular languages may use different conventional symbols to represent the phonemes of those languages. A phoneme is a sound or a group of different sounds perceived to have the function by speakers of the language or dialect in question. An example is the English phoneme /k/, which occurs in such as cat, kit, scat. Although most native speakers do not notice this, in most English dialects the c/k sounds in words are not identical, in kit the sound is aspirated. The words therefore contain different speech sounds, or phones, transcribed for the aspirated form, the above shows that in English, and are allophones of a single phoneme /k/. For example, in Icelandic, is the first sound of kátur meaning cheerful, Icelandic therefore has two separate phonemes /kʰ/ and /k/. A pair of words like kátur and gátur that differ only in one phone is called a pair for the two alternative phones in question. The existence of pairs is a common test to decide whether two phones represent different phonemes or are allophones of the same phoneme. In other languages, though, including Korean, even though both sounds and occur, no minimal pair exists. The lack of minimal pairs distinguishing and in Korean provides evidence that in this language they are allophones of a single phoneme /t/, the word /tata/ is pronounced, for example. Signed languages, such as American Sign Language also have minimal pairs, Sign language minimal pairs refer to one of the signs parameters, handshape, movement, location, palm orientation, and non-manual signal/marker
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Language
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Language is the ability to acquire and use complex systems of communication, particularly the human ability to do so, and a language is any specific example of such a system. The scientific study of language is called linguistics, questions concerning the philosophy of language, such as whether words can represent experience, have been debated since Gorgias and Plato in Ancient Greece. Thinkers such as Rousseau have argued that language originated from emotions while others like Kant have held that it originated from rational and logical thought, 20th-century philosophers such as Wittgenstein argued that philosophy is really the study of language. Major figures in linguistics include Ferdinand de Saussure and Noam Chomsky, estimates of the number of languages in the world vary between 5,000 and 7,000. However, any precise estimate depends on an arbitrary distinction between languages and dialects. Natural languages are spoken or signed, but any language can be encoded into secondary media using auditory, visual, or tactile stimuli – for example, in whistling, signed and this is because human language is modality-independent. All languages rely on the process of semiosis to relate signs to particular meanings, human language has the properties of productivity and displacement, and relies entirely on social convention and learning. Its complex structure affords a wider range of expressions than any known system of animal communication. Language is processed in different locations in the human brain. Humans acquire language through interaction in early childhood, and children generally speak fluently when they are approximately three years old. The use of language is deeply entrenched in human culture, a group of languages that descend from a common ancestor is known as a language family. The languages of the Dravidian family that are mostly in Southern India include Tamil. Academic consensus holds that between 50% and 90% of languages spoken at the beginning of the 21st century will probably have become extinct by the year 2100. The English word language derives ultimately from Proto-Indo-European *dn̥ǵʰwéh₂s tongue, speech, language through Latin lingua, language, tongue, and Old French language. The word is used to refer to codes, ciphers. Unlike conventional human languages, a language in this sense is a system of signs for encoding and decoding information. This article specifically concerns the properties of human language as it is studied in the discipline of linguistics. As an object of study, language has two primary meanings, an abstract concept, and a specific linguistic system, e. g. French
