In linguistics, a copula is a word or phrase that links the subject of a sentence to a subject complement, such as the word is in the sentence "The sky is blue" or the phrase was not being in the sentence "It was not being co-operative." The word copula derives from the Latin noun for a "link" or "tie" that connects two different things.
In linguistics and grammar, a pronoun is a word or a group of words that one may substitute for a noun or noun phrase.
A double negative is a construction occurring when two forms of grammatical negation are used in the same sentence. This is typically used to convey a different shade of meaning from a strictly positive sentence. Multiple negation is the more general term referring to the occurrence of more than one negative in a clause. In some languages, double negatives cancel one another and produce an affirmative; in other languages, doubled negatives intensify the negation. Languages where multiple negatives affirm each other are said to have negative concord or emphatic negation. Portuguese, Persian, French, Russian, Polish, Bulgarian, Greek, Spanish, Old English, Italian, Afrikaans, and Hebrew are examples of negative-concord languages. This is also true of many vernacular dialects of modern English. Chinese, Latin, German, Dutch, Japanese, Swedish and modern Standard English are examples of languages that do not have negative concord. Typologically, negative concord occurs in a minority of languages.
In linguistics, a compound verb or complex predicate is a multi-word compound that functions as a single verb. One component of the compound is a light verb or vector, which carries any inflections, indicating tense, mood, or aspect, but provides only fine shades of meaning. The other, "primary", component is a verb or noun which carries most of the semantics of the compound, and determines its arguments. It is usually in either base or [in Verb + Verb compounds] conjunctive participial form.
Denaʼina, also Tanaina, is the Athabaskan language of the region surrounding Cook Inlet. It is geographically unique in Alaska as the only Alaska Athabaskan language to include territory which borders salt water. Four dialects are usually distinguished:
- Upper Inlet, spoken in Eklutna, Knik, Susitna, Tyonek
- Outer Inlet, spoken in Kenai, Kustatan, Seldovia
- Iliamna, spoken in Pedro Bay, Old Iliamna, Lake Iliamna area
- Inland, spoken in Nondalton, Lime Village
Tagalog grammar is the body of rules that describe the structure of expressions in the Tagalog language, the language of the Tagalog region of the Philippines.
Dunglish is a popular term for an English spoken with a mixture of Dutch. It is often viewed pejoratively due to certain typical mistakes that native Dutch speakers, particularly those from the Netherlands, make when speaking English. The term is first recorded in 1965, with other colloquial portmanteau words including Denglish, Dutchlish (1986), and Dinglish (2003).
In linguistics, possession is an asymmetric relationship between two constituents, the referent of one of which in some sense possesses the referent of the other.
In Latin grammar, a gerundive is a verb form that functions as a verbal adjective.
-ing is a suffix used to make one of the inflected forms of English verbs. This verb form is used as a present participle, as a gerund, and sometimes as an independent noun or adjective. The suffix is also found in certain words like morning and ceiling, and in names such as Browning.
Pohnpeian is a Micronesian language spoken as the indigenous language of the island of Pohnpei in the Caroline Islands. Pohnpeian has approximately 30,000 (estimated) native speakers living in Pohnpei and its outlying atolls and islands with another 10,000-15,000 (estimated) living off island in parts of the US mainland, Hawaii and Guam. It is the second-most widely spoken native language of the Federated States of Micronesia the first being Chuukese.
Bahamian English is a group of varieties of English spoken in The Bahamas and by members of the Bahamian diaspora. The standard for official use and education is British-based with regard to spelling, vocabulary, and pronunciation; however, perceptions of the standard are more recently changing towards American norms. In particular, 21st-century news-industry and younger Bahamian speakers are often more influenced in their pronunciations by General American English or sometimes even African-American Vernacular English.
Ugandan English, also colloquially referred to as Uglish, is the variety of English spoken in Uganda. Aside from Uglish, other colloquial portmanteau words are Uganglish and Ugandlish (2010).
Malay grammar is the body of rules that describe the structure of expressions in the Malay language and Indonesian. This includes the structure of words, phrases, clauses and sentences. In Malay and Indonesian, there are four basic parts of speech: nouns, verbs, adjectives, and grammatical function words (particles). Nouns and verbs may be basic roots, but frequently they are derived from other words by means of prefixes and suffixes.
Saliba is an Oceanic language spoken on the islets off the southeastern tip of Papua New Guinea. There are approximately 2,500 speakers of Saliba. Significant documentation of the language was undertaken by the Saliba-Logea documentation project, and hundreds of audio-video resources can be found in the project archive.
In etymology, back-formation is the process or result of creating a new word via inflection, typically by removing or substituting actual or supposed affixes from a lexical item, in a way that expands the number of lexemes associated with the corresponding root word. The resulting is called a back-formation, a term coined by James Murray in 1889.
The Dorset dialect is the traditional dialect spoken in Dorset, a county in the West Country of England. Stemming from Old West Saxon, it is preserved in the isolated Blackmore Vale, despite it somewhat falling into disuse throughout the earlier part of the 20th century, when the arrival of the railways brought the customs and language of other parts of the country and in particular, London. The rural dialect is still spoken in some villages however and is kept alive in the poems of William Barnes and Robert Young.
Swahili is a Bantu language which is native to or mainly spoken in the East African region. It has a grammatical structure that is typical for Bantu languages, bearing all the hallmarks of this language family. These include agglutinativity, a rich array of noun classes, extensive inflection for person, tense, aspect and mood, and generally a subject–verb–object word order.
The grammar of the Massachusett language shares similarities with the grammars of related Algonquian languages. Nouns have gender based on animacy, based on the Massachusett world-view of what has spirit versus what does not. A body would be animate, but the parts of the body are inanimate. Nouns are also marked for obviation, with nouns subject to the topic marked apart from nouns less relevant to the discourse. Personal pronouns distinguish three persons, two numbers, inclusive and exclusive first-person plural, and proximate/obviative third-persons. Nouns are also marked as absentative, especially when referring to lost items or deceased persons.
