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A lexicon is the vocabulary of a language or branch of knowledge. In linguistics, a lexicon is a language's inventory of lexemes. The word lexicon derives from Greek word λεξικόν, neuter of λεξικός meaning 'of or for words'.
A loanword is a word at least partly assimilated from one language into another language. This is in contrast to cognates, which are words in two or more languages that are similar because they share an etymological origin; and calques, which involve translation. Loanwords from languages with different scripts are usually transliterated, but they are not translated. Additionally, loanwords may be adapted to the phonology, phonotactics, orthography, and morphology of the target language. When a loanword is fully adapted to the rules of the target language, it is distinguished from native words of the target language only by its origin. However, often the adaptation is incomplete, so loanwords may conserve specific features distinguishing them from native words of the target language: loaned phonemes and sound combinations, partial or total conserving of the original spelling, foreign plural or case forms or indeclinability.
Glottochronology is the part of lexicostatistics which involves comparative linguistics and deals with the chronological relationship between languages.
Lexicostatistics is a method of comparative linguistics that involves comparing the percentage of lexical cognates between languages to determine their relationship. Lexicostatistics is related to the comparative method but does not reconstruct a proto-language. It is to be distinguished from glottochronology, which attempts to use lexicostatistical methods to estimate the length of time since two or more languages diverged from a common earlier proto-language. This is merely one application of lexicostatistics, however; other applications of it may not share the assumption of a constant rate of change for basic lexical items.
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The re-latinization of Romanian was the reinforcement of the Romance features of the Romanian language during the 18th and 19th centuries. In this period, Romanian adopted a Latin-based alphabet to replace the Cyrillic script and borrowed many words from French as well as from Latin and Italian, in order to acquire the lexical tools necessary for modernization. This process coined words for recently introduced objects or concepts (neologisms), added Latinate synonyms for some Slavic and other loanwords, and strengthened some Romance syntactic features.
Concepticon is an open-source online lexical database of linguistic concept lists. It links concept labels in concept lists to concept sets.
References
- ↑ Jeanette Sakel; Daniel L. Everett (2012). Linguistic Fieldwork: A Student Guide. Cambridge University Press. p. 116. ISBN 978-1-107-37702-8.
- 1 2 3 Haspelmath & Tadmor, p. 72.
- ↑ "The World Loanword Database (WOLD)". wold.clld.org. Retrieved February 24, 2019.
- ↑ Haspelmath & Tadmor, p. 71.
- ↑ The Leipzig-Jakarta List of Basic Vocabulary. Source: Haspelmath, Martin and Uri Tadmor (eds.), 2009. Loanwords in the World’s Languages: A Comparative Handbook. Berlin and New York: Mouton de Gruyter.
- ↑ Tadmor, Uri, Martin Haspelmath, and Bradley Taylor. 2010. Borrowability and the notion of basic vocabulary. Diachronica 27:2 (2010), 226–246. doi : 10.1075/dia.27.2.04tad
- 1 2 Haspelmath & Tadmor, p. 74.
