Acoustic Phonetics
in Linguistics
Published online March 2013.
Article. Subjects: linguistics; anthropological linguistics; languages by region; psycholinguistics; sociolinguistics. 7677 words.
Acoustic phonetics is the study of the acoustic characteristics of speech, including an analysis and description of speech in terms of its physical properties, such as frequency,...
Acquisition of Language
in Linguistics
Published online October 2011.
Article. Subjects: linguistics; anthropological linguistics; languages by region; psycholinguistics; sociolinguistics. 11541 words.
First language acquisition—the study of how children acquire their first language(s)––is the branch of psycholinguistics that deals with the process of acquisition. This field is...
Afroasiatic Languages
in Linguistics
Published online October 2011.
Article. Subjects: linguistics; anthropological linguistics; languages by region; psycholinguistics; sociolinguistics. 12099 words.
Afroasiatic languages are found across North Africa and throughout much of East Africa and the Middle East. Afroasiatic is generally considered to be composed of the language families...
Algonquian Linguistics
in Linguistics
Published online October 2011.
Article. Subjects: linguistics; anthropological linguistics; languages by region; psycholinguistics; sociolinguistics. 6514 words.
The traditional and post-European contact range of the Algonquian languages covers an enormous area: roughly centered along most of the Canadian-US border, extending down the Atlantic...
Anaphora
in Linguistics
Published online October 2011.
Article. Subjects: linguistics; anthropological linguistics; languages by region; psycholinguistics; sociolinguistics. 8498 words.
Anaphora can be generally defined as “subsequent reference to an entity already introduced in discourse” (Safir 2004a; see Representing Anaphoric Dependencies). The study of anaphora...
Aphasia
in Linguistics
Published online October 2011.
Article. Subjects: linguistics; anthropological linguistics; languages by region; psycholinguistics; sociolinguistics. 9911 words.
Aphasia is a language disorder acquired subsequent to brain damage that affects production and understanding of spoken and written language in varying degrees and patterns associated...
Articulatory Phonetics
in Linguistics
Published online October 2011.
Article. Subjects: linguistics; anthropological linguistics; languages by region; psycholinguistics; sociolinguistics. 5627 words.
Articulatory phonetics is concerned with the physical apparatus used to produce speech sounds and the physical and cognitive factors that determine what are possible speech sounds and...
Athabaskan Languages
in Linguistics
Published online October 2011.
Article. Subjects: linguistics; anthropological linguistics; languages by region; psycholinguistics; sociolinguistics. 11196 words.
The Athabaskan family of languages is or was spoken in primarily three regions: (1) in the interior of Alaska and much of western Canada, (2) in northwestern California and southwestern...
Australian Languages
in Linguistics
Published online October 2011.
Article. Subjects: linguistics; anthropological linguistics; languages by region; psycholinguistics; sociolinguistics. 8696 words.
At the time of the first European settlement of Australia in 1788, there were approximately 250 distinct languages spoken, representing about twenty-eight phylic families. In the early...
Austronesian Linguistics
in Linguistics
Published online October 2011.
Article. Subjects: linguistics; anthropological linguistics; languages by region; psycholinguistics; sociolinguistics. 11439 words.
Austronesian linguistics is the linguistic study of languages belonging to the Austronesian language family. The more than 1,200 Austronesian languages occupy a vast area. Traditionally,...