Language Warning: You are not logged in. Your IP address will be publicly visible if you make any edits. If you log in or create an account, your edits will be attributed to your username, along with other benefits.Anti-spam check. Do not fill this in! ==Structure== When described as a system of [[symbolic communication]], language is traditionally seen as consisting of three parts: [[sign (semiotics)|signs]], [[meaning (semiotics)|meanings]], and a [[code (semiotics)|code]] connecting signs with their meanings. The study of the process of [[semiosis]], how signs and meanings are combined, used, and interpreted is called [[semiotics]]. Signs can be composed of sounds, gestures, letters, or symbols, depending on whether the language is spoken, signed, or written, and they can be combined into complex signs, such as words and phrases. When used in communication, a sign is encoded and transmitted by a sender through a channel to a receiver who decodes it.<ref name="Lyons17">{{harvcoltxt|Lyons|1981|pp=17–24}}</ref> [[File:Ancient Tamil Script.jpg|thumb|right|Ancient [[Tamil language|Tamil]] inscription at [[Thanjavur]]]] Some of the properties that define human language as opposed to other communication systems are: the arbitrariness of the linguistic sign, meaning that there is no predictable connection between a linguistic sign and its meaning; the duality of the linguistic system, meaning that linguistic structures are built by combining elements into larger structures that can be seen as layered, e.g. how sounds build words and words build phrases; the discreteness of the elements of language, meaning that the elements out of which linguistic signs are constructed are discrete units, e.g. sounds and words, that can be distinguished from each other and rearranged in different patterns; and the productivity of the linguistic system, meaning that the finite number of linguistic elements can be combined into a theoretically infinite number of combinations.<ref name="Lyons17"/> The rules by which signs can be combined to form words and phrases are called [[syntax]] or grammar. The meaning that is connected to individual signs, morphemes, words, phrases, and texts is called [[semantics]].<ref>{{harvcoltxt|Trask|1999|p=35}}</ref> The division of language into separate but connected systems of sign and meaning goes back to the first linguistic studies of de Saussure and is now used in almost all branches of linguistics.<ref>{{harvcoltxt|Lyons|1981|pp=218–224}}</ref> ===Semantics=== {{main|Semantics|Semiotics|Meaning (linguistics)}} Languages express meaning by relating a sign form to a meaning, or its content. Sign forms must be something that can be perceived, for example, in sounds, images, or gestures, and then related to a specific meaning by social convention. Because the basic relation of meaning for most linguistic signs is based on social convention, linguistic signs can be considered arbitrary, in the sense that the convention is established socially and historically, rather than by means of a natural relation between a specific sign form and its meaning.<ref name="Saussure"/> Thus, languages must have a [[vocabulary]] of signs related to specific meaning. The English sign "dog" denotes, for example, a member of the species ''[[Canis familiaris]]''. In a language, the array of arbitrary signs connected to specific meanings is called the [[lexicon]], and a single sign connected to a meaning is called a [[lexeme]]. Not all meanings in a language are represented by single words. Often, semantic concepts are embedded in the morphology or syntax of the language in the form of [[Grammatical category|grammatical categories]].<ref name="Levinson 1983">{{harvcoltxt|Levinson|1983}}</ref> All languages contain the semantic structure of [[predicate (grammar)|predication]]: a structure that predicates a property, state, or action. Traditionally, semantics has been understood to be the study of how speakers and interpreters assign [[truth value]]s to statements, so that meaning is understood to be the process by which a predicate can be said to be true or false about an entity, e.g. "<nowiki>[x [is y]]" or "[x [does y]]</nowiki>". Recently, this model of semantics has been complemented with more dynamic models of meaning that incorporate shared knowledge about the context in which a sign is interpreted into the production of meaning. Such models of meaning are explored in the field of [[pragmatics]].<ref name="Levinson 1983"/> ===Sounds and symbols=== {{main|Phonology|Writing}} {{multiple image | align = right | direction = vertical | width = 150 | image1 = ManSpec.png | caption1 = A spectrogram showing the sound of the spoken English word "man", which is written phonetically as {{ipa|[mæn]}}. In flowing speech, there is no clear division between segments, only a smooth transition as the vocal apparatus moves. | image3 = Hangul wi.svg | caption3 = The syllable "wi" in the [[Hangul]] script | image4 = KSL wi.jpg | caption4 = The sign for "wi" in [[Korean Sign Language]] (see [[Korean manual alphabet]]) }} Depending on modality, language structure can be based on systems of sounds (speech), gestures (sign languages), or graphic or tactile symbols (writing). The ways in which languages use sounds or signs to construct meaning are studied in [[phonology]].<ref>{{harvcoltxt|Goldsmith|1995}}</ref> Sounds as part of a linguistic system are called [[phonemes]].<ref>{{harvcoltxt|International Phonetic Association|1999|p=27}}</ref> Phonemes are abstract units of sound, defined as the smallest units in a language that can serve to distinguish between the meaning of a pair of minimally different words, a so-called [[minimal pair]]. In English, for example, the words ''bat'' {{ipa|[bæt]}} and ''pat'' {{ipa|[pʰæt]}} form a minimal pair, in which the distinction between {{IPA|/b/}} and {{IPA|/p/}} differentiates the two words, which have different meanings. However, each language contrasts sounds in different ways. For example, in a language that does not distinguish between voiced and unvoiced consonants, the sounds {{IPA|[p]}} and {{IPA|[b]}} (if they both occur) could be considered a single phoneme, and consequently, the two pronunciations would have the same meaning. Similarly, the English language does not distinguish phonemically between [[aspiration (linguistics)|aspirated and non-aspirated]] pronunciations of consonants, as many other languages like [[Korean language|Korean]] and [[Hindi]] do: the unaspirated {{IPA|/p/}} in ''spin'' {{ipa|[spɪn]}} and the aspirated {{IPA|/p/}} in ''pin'' {{ipa|[pʰɪn]}} are considered to be merely different ways of pronouncing the same phoneme (such variants of a single phoneme are called [[allophones]]), whereas in [[Mandarin Chinese]], the same difference in pronunciation distinguishes between the words {{ipa|[pʰá]}} 'crouch' and {{ipa|[pá]}} 'eight' (the accent above the á means that the vowel is pronounced with a high tone).<ref name="Trask214"/> All [[oral language|spoken languages]] have phonemes of at least two different categories, [[vowels]] and [[consonants]], that can be combined to form [[syllable]]s.<ref name="MacMahon5"/> As well as segments such as consonants and vowels, some languages also use sound in other ways to convey meaning. Many languages, for example, use [[stress (linguistics)|stress]], [[pitch accent|pitch]], [[Vowel length|duration]], and [[tonal language|tone]] to distinguish meaning. Because these phenomena operate outside of the level of single segments, they are called [[suprasegmental]].<ref>{{harvcoltxt|International Phonetic Association|1999|p=4}}</ref> Some languages have only a few phonemes, for example, [[Rotokas language|Rotokas]] and [[Pirahã language]] with 11 and 10 phonemes respectively, whereas languages like [[Taa language#Phonology|Taa]] may have as many as 141 phonemes.<ref name="Trask214">{{harvcoltxt|Trask|2007|p=214}}</ref> In [[sign language]]s, [[Phoneme#Phonemes in sign languages|the equivalent to phonemes]] (formerly called [[chereme]]s) are defined by the basic elements of gestures, such as hand shape, orientation, location, and motion, which correspond to manners of articulation in spoken language.<ref>Stokoe, William C. (1960). ''Sign Language Structure: An Outline of the Visual Communication Systems of the American Deaf,'' Studies in linguistics: Occasional papers (No. 8). Buffalo: Dept. of Anthropology and Linguistics, University of Buffalo.</ref><ref>[[William Stokoe|Stokoe, William C.]]; [[Dorothy C. Casterline]]; [[Carl G. Croneberg]] (1965). ''A dictionary of American sign languages on linguistic principles.'' Washington, D.C.: Gallaudet College Press</ref><ref>{{harvcoltxt|Sandler|Lillo-Martin|2001|pp=539–540}}</ref> [[Writing system]]s represent language using visual symbols, which may or may not correspond to the sounds of spoken language. The [[Latin alphabet]] (and those on which it is based or that have been derived from it) was originally based on the representation of single sounds, so that words were constructed from letters that generally denote a single consonant or vowel in the structure of the word. In [[syllabary|syllabic scripts]], such as the [[Inuktitut]] syllabary, each sign represents a whole syllable. In [[logographic]] scripts, each sign represents an entire word,<ref>{{harvcoltxt|Trask|2007|p=326}}</ref> and will generally bear no relation to the sound of that word in spoken language. Because all languages have a very large number of words, no purely logographic scripts are known to exist. Written language represents the way spoken sounds and words follow one after another by arranging symbols according to a pattern that follows a certain direction. The direction used in a writing system is entirely arbitrary and established by convention. Some writing systems use the horizontal axis (left to right as the Latin script or right to left as the [[Arabic script]]), while others such as traditional Chinese writing use the vertical dimension (from top to bottom). A few writing systems use opposite directions for alternating lines, and others, such as the ancient Maya script, can be written in either direction and rely on graphic cues to show the reader the direction of reading.<ref name="Coulmas">{{harvcoltxt|Coulmas|2002}}</ref> In order to represent the sounds of the world's languages in writing, linguists have developed the [[International Phonetic Alphabet]], designed to represent all of the discrete sounds that are known to contribute to meaning in human languages.<ref>{{harvcoltxt|Trask|2007|p=123}}</ref> ===Grammar=== {{main|Grammar}} Grammar is the study of how meaningful elements called ''[[morpheme]]s'' within a language can be combined into utterances. Morphemes can either be ''free'' or ''bound''. If they are free to be moved around within an utterance, they are usually called ''[[word]]s'', and if they are bound to other words or morphemes, they are called [[affix]]es. The way in which meaningful elements can be combined within a language is governed by rules. The study of the rules for the internal structure of words are called [[morphology (linguistics)|morphology]]. The rules of the internal structure of phrases and sentences are called ''syntax''.<ref>{{harvcoltxt|Lyons|1981|p=103}}</ref> ====Grammatical categories==== {{main|Grammatical category}} Grammar can be described as a system of categories and a set of rules that determine how categories combine to form different aspects of meaning.<ref>{{harvcoltxt|Allerton|1989}}</ref> Languages differ widely in whether they are encoded through the use of categories or lexical units. However, several categories are so common as to be nearly universal. Such universal categories include the encoding of the grammatical relations of participants and predicates by grammatically [[morphosyntactic alignment|distinguishing between their relations]] to a predicate, the encoding of [[Grammatical tense|temporal]] and [[Preposition and postposition|spatial]] relations on predicates, and a system of [[grammatical person]] governing reference to and distinction between speakers and addressees and those about whom they are speaking.<ref>{{harvcoltxt|Payne|1997}}</ref> ====Word classes==== Languages organize their [[parts of speech]] into classes according to their functions and positions relative to other parts. All languages, for instance, make a basic distinction between a group of words that prototypically denotes things and concepts and a group of words that prototypically denotes actions and events. The first group, which includes English words such as "dog" and "song", are usually called [[noun]]s. The second, which includes "think" and "sing", are called [[verb]]s. Another common category is the [[adjective]]: words that describe properties or qualities of nouns, such as "red" or "big". Word classes can be "open" if new words can continuously be added to the class, or relatively "closed" if there is a fixed number of words in a class. In English, the class of pronouns is closed, whereas the class of adjectives is open, since an infinite number of adjectives can be constructed from verbs (e.g. "saddened") or nouns (e.g. with the -like suffix, as in "noun-like"). In other languages such as [[Korean language|Korean]], the situation is the opposite, and new pronouns can be constructed, whereas the number of adjectives is fixed.<ref>{{harvcoltxt|Trask|2007|p=208}}</ref> Word classes also carry out differing functions in grammar. Prototypically, verbs are used to construct [[predicate (grammar)|predicates]], while nouns are used as [[argument (linguistics)|argument]]s of predicates. In a sentence such as "Sally runs", the predicate is "runs", because it is the word that predicates a specific state about its argument "Sally". Some verbs such as "curse" can take two arguments, e.g. "Sally cursed John". A predicate that can only take a single argument is called [[transitivity (grammar)|''intransitive'']], while a predicate that can take two arguments is called [[transitive verb|''transitive'']].<ref>{{harvcoltxt|Trask|2007|p=305}}</ref> Many other word classes exist in different languages, such as [[conjunction (grammar)|conjunctions]] like "and" that serve to join two sentences, [[article (grammar)|articles]] that introduce a noun, [[interjections]] such as "wow!", or [[ideophones]] like "splash" that mimic the sound of some event. Some languages have positionals that describe the spatial position of an event or entity. Many languages have [[Classifier (linguistics)|classifiers]] that identify countable nouns as belonging to a particular type or having a particular shape. For instance, in [[Japanese language|Japanese]], the general noun classifier for humans is ''nin'' (人), and it is used for counting humans, whatever they are called:<ref>{{harvcoltxt|Senft|2008}}</ref> :''san-nin no gakusei'' (三人の学生) lit. "3 human-classifier of student" – three students For trees, it would be: :''san-bon no ki'' (三本の木) lit. "3 classifier-for-long-objects of tree" – three trees ====Morphology==== In linguistics, the study of the internal structure of complex words and the processes by which words are formed is called [[morphology (linguistics)|morphology]]. In most languages, it is possible to construct complex words that are built of several [[morpheme]]s. For instance, the English word "unexpected" can be analyzed as being composed of the three morphemes "un-", "expect" and "-ed".<ref>{{harvcoltxt|Aronoff|Fudeman|2011|pp=1–2}}</ref> Morphemes can be classified according to whether they are independent morphemes, so-called [[Root (linguistics)|roots]], or whether they can only co-occur attached to other morphemes. These bound morphemes or [[affix]]es can be classified according to their position in relation to the root: ''[[prefix]]es'' precede the root, [[suffix]]es follow the root, and [[infix]]es are inserted in the middle of a root. Affixes serve to modify or elaborate the meaning of the root. Some languages change the meaning of words by changing the phonological structure of a word, for example, the English word "run", which in the past tense is "ran". This process is called ''[[ablaut]]''. Furthermore, morphology distinguishes between the process of [[inflection]], which modifies or elaborates on a word, and the process of [[Morphological derivation|derivation]], which creates a new word from an existing one. In English, the verb "sing" has the inflectional forms "singing" and "sung", which are both verbs, and the derivational form "singer", which is a noun derived from the verb with the agentive suffix "-er".<ref>{{harvcoltxt|Bauer|2003}}; {{harvcoltxt|Haspelmath|2002}}</ref> Languages differ widely in how much they rely on morphological processes of word formation. In some languages, for example, Chinese, there are no morphological processes, and all grammatical information is encoded syntactically by forming strings of single words. This type of morpho-syntax is often called [[Isolating language|isolating]], or analytic, because there is almost a full correspondence between a single word and a single aspect of meaning. Most languages have words consisting of several morphemes, but they vary in the degree to which morphemes are discrete units. In many languages, notably in most Indo-European languages, single morphemes may have several distinct meanings that cannot be analyzed into smaller segments. For example, in Latin, the word {{lang|la|bonus}}, or "good", consists of the root {{lang|la|bon-}}, meaning "good", and the suffix -{{lang|la|us}}, which indicates masculine gender, singular number, and [[nominative]] case. These languages are called ''[[fusional languages]]'', because several meanings may be fused into a single morpheme. The opposite of fusional languages are [[agglutinative languages]] which construct words by stringing morphemes together in chains, but with each morpheme as a discrete semantic unit. An example of such a language is [[Turkish language|Turkish]], where for example, the word {{lang|tr|evlerinizden}}, or "from your houses", consists of the morphemes, {{lang|tr|ev-ler-iniz-den}} with the meanings ''house-plural-your-from''. The languages that rely on morphology to the greatest extent are traditionally called [[polysynthetic languages]]. They may express the equivalent of an entire English sentence in a single word. For example, in [[Persian language|Persian]] the single word {{lang-fa|نفهمیدمش|nafahmidamesh|label=none}} means ''I didn't understand it'' consisting of morphemes {{lang|fa-latn|na-fahm-id-am-esh}} with the meanings, "negation.understand.past.I.it". As another example with more complexity, in the [[Yupik language|Yupik]] word {{lang|ypk|tuntussuqatarniksatengqiggtuq}}, which means "He had not yet said again that he was going to hunt reindeer", the word consists of the morphemes {{lang|ypk|tuntu-ssur-qatar-ni-ksaite-ngqiggte-uq}} with the meanings, "reindeer-hunt-future-say-negation-again-third.person.singular.indicative", and except for the morpheme {{lang|ypk|tuntu}} ("reindeer") none of the other morphemes can appear in isolation.<ref>{{harvcoltxt|Payne|1997|pp=28–29}}</ref> Many languages use morphology to cross-reference words within a sentence. This is sometimes called ''[[Agreement (linguistics)|agreement]]''. For example, in many Indo-European languages, adjectives must cross-reference the noun they modify in terms of number, case, and gender, so that the Latin adjective {{lang|la|bonus}}, or "good", is inflected to agree with a noun that is masculine gender, singular number, and nominative case. In many polysynthetic languages, verbs cross-reference their subjects and objects. In these types of languages, a single verb may include information that would require an entire sentence in English. For example, in the [[Basque language|Basque]] phrase {{lang|eu|ikusi nauzu}}, or "you saw me", the past tense auxiliary verb {{lang|eu|n-au-zu}} (similar to English "do") agrees with both the subject (you) expressed by the {{lang|eu|n}}- prefix, and with the object (me) expressed by the – {{lang|eu|zu}} suffix. The sentence could be directly transliterated as "see you-did-me"<ref>{{harvcoltxt|Trask|2007|p=11}}</ref> ====Syntax==== {{main|Syntax}} [[File:Constituent structure analysis English sentence.svg|upright=1.5|thumb|In addition to word classes, a sentence can be analyzed in terms of grammatical functions: "The cat" is the [[subject (grammar)|subject]] of the phrase, "on the mat" is a [[locative (case)|locative]] phrase, and "sat" is the core of the [[Predicate (grammar)|predicate]].]] Another way in which languages convey meaning is through the order of words within a sentence. The grammatical rules for how to produce new sentences from words that are already known is called syntax. The syntactical rules of a language determine why a sentence in English such as "I love you" is meaningful, but "*love you I" is not.{{refn|group=note|The prefixed asterisk * conventionally indicates that the sentence is ungrammatical, i.e. syntactically incorrect.<ref>{{cite book|last1=Denham|first1=Kristin|last2=Lobeck|first2=Anne|author2-link=Anne Lobeck |title=Linguistics for Everyone: An Introduction|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=n0KVSvqvZKYC&pg=PA9|year=2009|publisher=Cengage Learning|isbn=978-1-4130-1589-8|page=9|quote=An ''ungrammatical'' sentence is one that is impossible in a given language, one that a native speaker of that variety would never utter naturally. (Remember that ungrammatical sentences are marked with an asterisk, *.|access-date=16 April 2020|archive-date=22 May 2020|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20200522101450/https://books.google.com/books?id=n0KVSvqvZKYC&pg=PA9|url-status=live}}</ref> }} Syntactical rules determine how word order and sentence structure is constrained, and how those constraints contribute to meaning.<ref>{{harvcoltxt|Baker|2001|p=265}}</ref> For example, in English, the two sentences "the slaves were cursing the master" and "the master was cursing the slaves" mean different things, because the role of the grammatical subject is encoded by the noun being in front of the verb, and the role of object is encoded by the noun appearing after the verb. Conversely, in [[Latin language|Latin]], both ''Dominus servos vituperabat'' and ''Servos vituperabat dominus'' mean "the master was reprimanding the slaves", because ''servos'', or "slaves", is in the [[accusative case]], showing that they are the [[Object (grammar)|grammatical object]] of the sentence, and ''dominus'', or "master", is in the [[nominative case]], showing that he is the subject.<ref>{{harvcoltxt|Trask|2007|p=179}}</ref> Latin uses morphology to express the distinction between subject and object, whereas English uses word order. Another example of how syntactic rules contribute to meaning is the rule of [[Wh-movement|inverse word order in questions]], which exists in many languages. This rule explains why when in English, the phrase "John is talking to Lucy" is turned into a question, it becomes "Who is John talking to?", and not "John is talking to who?". The latter example may be used as a way of placing [[focus (linguistics)|special emphasis]] on "who", thereby slightly altering the meaning of the question. Syntax also includes the rules for how complex sentences are structured by grouping words together in units, called [[phrase]]s, that can occupy different places in a larger syntactic structure. Sentences can be described as consisting of phrases connected in a tree structure, connecting the phrases to each other at different levels.{{sfn|Baker|2001|pp=269–270}} To the right is a graphic representation of the syntactic analysis of the English sentence "the cat sat on the mat". The sentence is analyzed as being constituted by a noun phrase, a verb, and a prepositional phrase; the prepositional phrase is further divided into a preposition and a noun phrase, and the noun phrases consist of an article and a noun.<ref name="Trask 2007 218–19">{{harvcoltxt|Trask|2007|pp=218–219}}</ref> The reason sentences can be seen as being composed of phrases is because each phrase would be moved around as a single element if syntactic operations were carried out. For example, "the cat" is one phrase, and "on the mat" is another, because they would be treated as single units if a decision was made to emphasize the location by moving forward the prepositional phrase: "[And] on the mat, the cat sat".<ref name="Trask 2007 218–19"/> There are many different formalist and functionalist frameworks that propose theories for describing syntactic structures, based on different assumptions about what language is and how it should be described. Each of them would analyze a sentence such as this in a different manner.<ref name="NewmeyerForm"/> ===Typology and universals=== {{main|Linguistic typology|Linguistic universal}} Languages can be classified in relation to their grammatical types. Languages that belong to different families nonetheless often have features in common, and these shared features tend to correlate.<ref>{{harvcoltxt|Nichols|1992}};{{harvcoltxt|Comrie|1989}}</ref> For example, languages can be classified on the basis of their basic [[word order]], the relative order of the [[verb]], and its constituents in a normal indicative [[sentence (linguistics)|sentence]]. In English, the basic order is [[Subject–verb–object|SVO]] (subject–verb–object): "The snake(S) bit(V) the man(O)", whereas for example, the corresponding sentence in the [[Australian Aboriginal languages|Australian language]] [[Gamilaraay language|Gamilaraay]] would be ''d̪uyugu n̪ama d̪ayn yiːy'' (snake man bit), [[Subject-object-verb|SOV]].<ref name="CroftErg">{{harvcoltxt|Croft|2001|p=340}}</ref> Word order type is relevant as a typological parameter, because basic word order type corresponds with other syntactic parameters, such as the relative order of nouns and adjectives, or of the use of [[prepositions]] or [[postpositions]]. Such correlations are called [[Linguistic universals|implicational universals]].<ref>{{harvcoltxt|Greenberg|1966}}</ref> For example, most (but not all) languages that are of the [[Subject-object-verb|SOV]] type have postpositions rather than prepositions, and have adjectives before nouns.<ref>{{harvcoltxt|Comrie|2009|p=45}}; {{harvcoltxt|McMahon|1994|p=156}}</ref> All languages structure sentences into Subject, Verb, and Object, but languages differ in the way they classify the relations between actors and actions. English uses the [[Nominative–accusative language|nominative-accusative]] word typology: in English transitive clauses, the subjects of both intransitive sentences ("I run") and transitive sentences ("I love you") are treated in the same way, shown here by the nominative pronoun ''I''. Some languages, called [[Ergativity|ergative]], Gamilaraay among them, distinguish instead between Agents and Patients. In ergative languages, the single participant in an intransitive sentence, such as "I run", is treated the same as the patient in a transitive sentence, giving the equivalent of "me run". Only in transitive sentences would the equivalent of the pronoun "I" be used.<ref name="CroftErg"/> In this way the semantic roles can map onto the grammatical relations in different ways, grouping an intransitive subject either with Agents (accusative type) or Patients (ergative type) or even making each of the three roles differently, which is called the [[Tripartite language|tripartite type]].<ref>{{harvcoltxt|Croft|2001|p=355}}</ref> The shared features of languages which belong to the same typological class type may have arisen completely independently. Their co-occurrence might be due to universal laws governing the structure of natural languages, "language universals", or they might be the result of languages evolving convergent solutions to the recurring communicative problems that humans use language to solve.<ref name="Myths"/> Summary: Please note that all contributions to Christianpedia may be edited, altered, or removed by other contributors. If you do not want your writing to be edited mercilessly, then do not submit it here. You are also promising us that you wrote this yourself, or copied it from a public domain or similar free resource (see Christianpedia:Copyrights for details). Do not submit copyrighted work without permission! Cancel Editing help (opens in new window) Discuss this page