Category: applied linguistics
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Phonemic atomism
SOCRATES: Is a proposition resolvable into any part smaller than a name?HERMOGENES: No; that is the smallest. (Cratylus, Plato) In language there are levels of units. These are sentence, clause, phrase, word and phoneme. Here Socrates narrows down the meaningful unit to the word or name. A phoneme in itself has no meaning as such.…
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anata – ‘you’ in Japanese
In English, to address the person you are speaking to, you use ‘you’ (I have just used ‘you’ four times in one sentence. lol). It is impossible to call them by name directly to him or her. But that is English. In Japanese, you must use their name, or else drop the subject (which is…
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Constituent, adverbial, and the prepositional phrase
Consider the following sentence: (1) He is at the station. We could ask (2) Where is he? and we may also ask: (3) He is at what? or (4) What is he at? However (3) and (4) are marked in the linguistic sense. (2) seems the more natural question form. Consider (5): (5) He is…
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Is not good communication about saying the right things and asking the right questions?
In Sperber and Wilson’s Relevance (ISBN9780631198789) they quote the following in discussing the idea of mutual knowledge: On Wednesday morning Ann and Bob read the early edition of the newspaper, and they discuss the fact that its says that A Day at the Races is showing that night at the Roxy. When the late edition arrives,…
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Agent
Just remember this: the agent of a sentence is the one doing the action of the verb. Consider the following sentences: (1) The car struck the fence. (2) The fence was struck by the car. In both (1) and (2) it is the car that is doing striking, even though in (2) it is NOT the subject.…
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The linguistic sign
Saussure pointed to that language is mistakenly thought of as a matching of a thing to a name. To him the link is between a concept (signified) and a sound pattern (signifier). The signified is its meaning and the signifier is the “container”. The two together makes the linguistic sign. The linguistic sign has two characteristics.…
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The origin of English words
Source: Thomas Finkenstaedt; Dieter Wolff (1973). Ordered profusion; studies in dictionaries and the English lexicon. About 85% of words in the English language are from three languages – Germanic, French and Latin. 12% are from Greek and other minor languages like Chinese and Japanese. About 4% are proper names. Different languages had influence on English…
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Active vs. passive sentence structures
One of the reasons (there are many reason but this is just one) why we would like to change an active sentence into a passive one is because we would like to bring the object of the sentence into focus. Consider these sentences: My brother was hit by a car. A car hit my brother.…
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Actants
In any English sentence there are either zero, one, two or three actants. Actants are the “participants” of the sentence. They are either people or things. In (1) below the action of “to rain” itself is the “zero” actant. (1) It is raining. “It” is the dummy subject. In (2) and (3) the subjects “Peter” and…
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In praise of lexicogrammar
Lexicogrammar is not a word you hear much but those of a certain following – cognitive linguists, functional grammarians, etc – use this word to describe what is traditionally call vocabulary and grammar as one system rather than being two separate systems. As a researcher in prepositions this is a big deal. It means I…
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