| | | ca | | | de | | | en | | | es | | | fr | | | it | | | nl | | | no | | | pl | | | pt | | | ru | | | ro | | | fi | | | sv | | | tr | | | vo | | |
| |  |
Linguistics is the scientific study of language, and is largely divided into two major fields: theoretical linguistics and applied linguistics. Someone who engages in this study is called a linguist.
Theoretical (or general) linguistics encompasses six major sub-fields: phonetics (the study of the isolated sounds of speech), phonology (the study of speech sound systems and their mental representations), morphology (the study of the grammatical rules for word formation), syntax (the study of word order), semantics (the study of meaning) and pragmatics (the study of meaning in context) which, together, allow for a description of the way a language works to convey meaning from one speaker to another. Applied linguistics encompasses diverse fields such as language education, second language acquisition, effect of society on language, or language's relationship to psychology, and so on.
Culture · Geography · Health · History · Mathematics · Natural sciences · Philosophy · Religion · Society · Technology
In grammar, the voice (also called gender or diathesis) of a verb describes the relationship between the action (or state) that the verb expresses and the participants identified by its arguments (subject, object, etc.). When the subject is the agent or actor of the verb, the verb is in the active voice. When the subject is the patient, target or undergoer of the action, it is said to be in the passive voice.
For example, in the sentence:
- The cat ate the mouse
the verb "ate" is in the active voice, but in the sentence:
- The mouse was eaten by the cat
the verbal phrase "was eaten" is passive.
Pāṇini was an ancient Sanskrit grammarian born in Shalātura, modern Lahur of North-West Frontier province of Pakistan. The place is situated at a distance of four miles from Ohind near Attock on the right bank of Indus River in the ancient Kambojan/Gandharan territory. Panini is believed to have flourished in 5th century BCE, (but estimates range from the 7th to the 3rd centuries) and is famous for formulating the 3,959 sutras or rules of Sanskrit morphology known as the Aṣṭādhyāyī. In his sutras (IV.1.168-177)
...that pragmatics studies how saying "gosh, it's cold in here" can mean "please close the window"?
...that learning a second (or third or fourth) language as an adult is a different process from learning your first language(s)?
...that Damin is the only non-African language to have clicks as regular speech sounds?
...that an agent noun is a noun derived from another word that denotes an action, and means an entity that does that action?
 |
Here are some tasks you can do:
|
- Expand stubs, where possible.
- Attend where attention is needed.
- Nominate an article, a biography, a picture or a phone for a feature.
- Clean up Category:Linguistics where you are able.
WikiProjects concerned with linguistics:
- Language acquisition
- Psycholinguistics
- Sociolinguistics
- Linguistic anthropology
- Cognitive linguistics
- Computational linguistics
- Descriptive linguistics
- Stylistics
- Corpus linguistics
Of Interest
