Linguistics

Table of Contents

1. Traditional Grammar

1.1. Parts of Speech

In English, usually,

  • Noun
  • Verb
  • Adjective
  • Adverb
  • Pronoun
  • Preposition
  • Conjunction
  • Interjection
  • Article

2. Grammar

2.1. Syntactic Category

2.1.1. Lexical Categories

  • Word Classes
  • A Adjective
  • P Adposition
  • Adv Adverb
  • C Coordinate Conjunction
  • D Determiner
  • I Interjection
  • N Noun
  • Par Particle
  • Pr Pronoun
  • Sub Subordinate Conjunction
  • V Verb
  • etc.

2.1.2. Phrasal Categories

  • AP Adjective Phrase
  • AdvP Adverb Phrase
  • PP Adposition Phrase
  • NP Noun Phrase
  • VP Verb Phrase
  • etc.

2.2. Grammatical Cateogry

2.2.1. Case

Category of nouns and noun modifiers.

2.2.1.1. Nominative

주격 relating to or denoting a case of nouns, pronouns, and adjectives (as in Latin and other inflected languages) used for the subject of a verb.

2.2.1.2. Accusative

대격 relating to or denoting a case of nouns, pronouns, and adjectives that expresses the object of an action or the goal of motion.

2.2.1.3. Dative

여격 (in Latin, Greek, German, and other languages) denoting a case of nouns and pronouns, and words in grammatical agreement with them, indicating an indirect object or recipient.

2.2.1.4. Genitive

속격 relating to or denoting a case of nouns and pronouns (and words in grammatical agreement with them) indicating possession or close association.

2.2.1.5. Ablative
2.2.1.6. Vocative
2.2.1.7. Locative
2.2.1.8. Instrumental

2.2.2. Person-Number-Gender

2.2.3. Tense-Aspect-Mood

2.2.4. Voice

2.2.5. Possession

2.2.6. Definiteness

2.2.7. Politeness

2.2.8. Causativity

2.2.9. Clusivity

2.2.10. Interrogatives

2.2.11. Transitivity

2.2.12. Valency

2.2.13. Polarity

2.2.14. Telicity

2.2.15. Volition

2.2.16. Mirativity

2.2.17. Evidentiality

2.2.18. Animacy

2.2.19. Associativity

2.2.20. Pluractionality

2.2.21. Reciprocity

2.3. Inflection

Affixation or apophony is commonly used.

2.3.1. Conjugation

Inflection of verbs

2.3.2. Declension

Inflection of nouns, adjectives, adverbs, etc.

3. Etymology

3.1. English

3.1.1. Pronouns

Shifted around the Middle English c. 1150 to c. 1470

  • 'they' is introduced from the Old Norse language around 1200 A.D.
  • 'she' came about around 1200 without distinguished origin.
  • 'thou', 'thy', 'thee' were singular second person pronouns, and Ye was plural second person pronoun. The shift happened slowly from 1200 to 1600 due to the French influence of T-V distinction.
  • Singular 'they' is about 700 years old, but 300 years ago grammarians prescribed that it is plural.
    • Various methods were devised such as 'he or she', generic 'he' or neopronouns were developed to mitigate this rule.

3.1.2. Affirmation to Negative Questions

Originally 'Yea' [jɛɪ] and 'Nay' [nɛɪ] was used to affirm and contradict positive questions, and 'Yes' and 'No' was for negative questions.

Specific vocabularies like this exits in other languages:

Language Affirm Positive Affirm Negative Contradict Positive Contradict Negative
Romanian da ba da nu ba nu
French oui si non non
German ja doch nein nein
Hungarian igen de nem nem

Refer Why We Should Bring Back “Yea” and “Nay!” - YouTube

4. Phonetics

4.1. Consonants

Consonant is an obstructed airflow.

It is categorized based on the articulatory settings: place and manner of articulation, and voicing.

4.1.1. Alveolar

치경, 치조

5. Phonology

5.1. Ablaut

The system of apophony (regular vowel variation) in the Proto-Indo-European language. For example, man-men, sing-sang-sung, gibt-gabt.

6. Interlinear Gloss

7. Language Family

  • Group of languages that shares the same ancestry.

Primary_Human_Languages_Improved_Version.png

  • This shows the distributions of the primary language families.

7.1. Indo-European

It is the most spoken language family spoken around Europe, Russia, Persia, and India, accounting for 46% of the world population.

indo-european and uralic language family tree.png

7.1.1. Romance

  • The descendant of the Latin
  • Summarizing Romance sound shifts - YouTube
  • There was 20 letters, with C being the [k] sound, V being the [u] or [w] sound, L being the dark L [ɫ], with additional K, Y, Z to express the Greek words.
7.1.1.1. Western-Romance
7.1.1.1.1. Ibero-Romance

Spanish

  • some f are replaced with h
7.1.1.1.2. Gallo-Romance
  • Large germanic influences

French

7.1.1.1.3. Italo-Romance
7.1.1.2. Eastern-Romance
  • Heavy Slavic influences

7.1.2. Germanic

7.1.2.1. West Germanic

Frisian

  • spoken in the coastal region of the Netherlands and Germany

7.2. Sino-Tibetan

  • Spoken around China, Myanmar, etc.

Chinese and Tibetan

7.3. Niger-Congo

  • Sub-Saharan Africa
  • It is a hypothetical language family, as we are not sure of it.

7.4. Afroasiatic

  • Also known as Hamito-Semitic.
  • It is the fourth largest language family.
  • North Africa
  • Mesopotamia
  • Arabian peninsula

7.4.1. Semitic

Hebrew

7.5. Koreanic

7.6. Japonic

8. References

Created: 2025-09-14 Sun 20:14