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In linguistics, morphology (mor-FOL-ə-jee [1]) is the study of words, including the principles by which they are formed, and how they relate to one another within a language. [2] [3] 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.
These languages have a high morpheme-to-word ratio, a highly regular morphology, and a tendency for verb forms to include morphemes that refer to several arguments besides the subject (polypersonalism). Another feature of polysynthetic languages is commonly expressed as "the ability to form words that are equivalent to whole sentences in other ...
Linguistics is the scientific study of language. [1] [2] [3] The areas of linguistic analysis are syntax (rules governing the structure of sentences), semantics (meaning), morphology (structure of words), phonetics (speech sounds and equivalent gestures in sign languages), phonology (the abstract sound system of a particular language), and pragmatics (how the context of use contributes to ...
Languages exhibiting accusative alignment are the most widespread of all of the alignment types. These languages can be found on every continent, in comparison to languages with ergative alignment that are restricted to certain areas of the world, namely the Caucasus, parts of North American and Mesoamerica, the Tibetan plateau, and Australia.
For example, the cenemes of spoken language are phonemes, while the pleremes are morphemes or words; the cenemes of alphabetic writing are the letters and the pleremes are the words. [6] Sign languages may have less double articulation because more gestures are possible than sound and able to convey more meaning without double articulation. [7]
In linguistics, a word stem is a part of a word responsible for its lexical meaning. Typically, a stem remains unmodified during inflection with few exceptions due to apophony (for example in Polish, miast-o ("city") and w mieść-e ("in the city"); in English, sing, sang, and sung, where it can be modified according to morphological rules or peculiarities, such as sandhi)
Linguistic typology (or language typology) is a field of linguistics that studies and classifies languages according to their structural features to allow their comparison. Its aim is to describe and explain the structural diversity and the common properties of the world's languages. [ 1 ]
A mora (plural morae or moras; often symbolized μ) is a theoretical or perceptual smallest unit of timing, equal to or shorter than a syllable, in some spoken languages in which phonetic length (such as vowel length) matters significantly.