Linguistics - Miracle Of Human Language

Question 1

MORPHEMES

Answer 1

Smallest meaningful language units:

• AFFIXES (prefix & suffix)
• BASE (Le radical)

Question 2

SYNTAX

Answer 2

Study of SENTANCE structure
6 possible, with
-SVO & SOV covering 90% of languages.
- VSO (eg. Tagalog) 8-9%

=> in 99% of languages SUBJECT comes before OBJECT
- SOV seems to be the human natural order (mimicking from ALL languages!)

Question 3

MORPHOLOGY

Answer 3

Stydy of the rules for forming admissible words.
Criteria used to classify languages:
- ISOLATING: 1 word is 1 morpheme
CHINESE
- AGGLUTINATIVE: lots of morphemes articulated in a transparent way TURKUSH
- FUSIONAL: affixes but also changes to the base ARABIC
- POLYSYNTHETIC: combine bases & affixes endlessly - rare (north US & Indo)
“My” 4 languages are “mainly” FUSIONAL (+ agglu for German)