Category: General Language

Me, personally? That the same changes happen, again and again, from language to language to language. The same grammaticalisations; the same sound changes; the same semantic changes; the same syntactic changes; the same metaphors. Which is little to do with Universal Grammar, and a lot to do with universals of cognition and articulation. Answered 2016-08-31 […]

If you’re detecting change with your eyes: New vocabulary, then semantic shifts in existing words, then syntax — particularly syntax of individual words. fun became an adjective within my lifetime. If you’re detecting change with your ears: all of the above, then maybe phonetics. But sound change is slower, socially and generationally stratified, and geographically […]

In traditional grammar, this is conjugation for verbs, and declension for nominals; both are limited to inflectional morphology. Answered 2016-08-30 [Originally posted on http://quora.com/What-do-we-call-the-process-of-creating-all-of-the-possible-morphological-extractions-of-a-given-word/answer/Nick-Nicholas-5]

Not aware of such a term, but it’s a nice distinction: the endonym is really just a pronominal reference, so much “ours” that it doesn’t warrant a name at all. I could coin the term hemeteronym, “ours-name”, for it, but I won’t. It’s a pronominal, or deictic, endonym. Answered 2016-08-28 [Originally posted on http://quora.com/Is-there-a-more-specific-word-for-endonyms-which-simply-mean-our-language-or-similar-and-are-semantically-awkward-for-outsiders-to-use/answer/Nick-Nicholas-5]

If you’re asking about the etymology of idiolect: idio-: from Greek idios “particular, individual”. Cf. idiosyncrasy, idiot (originally: private citizen, loner), idiom. -lect: back-formation from dia-lect, originally “something conversed about/in”, from dia “through” and lektos “spoken”. See: What are some examples of idiolects? How is an idiolect different from a sociolect? If you’re asking why […]

The question is somewhat opaque, but OP is getting to the question of, why is the definition of a word such a complex, and potentially circular, graph of links to other definitions. Your original question, OP, was in fact about circularity. The answer is: Dictionary definitions aren’t particularly concerned about rigour or non-circularity: you’re assumed […]

You lose linguistic diversity, as the dialects gradually die out, or at least are marginalised. You may not may not care about linguistic diversity, of course. You lose ways of saying things that are specific to non-standard dialects. Cretan dialect for example has a distinct word for “trickle”. (To my annoyance, I don’t remember it.) […]

Thing about onomatopoeias is, they get conventionalised and stick around, even if the referent no longer makes that sound. I mean this sound? This sound, the doot doot doot bloop bleep flurgh frump virrrr of a dial up modem? Hasn’t been heard in functional use for what, twenty years? And yet it is still used […]

Supplemental to the list given by David Rosson (ah, your American bias is showing, David cc C (Selva) R.Selvakumar As Dmitriy Genzel points out, Historical Linguistics is an observational science, like Astronomy. A lot of hypothesis testing though. To add to Tibor Kiss’ list of German words, Linguistic Typology is a Versammelnde Wissenschaft: a […]

Politeness theory I’m sure I’ve answered this here already. Positive politeness strategies are culturally approved ways of interacting with other people, that involve doing good things for them. They concentrate on eliminating distance between people. Negative politeness strategies are culturally approved ways of interacting with other people, that involve not doing bad things to them. […]