Topic: Linguistics (Page 6)

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๐Ÿ”— Colorless green ideas sleep furiously

๐Ÿ”— Philosophy ๐Ÿ”— Philosophy/Logic ๐Ÿ”— Linguistics ๐Ÿ”— Philosophy/Philosophy of language ๐Ÿ”— Linguistics/Philosophy of language

Colorless green ideas sleep furiously is a sentence composed by Noam Chomsky in his 1957 book Syntactic Structures as an example of a sentence that is grammatically correct, but semantically nonsensical. The sentence was originally used in his 1955 thesis The Logical Structure of Linguistic Theory and in his 1956 paper "Three Models for the Description of Language". Although the sentence is grammatically correct, no obvious understandable meaning can be derived from it, and thus it demonstrates the distinction between syntax and semantics. As an example of a category mistake, it was used to show the inadequacy of certain probabilistic models of grammar, and the need for more structured models.

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๐Ÿ”— Moin

๐Ÿ”— Germany ๐Ÿ”— Linguistics

Moin, moi or mojn is a Low German, Frisian, High German (moin [moin] or Moin, [Moin]), Danish (mojn) and Kashubian (mรฒjn) greeting from East Frisia, Southern Schleswig (including North Frisia and Flensburg), Bremen, Holstein, Mecklenburg-Vorpommern, the eastern and northern Netherlands, Southern Jutland in Denmark and parts of Kashubia.

It means "hello" and, in some places, "goodbye" as well.

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  • "Moin" | 2020-08-17 | 19 Upvotes 10 Comments

๐Ÿ”— Eggcorn

๐Ÿ”— Linguistics

In linguistics, an eggcorn is an idiosyncratic substitution of a word or phrase for a word or words that sound similar or identical in the speaker's dialect (sometimes called oronyms). The new phrase introduces a meaning that is different from the original but plausible in the same context, such as "old-timers' disease" for "Alzheimer's disease". An eggcorn can be described as an intra-lingual phono-semantic matching, a matching in which the intended word and substitute are from the same language.

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๐Ÿ”— Pre-Greek Substrate

๐Ÿ”— Classical Greece and Rome ๐Ÿ”— Greece ๐Ÿ”— Linguistics ๐Ÿ”— Languages

The pre-Greek substrate (or substratum) consists of the unknown pre-Greek language or languages (either Pre-Indo-European or other Indo-European languages) spoken in prehistoric Greece prior to the emergence of the Proto-Greek language in the region c.โ€‰3200โ€“2200ย BC, during the Early Helladic period. About 1,000 words of Greek vocabulary cannot be adequately explained as derivatives from Proto-Greek or Proto-Indo-European, leading to the substratum hypothesis.

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๐Ÿ”— Greek Language Question

๐Ÿ”— Greece ๐Ÿ”— Linguistics ๐Ÿ”— Linguistics/Applied Linguistics ๐Ÿ”— Languages

The Greek language question (Greek: ฯ„ฮฟ ฮณฮปฯ‰ฯƒฯƒฮนฮบฯŒ ฮถฮฎฯ„ฮทฮผฮฑ, to glossikรณ zรญtima) was a dispute about whether the vernacular of the Greek people (Demotic Greek) or a cultivated literary language based on Ancient Greek (Katharevousa) should be the prevailing language of the people and government of Greece. It was a highly controversial topic in the 19th and 20th centuries, and was finally resolved in 1976 when Demotic was made the official language. The language phenomenon in question, which also occurs elsewhere in the world, is called diglossia.

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๐Ÿ”— Dord

๐Ÿ”— Linguistics ๐Ÿ”— Linguistics/Applied Linguistics

The word dord is a dictionary error in lexicography. It was accidentally created, as a ghost word, by the staff of G. and C. Merriam Company (now part of Merriam-Webster) in the New International Dictionary, second edition (1934). That dictionary defined the term a synonym for density used in physics and chemistry in the following way: "dord (dรดrd), n. Physics & Chem. Density."

Philip Babcock Gove, an editor at Merriam-Webster who became editor-in-chief of Webster's Third New International Dictionary, wrote a letter to the journal American Speech, fifteen years after the error was caught, in which he explained how the "dord" error was introduced and corrected.

On 31 July 1931, Austin M. Patterson, the dictionary's chemistry editor, sent in a slip reading "D or d, cont./density." This was intended to add "density" to the existing list of words that the letter "D" can abbreviate. The phrase "D or d" was misinterpreted as a single, run-together word: Dord. This was a plausible mistake, because headwords on slips were typed with spaces between the letters, so "Dย orย d" looked very much like "Dย oย rย d". The original slip went missing, so a new slip was prepared for the printer, which assigned a part of speech (noun) and a pronunciation. The would-be word was not questioned or corrected by proofreaders. The entry appeared on page 771 of the dictionary around 1934, between the entries for Dorcopsis (a type of small kangaroo) and dorรฉ (golden in color).

On 28 February 1939, an editor noticed "dord" lacked an etymology and investigated, discovering the error. An order was sent to the printer marked "plate change/imperative/urgent". The non-word "dord" was excised; "density" was added as an additional meaning for the abbreviation "D or d" as originally intended, and the definition of the adjacent entry "Dorรฉ furnace" was expanded from "A furnace for refining dore bullion" to "a furnace in which dore bullion is refined" to close up the space. Gove wrote that this was "probably too bad, for why shouldn't dord mean 'density'?" In 1940, bound books began appearing without the ghost word, although inspection of printed copies well into the 1940s show "dord" still present. The entry "dord" was not completely removed until 1947.

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  • "Dord" | 2019-03-03 | 24 Upvotes 1 Comments

๐Ÿ”— HODL

๐Ÿ”— Internet culture ๐Ÿ”— Linguistics ๐Ÿ”— Numismatics ๐Ÿ”— Cryptocurrency

Hodl ( HOD-ษ™l; often written HODL) is slang in the cryptocurrency community for holding the cryptocurrency rather than selling it. A person who does this is known as a Hodler. It originated in a December 2013 post on the Bitcoin Forum message board by an apparently inebriated user who posted with a typo in the subject, "I AM HODLING." It is often backronymed to "hold on for dear life". In 2017, Quartz listed it as one of the essential slang terms in Bitcoin culture, and described it as a stance, "to stay invested in bitcoin and not to capitulate in the face of plunging prices." TheStreet.com referred to it as the "favorite mantra" of Bitcoin holders. Bloomberg News referred to it as a "mantra" for holders during market routs.

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  • "HODL" | 2021-01-03 | 18 Upvotes 5 Comments

๐Ÿ”— Long and short scales

๐Ÿ”— Numbers ๐Ÿ”— Linguistics ๐Ÿ”— Malaysia

The long and short scales are two of several naming systems for integer powers of ten which use some of the same terms for different magnitudes.

For whole numbers smaller than 1,000,000,000 (109), such as one thousand or one million, the two scales are identical. For larger numbers, starting with 109, the two systems differ. For identical names, the long scale proceeds by powers of one million, whereas the short scale proceeds by powers of one thousand. For example, one billion is one thousand millions in the short scale, while it is one million millions in the long scale. The long scale system introduces new terms for the intervening values, typically replacing the word ending -ion with -iard.

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๐Ÿ”— Today a greater percentage of Dutch people speak English than Canadians

๐Ÿ”— Lists ๐Ÿ”— Statistics ๐Ÿ”— Linguistics ๐Ÿ”— Linguistics/Applied Linguistics ๐Ÿ”— Languages ๐Ÿ”— Countries ๐Ÿ”— English Language

The following is a list of English-speaking population by country, including information on both native speakers and second-language speakers.

Some of the entries in this list are dependent territories (e.g.: U.S. Virgin Islands), autonomous regions (e.g.: Hong Kong) or associated states (e.g.: Cook Islands) of other countries, rather than being fully sovereign countries in their own right.

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๐Ÿ”— Red herring

๐Ÿ”— Philosophy ๐Ÿ”— Literature ๐Ÿ”— Philosophy/Logic ๐Ÿ”— Linguistics ๐Ÿ”— Linguistics/Etymology

A red herring is something that misleads or distracts from a relevant or important question. It may be either a logical fallacy or a literary device that leads readers or audiences toward a false conclusion. A red herring may be used intentionally, as in mystery fiction or as part of rhetorical strategies (e.g., in politics), or may be used in argumentation inadvertently.

The term was popularized in 1807 by English polemicist William Cobbett, who told a story of having used a strong-smelling smoked fish to divert and distract hounds from chasing a rabbit.

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