Linguistics & Language Basics

Cards · 50

Phoneme

English /p/ and /b/ distinguish 'pat' vs 'bat', whereas in Arabic, [p] and [b] are allophones of the single phoneme /b/.

Minimal Pair

Spanish 'pero' (but) vs 'perro' (dog) distinguish meaning solely via the tap /ɾ/ and trill /r/ sounds.

Allophone

English unaspirated [t] in 'stop' vs aspirated [tʰ] in 'top'; native speakers perceive them as the same sound.

Agglutinative Morphology

Turkish 'evlerinizden' breaks into ev-ler-iniz-den (house-PL-your-from, 'from your houses'), with distinct, stable affixes.

Fusional Morphology

Spanish 'habló' (he/she spoke), where suffix '-ó' simultaneously encodes past tense, indicative mood, 3rd person, and singular.

Isolating / Analytic Language

Mandarin Chinese '我 昨天 买 书' (wǒ zuótiān mǎi shū: I yesterday buy book) expresses grammar purely via word order, not inflections.

Polysynthetic Language

Yupik and Inuktitut incorporate multiple noun roots and grammatical affixes into a single word functioning as an entire sentence.

Grammatical Tone

Mandarin distinguishes 'mā' (mother, 妈) from 'mǎ' (horse, 马) entirely through pitch contours.

Register Tone

Yoruba distinguishes high, mid, and low pitch registers to separate unrelated vocabulary and verb tenses.

Vowel Harmony

Finnish forbids front vowels (ä, ö, y) and back vowels (a, o, u) in the same word stem, affecting suffixes like '-ssa' vs '-ssä'.

Nasalization

French distinguishes oral vowels from nasal vowels, as in 'beau' [bo] (beautiful) versus 'bon' [bɔ̃] (good).

Click Consonants

IsiXhosa and !Xóõ use non-pulmonic airstream clicks like dental [ǀ] and lateral [ǁ] as distinct phonemic consonants.

Ejective Consonants

Amharic and Georgian pronounce glottalic egressive sounds such as /k'/ or /p'/, produced with an upward glottal push.

Dual Grammatical Number

Standard Arabic features singular (kitāb), dual (kitābān, two books), and plural (kutub, three or more books).

Trial Number

Sursurunga (Austronesian) marks singular, dual, trial (specifically three entities), and plural across pronouns.

Paucal Number

Russian requires special genitive singular noun forms for counts 2-4 ('два стола') distinct from plural 5+ ('пять столов').

Inclusive vs. Exclusive 'We'

Tagalog 'tayo' includes the listener ('you and I'), whereas 'kami' excludes the listener ('he/she and I, not you').

Evidentiality

Tuyuca (Amazonian) requires verb suffixes specifying whether info was seen, heard, inferred, or reported by hearsay.

Noun Classes / Classifiers

Japanese requires specific counting classifiers: '本' (hon) for long slender objects, and '匹' (hiki) for small animals.

Grammatical Gender

German classifies nouns into masculine (der Tisch), feminine (die Lampe), and neuter (das Buch).

Grammatical Case

Latin marks roles via suffixes: nominative 'servus' (slave, subject) vs accusative 'servum' (slave, direct object).

Ergative-Absolutive Alignment

Basque marks transitive subjects with ergative '-k', while intransitive subjects and direct objects share absolutive marking.

Nominative-Accusative Alignment

English groups intransitive subjects ('she ran') and transitive subjects ('she ate it') together as nominative.

Subject-Verb-Object (SVO)

English, French, and Swahili typically place the subject first, verb second, and direct object last.

Subject-Object-Verb (SOV)

Japanese and Turkish place the verb at the sentence end: 'watashi wa ringo o taberu' (I apple eat).

Verb-Subject-Object (VSO)

Classical Arabic and Irish default to verb initial order: 'Léann an fear an leabhar' (Reads the man the book).

Topic-Prominent Syntax

Japanese marks thematic topics with particle 'wa' (は), distinct from grammatical subject marker 'ga' (が).

Wh-Movement

English shifts question words to clause heads ('What did you see?'), unlike Mandarin Chinese which keeps them in situ ('你看到了什么？').

Suppletion

English 'good' changing to 'better' and Spanish 'ir' (to go) changing to 'fui' (I went) use etymologically unrelated roots.

Reduplication

Indonesian marks plurals by repeating the root: 'anak' (child) becomes 'anak-anak' (children).

Infixation

Tagalog inserts affixes inside root morphemes: root 'sulat' (write) becomes 'sumulat' (to write) via the infix '-um-'.

Circumfixation

German past participles surround verb roots with both prefix and suffix: root 'lieb-' becomes 'ge-lieb-t' (loved).

Clitic

French unstressed object pronouns attach prosodically to verbs without being full affixes: 'je t'aime' (I love you).

Calque (Loan Translation)

German 'Wolkenkratzer' and French 'gratte-ciel' are literal morpheme-by-morpheme translations of English 'skyscraper'.

Cognates

English 'night', German 'Nacht', Latin 'nox', and Sanskrit 'nakt' derive from a common Proto-Indo-European ancestor.

False Friends

Spanish 'embarazada' means pregnant, not embarrassed; Italian 'salire' means to go up, not to leave.

Grammatical Aspect vs. Tense

Russian pairs imperfective 'читать' (to be reading) with perfective 'прочитать' (to finish reading), regardless of time.

Semantic Drift / Shift

English 'silly' historically meant blessed/innocent (from Old English 'sǣlig'), shifting over centuries to foolish.

Pejoration

English 'villain' originally referred merely to a peasant farm worker, but gained a negative moral meaning.

Melioration

English 'nice' originally meant ignorant or foolish (from Latin 'nescius') before shifting to pleasant/agreeable.

Diglossia

In the Arab world, Modern Standard Arabic is used for writing/formal speech, while local dialects (Aammiyya) are spoken at home.

Code-Switching

Bilingual speakers alternate languages within a conversation: 'I was going to the store pero olvidé mi billetera'.

Pidgin

Tok Pisin developed in Papua New Guinea as a simplified, non-native lingua franca for trade among multilingual groups.

Creole

Haitian Creole emerged when children acquired a contact pidgin as their fully-fledged, native first language with complete grammar.

Grimm's Law

Proto-Indo-European voiceless stops became Proto-Germanic fricatives: Latin 'pater' corresponds to English 'father'.

Honorifics / T-V Distinction

French contrasts informal 'tu' with polite 'vous'; Japanese applies elaborate polite verb morphology ('keigo').

Inalienable Possession

Hawaiian and Guaraní treat body parts and kin as permanently possessed, using different markers than for portable items.

Voicing Distinction

English distinguishes voiced /z/ from voiceless /s/ ('zeal' vs 'seal'); Australian languages often lack voicing contrasts entirely.

Null-Subject (Pro-Drop)

Spanish omits subject pronouns ('canto' = 'I sing'), whereas standard English demands an explicit subject ('I sing').

Agglutination vs. Polysynthesis

Japanese aggregates tense and negation ('tabe-sase-rare-nakatta'), while Mohawk incorporates direct nouns inside the verb complex.