Tag: linguistics
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Word of the Week: Sign Languages
Sign languages are languages that use gestures, hand movements, and facial expressions instead of spoken words. They are true languages, more organized and complex than body language or baby signs, complete with their own grammatical structures. Because sign languages do not use sounds like oral languages, aspects like emotion and emphasis are added with the…
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Word of the Week: International Phonetic Alphabet
The International Phonetic Alphabet, or IPA, is a phonetic notation system of standardized speech sounds. It is used to transcribe the pronunciation of spoken words. The symbols that make up IPA represent every existing sound in all oral language. It was developed in 1886 and is occasionally updated by the International Phonetic Association. One aim…
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Word of the Week: Theory of Mind
Theory of mind is the ability to interpret the mental states of others, such as beliefs, desires, and emotions. Theory of mind allows a person to understand others’ thoughts and intentions as well as explain and predict others’ behavior. It also allows a person to understand that someone may hold different beliefs than their own.…
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Word of the Week: The Five Domains of Language
The domains of language are the broad ways to analyze language. The five domains are phonology, morphology, syntax, semantics, and pragmatics. The domains can be understood as lenses through which we can study language, with each one contributing something different. When put together, they form our complex and ever-changing language system. Phonology is the study…
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Word of the Week: Semantic Network
Words do not exist independently in our minds—they connect to other words in meaningful ways. In linguistics, a semantic network is a map of how words relate to each other conceptually. This network has points and lines that connect these points. The points are words, and the lines show how any given word meaning relates…
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Word of the Week: Idiolect
An idiolect is an individual’s variation of speech and language. Every person has a distinctive combination of word choice, grammar, pronunciation, and style that makes up their idiolect. As opposed to a dialect, which encompasses the language of a group of people, an idiolect is much more narrow—is unique to the individual. It is influenced…
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Word of the Week: The Gavagai Problem
The Gavagai problem describes the enormous task of word learning. To learn a word’s meaning, we begin by matching words to referents, or the thing to which a word refers. The word “gavagai” originates from a thought experiment proposed by the philosopher Willard Van Orman Quine in 1960. It goes along the lines of this:…
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Word of the Week: Code-switching
Code-switching means changing how language is used depending on social context. This can mean switching between languages (such as speaking English to an English speaker but German to a German speaker) or mixing languages (such as Spanglish). It can also refer to switching dialect (such as African American English to Standard American English) or changing…
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Word of the Week: Register
Registers are the stylistic variations of language an individual uses based on circumstance. People tend to adapt their pronunciation, word choice, grammar and/or body language to the different social situations in which they might find themselves. The social occasion, context, purpose, and audience are all important when choosing a register. Choosing a register may be…
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Word of the Week: Dialect
A dialect is a variation of a language shared by members of a region, social class, or ethnicity. Dialects can vary from each other in vocabulary, grammar, and pronunciation. Some also have unique conversational rules. They are often considered to be mutually intelligible: generally, speakers of one dialect can be understood by speakers of another…
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