Linguistics is the scientific study of language – its structure, its history, how it works and how it changes.
One of the most interesting aspects of linguistics is language theory. It deals with the nature of language itself: what it is, how it works and why it evolved the way it did.
Language theory is fascinating because it provides us with a window into the mind of humans and into our evolutionary history.
Read our latest posts on language theory:
We’re all familiar with the famous Pavlovian dogs – ring a bell and the dog begins to salivate, because it’s been trained to associate the bell with food. This is an example of classical conditioning – a small example of… Continue Reading
As we’ve covered on our blog before, it’s not always easy to distinguish between a language and a dialect. One criterion that can help differentiate between the two is mutual intelligibility. That means whether two speakers can understand each other… Continue Reading
In this series, we will talk about the main developments in the discipline that was later called Linguistics, which lead us to our current understanding of the properties of language, the relationship between language and our social world and the… Continue Reading
While the concept of “a word” is surprisingly difficult to define with any accuracy, it still makes sense to divide that nebulous idea into more concrete and manageable categories. One way of doing that is to split words into content… Continue Reading
When you start learning a new language, it can seem like nothing makes sense. The nouns don’t go in the right place, verbs change in incomprehensible ways, and the sentence structure is just plain dumb. But, in fact, all languages… Continue Reading
Trying to make sense of linguistic terms can sometimes be a challenge. Especially when the terms are very similar in both meaning and sound. Such is the case with homonyms, homophones, and homographs. If you add to that list “homomorphs”,… Continue Reading
Words that resemble one another are common in all of the world’s languages. Through historical trade and relations with neighbouring countries, vocabulary elements have spread far and wide from their original locations. For example, “orange” comes to English from the… Continue Reading
A while back, we covered the sad issue of language death on our blog – a process that is only expected to pick up speed in the coming decades. The one thing we did not explain in the articles, however,… Continue Reading
Even today, mysteries remain common in the world of languages and one of the biggest of these is the origin of the world’s language isolates. The term refers to languages such as Basque, Korean, and, up until recently, also included… Continue Reading
Whether you’re learning your first or seventh language, you essentially need to go through the same motions: learn vocabulary and the grammar rules to manipulate your newfound words into sentences that make sense; you need to train your ear to… Continue Reading
