Structural linguistics and word classes

Lingua ◽  
1949 ◽  
Vol 1 ◽  
pp. 427-500 ◽  
Author(s):  
A.W. de Groot
2021 ◽  
Vol 14 (1) ◽  
pp. 69-100
Author(s):  
Norajihah Muda ◽  
◽  
Zaitul Azma Zainon Hamzah

The aboriginal peoples of Malaysia, the orang asli, belong three main groups, namely the Senoi, Negrito and Proto Malays. The Che Wong is a tribe belonging to the Senoi peoples. A large portion of the Che Wong tribe live in Pahang, especially in villages in the areas of Sungai Enggang in Kuala Gandah, Pahang. Based on observation, the Malay language, as a dominant communication language, has influenced the language of the Che Wong tribe. This study focuses on the aspects of the Che Wong language as a medium of communication in Kampung Sungai Enggang, in Kuala Gandah, Pahang. The informants for this study were native speakers of the Che Wong community. The objective of this study was to explain the phonological and lexical aspects of the Che Wong language, using the approach of structural linguistics. The researcher employed a qualitative approach to analyse data obtained through recordings and pronunciation techniques. Transcription was done using symbols of the International Phonetic Alphabet (IPA), with Che Wong vocabulary data based on the Swadesh list and themed word classes. From the analysis, it is found that the Che Wong language has eight vocal phonemes and 20 consonantal phonemes. Based on the themed lexical items, the research also found that there are similarities and differences between the Che Wong and Malay languages. In the themed vocabulary data concerning household items, especially, there are similarities between the Che Wong and Malay languages. However, on the whole, the vocabulary retains much of the Che Wong language. A study of the Che Wong language covering phonological and lexical aspects should be performed to further examine the structure of this language, and to ensure its survival over time.


2001 ◽  
Vol 10 (2) ◽  
pp. 180-188 ◽  
Author(s):  
Steven H. Long ◽  
Ron W. Channell

Most software for language analysis has relied on an interaction between the metalinguistic skills of a human coder and the calculating ability of the machine to produce reliable results. However, probabilistic parsing algorithms are now capable of highly accurate and completely automatic identification of grammatical word classes. The program Computerized Profiling combines a probabilistic parser with modules customized to produce four clinical grammatical analyses: MLU, LARSP, IPSyn, and DSS. The accuracy of these analyses was assessed on 69 language samples from typically developing, speech-impaired, and language-impaired children, 2 years 6 months to 7 years 10 months. Values obtained with human coding and by the software alone were compared. Results for all four analyses produced automatically were comparable to published data on the manual interrater reliability of these procedures. Clinical decisions based on cutoff scores and productivity data were little affected by the use of automatic rather than human-generated analyses. These findings bode well for future clinical and research use of automatic language analysis software.


Diachronica ◽  
2012 ◽  
Vol 29 (2) ◽  
pp. 162-200 ◽  
Author(s):  
Matthias Gerner

This paper isolates four parameters that guide the historical change of word classes: the quantificational parameter, the directional parameter, the preservative parameter and the temporal parameter. These parameters are involved in the organization of seven case studies in East Asian languages. Based on these case studies I define four diachronic tendencies that apply to East Asian languages and perhaps beyond: (1) the greater the size of the target word class, the lower the number of new acquired meanings; (2) if a word class engages on a path of change, then the greater its size, the more likely it is that the process of change in which it engages will be lexicalization; (3) in a typical process of grammaticalization relatively more meanings are generated than in a typical process of lexicalization; (4) processes of grammaticalization represent temporally short processes more often than processes of lexicalization.


2007 ◽  
Vol 1 (6) ◽  
pp. 709-726 ◽  
Author(s):  
Jan Rijkhoff
Keyword(s):  

2012 ◽  
Vol 24 (1) ◽  
pp. 33-58 ◽  
Author(s):  
Erez Levon

AbstractBeliefs about a language rarely correspond to how it is used. This is especially true for Hebrew, a language that has been subject to continued ideological “preservation” efforts ever since its (re)vernacularization in the early 20th century. Recently, attention has turned to the maintenance of Hebrew gender morphology, which is perceived in both scholarly and popular opinion as threatened by a process of leveling to gender syncretized forms across a range of word classes and inflectional paradigms. In this article, I investigate the extent to which sociolinguistic evidence supports this perception in cases of animate reference. I argue that while the claim of widespread gender neutralization of these forms is descriptively valid, its characterization as a change-in-progress is inaccurate. Rather, I suggest that Hebrew is already fully syncretized for gender in certain relevant morphological contexts and that the perception of an ongoing process of change reflects a prescriptive belief about how Hebrew should be, not how it actually is.


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