In linguistics, morphology is the study of words, including the principles by which they are formed, and how they relate to one another within a language. Most approaches to morphology investigate the structure of words in terms of morphemes, which are the smallest units in a language with some independent meaning. Morphemes include roots that can exist as words by themselves, but also categories such as affixes that can only appear as part of a larger word. For example, in English the root catch and the suffix -ing are both morphemes; catch may appear as its own word, or it may be combined with -ing to form the new word catching. Morphology also analyzes how words behave as parts of speech, and how they may be inflected to express grammatical categories including number, tense, and aspect. Concepts such as productivity are concerned with how speakers create words in specific contexts, which evolves over the history of a language.
Ubykh is an extinct Northwest Caucasian language once spoken by the Ubykh people, a subgroup of Circassians who originally inhabited the eastern coast of the Black Sea before being deported en masse to the Ottoman Empire in the Circassian genocide.
Abkhaz, also known as Abkhazian, is a Northwest Caucasian language most closely related to Abaza. It is spoken mostly by the Abkhaz people. It is one of the official languages of Abkhazia, where around 100,000 people speak it. Furthermore, it is spoken by thousands of members of the Abkhazian diaspora in Turkey, Georgia's autonomous republic of Adjara, Syria, Jordan, and several Western countries. 27 October is the day of the Abkhazian language in Georgia.
Wichita is an extinct Caddoan language once spoken in Oklahoma by the Wichita and Affiliated Tribes. The last fluent heritage speaker, Doris Lamar-McLemore, died in 2016, although in 2007 there were three first-language speakers alive. This has rendered Wichita functionally extinct; however, the tribe offers classes to revitalize the language and works in partnership with the Wichita Documentation Project of the University of Colorado, Boulder.
Eyak was a Na-Dené language, historically spoken by the Eyak people, indigenous to south-central Alaska, near the mouth of the Copper River. The name Eyak comes from a Chugach Sugpiaq name (Igya'aq) for an Eyak village at the mouth of the Eyak River.
Vaeakau-Taumako is a Polynesian language spoken in some of the Reef Islands as well as in the Taumako Islands in the Temotu province of Solomon Islands.
Wiyot or Soulatluk (lit. 'your jaw') is an Algic language spoken by the Wiyot people of Humboldt Bay, California. The language's last native speaker, Della Prince, died in 1962.
The Warlpiri language is spoken by close to 3,000 of the Warlpiri people from the Tanami Desert, northwest of Alice Springs, Central Australia. It is one of the Ngarrkic languages of the large Pama–Nyungan family and is one of the largest Aboriginal languages in Australia in terms of number of speakers. One of the most well-known terms for The Dreaming, Jukurrpa, derives from Warlpiri.
The Arapaho (Arapahoe) language is one of the Plains Algonquian languages, closely related to Gros Ventre and other Arapahoan languages. It is spoken by the Arapaho of Wyoming and Oklahoma. Speakers of Arapaho primarily live on the Wind River Indian Reservation in Wyoming, though some have affiliation with the Cheyenne living in western Oklahoma.
An existential clause is a clause that refers to the existence or presence of something, such as "There is a God" and "There are boys in the yard". The use of such clauses can be considered analogous to existential quantification in predicate logic, which is often expressed with the phrase "There exist(s)...".
In linguistics, head directionality is a proposed parameter that classifies languages according to whether they are head-initial or head-final. The head is the element that determines the category of a phrase: for example, in a verb phrase, the head is a verb. Therefore, head initial would be "VO" languages and head final would be "OV" languages.
The Ojibwe language is an Algonquian North American indigenous language spoken throughout the Great Lakes region and westward onto the northern plains. It is one of the largest indigenous language north of Mexico in terms of number of speakers, and exhibits a large number of divergent dialects. For the most part, this article describes the Minnesota variety of the Southwestern dialect. The orthography used is the Fiero Double-Vowel System.
Najdi Arabic is the group of Arabic varieties originating from the Najd region of Saudi Arabia. Outside of Saudi Arabia, it is also the main Arabic variety spoken in the Syrian Desert of Iraq, Jordan, and Syria as well as the westernmost part of Kuwait.
The Pingelapese language is a Micronesian language native to Pingelap, an atoll belonging to the state of Pohnpei in the Federated States of Micronesia. This atoll is the homeland to the Pingelapese people, consisting of a three-square mile range of uninhabited small coral islets, Daekae and Sukora, and the inhabited islet, Pingelap. These islands partially make up the Caroline Islands.
The ꞌAreꞌare language is spoken by the ꞌAreꞌare people of the southern part of Malaita island, as well as nearby South Malaita Island and the eastern shore of Guadalcanal, in the Solomon Islands archipelago. It is spoken by about 18,000 people, making it the second-largest Oceanic language in the Solomons after the Kwara'ae. The literacy rate for ꞌAreꞌare is somewhere between 30% and 60% for first language speakers, and 25%–50% for second language learners. There are also translated Bible portions into the language from 1957 to 2008. ꞌAreꞌare is just one of seventy-one languages spoken in the Solomon Islands. It is estimated that at least seven dialects of ꞌAreꞌare exist. Some of the known dialects are Are, Aiaisii, Woo, Iꞌiaa, Tarapaina, Mareho and Marau; however, the written resources on the difference between dialects are rare; with no technical written standard. There are only few resources on the vocabulary of the ꞌAreꞌare language. A written standard has yet to be established, the only official document on the language being the ꞌAreꞌare dictionary written by Peter Geerts, which however does not explain pronunciation, sound systems or the grammar of the language.
Toki Pona is a philosophical artistic constructed language known for its small vocabulary, simplicity, and ease of acquisition. It was created by Sonja Lang, a Canadian linguist and translator, to simplify her thoughts and communication. The first drafts were published online in 2001, while the complete form was published in the 2014 book Toki Pona: The Language of Good. Lang also released a supplementary dictionary, the Toki Pona Dictionary, in July 2021, describing the language as used by its community of speakers. In January of 2024, a third book was released, titled “su” which is a Toki Pona adaptation of the Wizard of Oz story, written in Sitelen Pona. These three books are named pu, ku, and su respectively in Toki Pona.
East Cree, also known as James Bay (Eastern) Cree, and East Main Cree, is a group of Cree dialects spoken in Quebec, Canada on the east coast of lower Hudson Bay and James Bay, and inland southeastward from James Bay. Cree is one of the most spoken non-official aboriginal languages of Canada. Four dialects have been tentatively identified including the Southern Inland dialect (Iyiniw-Ayamiwin) spoken in Mistissini, Oujé-Bougoumou, Waswanipi, and Nemaska; the Southern Coastal dialect (Iyiyiw-Ayamiwin) spoken in Nemaska, Waskaganish, and Eastmain; the Northern Coastal Dialects (Iyiyiw-Ayimiwin), one spoken in Wemindji and Chisasibi and the other spoken in Whapmagoostui. The dialects are mutually intelligible, though difficulty arises as the distance between communities increases.
Marind is a Papuan language spoken in Malind District, Merauke Regency, Indonesia by over ten thousand people. Dialects are Southeast Marind, Gawir, Holifoersch, and Tugeri. Bian Marind, also known as Boven-Mbian, is divergent enough to not be mutually intelligible, and has been assigned a separate ISO code.
In Kabardian, like all Northwest Caucasian languages, the verb is the most inflected part of speech. Verbs are typically head final and are conjugated for tense, person, number, etc. Some of Circassian verbs can be morphologically simple, some of them consist only of one morpheme, like: кӏуэ "go", щтэ "take". However, generally, Circassian verbs are characterized as structurally and semantically difficult entities. Morphological structure of a Circassian verb includes affixes which are specific to the language. Verbs' affixes express meaning of subject, direct or indirect object, adverbial, singular or plural form, negative form, mood, direction, mutuality, compatibility and reflexivity, which, as a result, creates a complex verb, that consists of many morphemes and semantically expresses a sentence. For example: уакъыдэсогъэпсэлъэжы "I am forcing you to talk to them again" consists of the following morphemes: у-а-къы-дэ-со-гъэ-псэлъэ-жы, with the following meanings: "you (у) with them (а) from there (къы) together (дэ) I (со) am forcing (гъэ) to speak (псэлъэн) again (жы)".
Ubykh was a polysynthetic language with a high degree of agglutination that had an ergative-absolutive alignment.
