Portal:Language/Language topic
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Contents |
[edit] /December 2005
| a e i o u |
| vowels |
In phonetics, a vowel is a sound in spoken language that is characterized by an open configuration of the vocal tract where there is no build-up of air pressure above the glottis. This contrasts with consonants, which are characterized by a constriction or closure at one or more points along the vocal tract. The additional requirement is that vowels function as syllabic units: it is this criterion that distinguishes vowels from semivowels (and approximants, which in some languages may be slightly more constricted). Find out more...
[edit] /January 2006
Thou is a second person singular pronoun of the English language. Thou is the nominative case; the oblique/objective (functioning as both accusative and dative) is thee, and the genitive is thy or thine.
In modern English thou continues to be used only in some of the regional dialects of England, some religious contexts (referring to God when capitalized) and in certain specific phrases, e.g. "holier than thou", "fare thee well". Otherwise, its contemporary use is an archaism. Find out more...
[edit] /May 2006
A split infinitive is a construction in the English language made by inserting an adverb or adverbial phrase between "to" and a verb in its infinitive form. One famous example is from the science fiction series Star Trek: "To boldly go where no man has gone before." Here, the infinitive verb form of "go" is "to go", and the adverb "boldly" has been inserted, creating a split infinitive. In the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, some grammatical authorities argued that split infinitives should not be allowed in English, by an analogy with Latin, where they are usually impossible. Most authorities from the last 100 years, however, agree that this rule was mistaken, and indeed that splitting an infinitive can sometimes reduce ambiguity. Find out more...
[edit] /June 2006
Stuttering is a speech disorder in which the normal flow of speech is frequently disrupted by repetitions (sounds, syllables, words, or phrases), pauses, and prolongations that differ both in frequency and severity from those of normally fluent individuals. The term stuttering is most commonly associated with the involuntary repetition, but it also encompasses the abnormal hesitation or pausing before speech, referred to by stutterers as blocks, and the prolongation of certain sounds, usually vowels. Much of what constitutes “stuttering” cannot be observed by the listener; this includes such things as sound and word fears, situational fears, anxiety, tension, shame, and a feeling of "loss of control" during speech. The emotional state of the individual who stutters in response to the stuttering often constitutes the most difficult aspect of the disorder. Find out more...
[edit] /July 2006
An alphabet is a complete standardized set of letters — basic written symbols — each of which roughly represents a phoneme of a spoken language, either as it exists now or as it may have been in the past. There are other systems of writing such as logographies, in which each symbol represents a morpheme, or word, and syllabaries, in which each symbol represents a syllable. Find out more...
[edit] /August 2006
Vulgar Latin (in Latin, sermo vulgaris, "common speech") is a blanket term covering the vernacular dialects of the Latin language spoken mostly in the western provinces of the Roman Empire until those dialects, diverging still further, evolved into the early Romance languages. This spoken Latin differed from the literary language of classical Latin in its pronunciation, vocabulary, and grammar. Find out more...
[edit] /September 2006
The Sanskrit language (संस्कृतं saṃskṛtam, संस्कृता वाक् saṃskṛtā vāk) is a classical language of India, a liturgical language of Hinduism, Buddhism, and Jainism, and one of the 22 official languages of India. Sanskrit is also known as "The Mother of all Languages", although it, like Latin, Greek and Persian, actually descends from Proto-Indo-European (PIE). It has a position in India and Southeast Asia similar to that of Latin and Greek in Europe. The oldest type of Sanskrit, called Vedic Sanskrit, is the language of the Vedas, the oldest known scriptures in Hinduism.
[edit] /October 2006
A split infinitive is a grammatical construction in the English language where a word or phrase, usually an adverb or adverbial phrase, occurs between the marker to and the bare infinitive (uninflected) form of the verb. The construction is particularly notable because of some controversy (see below) as to whether it is "grammatically correct". Descriptively speaking, split infinitives are common in most varieties of English. However, their status as part of the standard language is controversial. In the 19th century, some grammatical authorities sought to introduce a prescriptive rule that split infinitives should not be used in English. Find out more...
[edit] /November 2006
Language timing is the rhythmic quality of a particular type of speech, in particular how syllables are distributed across time. There are two types of language timing: stress timing and syllable timing. If a language has a simple syllable structure with few consonants per syllable (such as Spanish and French), the language will usually have a syllable-timed rhythm. However, if a language has complex syllables with consonant clusters, (such as the syllables in English and Russian) the language will probably have an alternating stress-timed rhythm. Find out more...
[edit] /December 2006
Olmec hieroglyphs (or Olmec script) refers to the putative writing system associated with the Olmec archaeological culture which flourished in the Gulf Coast region of Mexico, ca. 1250–400 BCE. The evidence for Olmec writing is based mainly on a single inscription on a stone tablet, which was recovered from an Olmec archaeological site in the late 1990s. Details of the find (dubbed the "Cascajal block") were published by researchers in the 15 September 2006 issue of the journal Science.[1] Find out more...
