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69-543: It was written by Sir Henry Yule and Arthur Coke Burnell and first published in 1886. Burnell died before the work was finished, and most of it was completed by Yule, who acknowledged Burnell's detailed contributions. A subsequent edition was edited by William Crooke in 1903, with extra quotations and an index added. The first and second editions are collector's items; the second edition is widely available in facsimile. The dictionary holds over 2,000 entries, generally with citations from literary sources, some of which date to

138-414: A branch of linguistics. Before the 20th century, linguists analysed language on a diachronic plane, which was historical in focus. This meant that they would compare linguistic features and try to analyse language from the point of view of how it had changed between then and later. However, with the rise of Saussurean linguistics in the 20th century, the focus shifted to a more synchronic approach, where

207-560: A comparison of different time periods in the past and present) or in a synchronic manner (by observing developments between different variations that exist within the current linguistic stage of a language). At first, historical linguistics was the cornerstone of comparative linguistics , which involves a study of the relationship between different languages. At that time, scholars of historical linguistics were only concerned with creating different categories of language families , and reconstructing prehistoric proto-languages by using both

276-434: A linguistic medium of communication in itself. Palaeography is therefore the discipline that studies the evolution of written scripts (as signs and symbols) in language. The formal study of language also led to the growth of fields like psycholinguistics , which explores the representation and function of language in the mind; neurolinguistics , which studies language processing in the brain; biolinguistics , which studies

345-416: A particular feature or usage is "good" or "bad". This is analogous to practice in other sciences: a zoologist studies the animal kingdom without making subjective judgments on whether a particular species is "better" or "worse" than another. Prescription , on the other hand, is an attempt to promote particular linguistic usages over others, often favoring a particular dialect or " acrolect ". This may have

414-494: A particular language), and pragmatics (how the context of use contributes to meaning). Subdisciplines such as biolinguistics (the study of the biological variables and evolution of language) and psycholinguistics (the study of psychological factors in human language) bridge many of these divisions. Linguistics encompasses many branches and subfields that span both theoretical and practical applications. Theoretical linguistics (including traditional descriptive linguistics)

483-419: A second-language speaker who is attempting to acquire the language. Most contemporary linguists work under the assumption that spoken data and signed data are more fundamental than written data . This is because Nonetheless, linguists agree that the study of written language can be worthwhile and valuable. For research that relies on corpus linguistics and computational linguistics , written language

552-429: A similar list of his own. At Yule's suggestion, they combined their projects, working together until Burnell's death in 1882. Yule and Burnell compiled the text by using a variety of sources, including accounts of Anglo-Indian language and usages by other authors of the time, as well as government documents such as glossaries of revenue administrative and legislative terms, and contemporary dictionaries. In Indian English,

621-419: A view towards uncovering the biological underpinnings of language. In Generative Grammar , these underpinning are understood as including innate domain-specific grammatical knowledge. Thus, one of the central concerns of the approach is to discover what aspects of linguistic knowledge are innate and which are not. Cognitive linguistics , in contrast, rejects the notion of innate grammar, and studies how

690-424: A word. Linguistic structures are pairings of meaning and form. Any particular pairing of meaning and form is a Saussurean linguistic sign . For instance, the meaning "cat" is represented worldwide with a wide variety of different sound patterns (in oral languages), movements of the hands and face (in sign languages ), and written symbols (in written languages). Linguistic patterns have proven their importance for

759-462: Is a researcher within the field, or to someone who uses the tools of the discipline to describe and analyse specific languages. An early formal study of language was in India with Pāṇini , the 6th century BC grammarian who formulated 3,959 rules of Sanskrit morphology . Pāṇini's systematic classification of the sounds of Sanskrit into consonants and vowels, and word classes, such as nouns and verbs,

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828-430: Is a system of rules which governs the production and use of utterances in a given language. These rules apply to sound as well as meaning, and include componential subsets of rules, such as those pertaining to phonology (the organization of phonetic sound systems), morphology (the formation and composition of words), and syntax (the formation and composition of phrases and sentences). Modern frameworks that deal with

897-441: Is concerned with understanding the universal and fundamental nature of language and developing a general theoretical framework for describing it. Applied linguistics seeks to utilize the scientific findings of the study of language for practical purposes, such as developing methods of improving language education and literacy. Linguistic features may be studied through a variety of perspectives: synchronically (by describing

966-440: Is conventional or "coded" in a given language, pragmatics studies how the transmission of meaning depends not only on the structural and linguistic knowledge (grammar, lexicon, etc.) of the speaker and listener, but also on the context of the utterance, any pre-existing knowledge about those involved, the inferred intent of the speaker, and other factors. Phonetics and phonology are branches of linguistics concerned with sounds (or

1035-554: Is generally either juvenile (as in Humpty Dumpty or hokey-pokey ) or pejorative (as in namby-pamby or mumbo-jumbo ); further, Hobson and Jobson were stock characters in Victorian times, used to indicate a pair of yokels, clowns, or idiots. The title thus produced negative associations – being at best self-deprecatory on the part of the authors, suggesting themselves a pair of idiots – and reviewers reacted negatively to

1104-469: Is generally hard to find for events long ago, due to the occurrence of chance word resemblances and variations between language groups. A limit of around 10,000 years is often assumed for the functional purpose of conducting research. It is also hard to date various proto-languages. Even though several methods are available, these languages can be dated only approximately. In modern historical linguistics, we examine how languages change over time, focusing on

1173-447: Is often much more convenient for processing large amounts of linguistic data. Large corpora of spoken language are difficult to create and hard to find, and are typically transcribed and written. In addition, linguists have turned to text-based discourse occurring in various formats of computer-mediated communication as a viable site for linguistic inquiry. The study of writing systems themselves, graphemics, is, in any case, considered

1242-452: Is selected based on specific contexts but also, at a micro level, shapes language as text (spoken or written) down to the phonological and lexico-grammatical levels. Grammar and discourse are linked as parts of a system. A particular discourse becomes a language variety when it is used in this way for a particular purpose, and is referred to as a register . There may be certain lexical additions (new words) that are brought into play because of

1311-501: Is sometimes used in linguistics to refer to the process of phonological change by which loanwords are adapted to the phonology of the new language, as in the archetypal example of "Hobson-Jobson" itself. Webster's Third International Dictionary gives as examples of the law of Hobson-Jobson: Spanish cucaracha becoming English cockroach , and English riding coat becoming French redingote . Sir Henry Yule Too Many Requests If you report this error to

1380-428: Is the study of how language changes over history, particularly with regard to a specific language or a group of languages. Western trends in historical linguistics date back to roughly the late 18th century, when the discipline grew out of philology , the study of ancient texts and oral traditions. Historical linguistics emerged as one of the first few sub-disciplines in the field, and was most widely practised during

1449-508: The Sanskrit language in his Aṣṭādhyāyī . Today, modern-day theories on grammar employ many of the principles that were laid down then. Before the 20th century, the term philology , first attested in 1716, was commonly used to refer to the study of language, which was then predominantly historical in focus. Since Ferdinand de Saussure 's insistence on the importance of synchronic analysis , however, this focus has shifted and

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1518-432: The agent or patient . Functional linguistics , or functional grammar, is a branch of structural linguistics. In the humanistic reference, the terms structuralism and functionalism are related to their meaning in other human sciences . The difference between formal and functional structuralism lies in the way that the two approaches explain why languages have the properties they have. Functional explanation entails

1587-626: The comparative method and the method of internal reconstruction . Internal reconstruction is the method by which an element that contains a certain meaning is re-used in different contexts or environments where there is a variation in either sound or analogy. The reason for this had been to describe well-known Indo-European languages , many of which had detailed documentation and long written histories. Scholars of historical linguistics also studied Uralic languages , another European language family for which very little written material existed back then. After that, there also followed significant work on

1656-412: The knowledge engineering field especially with the ever-increasing amount of available data. Linguists focusing on structure attempt to understand the rules regarding language use that native speakers know (not always consciously). All linguistic structures can be broken down into component parts that are combined according to (sub)conscious rules, over multiple levels of analysis. For instance, consider

1725-504: The mind of the individual or the speech community. Construction grammar is a framework which applies the meme concept to the study of syntax. The generative versus evolutionary approach are sometimes called formalism and functionalism , respectively. This reference is however different from the use of the terms in human sciences . Modern linguistics is primarily descriptive . Linguists describe and explain features of language without making subjective judgments on whether

1794-455: The "medical discourse", and so on. The lexicon is a catalogue of words and terms that are stored in a speaker's mind. The lexicon consists of words and bound morphemes , which are parts of words that can not stand alone, like affixes . In some analyses, compound words and certain classes of idiomatic expressions and other collocations are also considered to be part of the lexicon. Dictionaries represent attempts at listing, in alphabetical order,

1863-410: The "n" sound in "tenth" is made differently from the "n" sound in "ten" spoken alone. Although most speakers of English are consciously aware of the rules governing internal structure of the word pieces of "tenth", they are less often aware of the rule governing its sound structure. Linguists focused on structure find and analyze rules such as these, which govern how native speakers use language. Grammar

1932-543: The 18th century, the first use of the comparative method by William Jones sparked the rise of comparative linguistics . Bloomfield attributes "the first great scientific linguistic work of the world" to Jacob Grimm , who wrote Deutsche Grammatik . It was soon followed by other authors writing similar comparative studies on other language groups of Europe. The study of language was broadened from Indo-European to language in general by Wilhelm von Humboldt , of whom Bloomfield asserts: This study received its foundation at

2001-575: The East, but the grammarians of the classical languages did not use the same methods or reach the same conclusions as their contemporaries in the Indic world. Early interest in language in the West was a part of philosophy, not of grammatical description. The first insights into semantic theory were made by Plato in his Cratylus dialogue , where he argues that words denote concepts that are eternal and exist in

2070-673: The Wikimedia System Administrators, please include the details below. Request from 172.68.168.236 via cp1112 cp1112, Varnish XID 946330904 Upstream caches: cp1112 int Error: 429, Too Many Requests at Thu, 28 Nov 2024 08:35:40 GMT Linguistics Linguistics is the scientific study of language . 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

2139-671: The aim of establishing a linguistic standard , which can aid communication over large geographical areas. It may also, however, be an attempt by speakers of one language or dialect to exert influence over speakers of other languages or dialects (see Linguistic imperialism ). An extreme version of prescriptivism can be found among censors , who attempt to eradicate words and structures that they consider to be destructive to society. Prescription, however, may be practised appropriately in language instruction , like in ELT , where certain fundamental grammatical rules and lexical items need to be introduced to

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2208-404: The biology and evolution of language; and language acquisition , which investigates how children and adults acquire the knowledge of one or more languages. The fundamental principle of humanistic linguistics, especially rational and logical grammar , is that language is an invention created by people. A semiotic tradition of linguistic research considers language a sign system which arises from

2277-559: The corpora of other languages, such as the Austronesian languages and the Native American language families . In historical work, the uniformitarian principle is generally the underlying working hypothesis, occasionally also clearly expressed. The principle was expressed early by William Dwight Whitney , who considered it imperative, a "must", of historical linguistics to "look to find the same principle operative also in

2346-462: The development of modern standard varieties of languages, and over the development of a language from its standardized form to its varieties. For instance, some scholars also tried to establish super-families , linking, for example, Indo-European, Uralic, and other language families to Nostratic . While these attempts are still not widely accepted as credible methods, they provide necessary information to establish relatedness in language change. This

2415-426: The equivalent aspects of sign languages). Phonetics is largely concerned with the physical aspects of sounds such as their articulation , acoustics, production, and perception. Phonology is concerned with the linguistic abstractions and categorizations of sounds, and it tells us what sounds are in a language, how they do and can combine into words, and explains why certain phonetic features are important to identifying

2484-430: The expertise of the community of people within a certain domain of specialization. Thus, registers and discourses distinguish themselves not only through specialized vocabulary but also, in some cases, through distinct stylistic choices. People in the medical fraternity, for example, may use some medical terminology in their communication that is specialized to the field of medicine. This is often referred to as being part of

2553-450: The field of philology , of which some branches are more qualitative and holistic in approach. Today, philology and linguistics are variably described as related fields, subdisciplines, or separate fields of language study but, by and large, linguistics can be seen as an umbrella term. Linguistics is also related to the philosophy of language , stylistics , rhetoric , semiotics , lexicography , and translation . Historical linguistics

2622-848: The first European contact with the Indian subcontinent , frequently in other non-English European languages. Most entries also have etymological notes. The project began through correspondence between Sir Henry Yule, who was then living in Palermo , and Arthur Coke Burnell, who was a member of the Madras Civil Service, and was holding posts in several places in South India, and particularly, in Thanjavur . In 1872, Burnell wrote to Yule that he had been collecting instances of Anglo-Indian usages of English, as Yule had also been working on

2691-644: The hands of the Prussian statesman and scholar Wilhelm von Humboldt (1767–1835), especially in the first volume of his work on Kavi, the literary language of Java, entitled Über die Verschiedenheit des menschlichen Sprachbaues und ihren Einfluß auf die geistige Entwickelung des Menschengeschlechts ( On the Variety of the Structure of Human Language and its Influence upon the Mental Development of

2760-433: The history of a language. The discipline that deals specifically with the sound changes occurring within morphemes is morphophonology . Semantics and pragmatics are branches of linguistics concerned with meaning. These subfields have traditionally been divided according to aspects of meaning: "semantics" refers to grammatical and lexical meanings, while "pragmatics" is concerned with meaning in context. Within linguistics,

2829-414: The human mind creates linguistic constructions from event schemas , and the impact of cognitive constraints and biases on human language. In cognitive linguistics, language is approached via the senses . A closely related approach is evolutionary linguistics which includes the study of linguistic units as cultural replicators . It is possible to study how language replicates and adapts to

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2898-461: The idea that language is a tool for communication, or that communication is the primary function of language. Linguistic forms are consequently explained by an appeal to their functional value, or usefulness. Other structuralist approaches take the perspective that form follows from the inner mechanisms of the bilateral and multilayered language system. Approaches such as cognitive linguistics and generative grammar study linguistic cognition with

2967-498: The interaction of meaning and form. The organization of linguistic levels is considered computational. Linguistics is essentially seen as relating to social and cultural studies because different languages are shaped in social interaction by the speech community . Frameworks representing the humanistic view of language include structural linguistics , among others. Structural analysis means dissecting each linguistic level: phonetic, morphological, syntactic, and discourse, to

3036-412: The late 19th century. Despite a shift in focus in the 20th century towards formalism and generative grammar , which studies the universal properties of language, historical research today still remains a significant field of linguistic inquiry. Subfields of the discipline include language change and grammaticalization . Historical linguistics studies language change either diachronically (through

3105-429: The lexicon of a given language; usually, however, bound morphemes are not included. Lexicography , closely linked with the domain of semantics, is the science of mapping the words into an encyclopedia or a dictionary. The creation and addition of new words (into the lexicon) is called coining or neologization , and the new words are called neologisms . It is often believed that a speaker's capacity for language lies in

3174-426: The nature of crosslinguistic variation, and the relationship between form and meaning. There are numerous approaches to syntax that differ in their central assumptions and goals. Morphology is the study of words , including the principles by which they are formed, and how they relate to one another within a language. Most approaches to morphology investigate the structure of words in terms of morphemes , which are

3243-421: The other hand, focuses on an analysis that is based on the paradigms or concepts that are embedded in a given text. In this case, words of the same type or class may be replaced in the text with each other to achieve the same conceptual understanding. The earliest activities in the description of language have been attributed to the 6th-century-BC Indian grammarian Pāṇini who wrote a formal description of

3312-478: The principles of grammar include structural and functional linguistics , and generative linguistics . Sub-fields that focus on a grammatical study of language include the following: Discourse is language as social practice (Baynham, 1995) and is a multilayered concept. As a social practice, discourse embodies different ideologies through written and spoken texts. Discourse analysis can examine or expose these ideologies. Discourse not only influences genre, which

3381-416: The quantity of words stored in the lexicon. However, this is often considered a myth by linguists. The capacity for the use of language is considered by many linguists to lie primarily in the domain of grammar, and to be linked with competence , rather than with the growth of vocabulary. Even a very small lexicon is theoretically capable of producing an infinite number of sentences. Stylistics also involves

3450-424: The relationships between dialects within a specific period. This includes studying morphological, syntactical, and phonetic shifts. Connections between dialects in the past and present are also explored. Syntax is the study of how words and morphemes combine to form larger units such as phrases and sentences . Central concerns of syntax include word order , grammatical relations , constituency , agreement ,

3519-466: The scholar Vijay Mishra objected that neither Yule nor Burnell had sound training in the languages required. He further objected that "it may be said that built into these hobson-jobsons is a contemptuous attitude, an ironic belittling of the values contained in the original vernacular words." That is, the British colonialists represented in the volume did not know or care to know the original meanings of

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3588-401: The scientific study of language, though linguistic science is sometimes used. Linguistics is a multi-disciplinary field of research that combines tools from natural sciences, social sciences, formal sciences , and the humanities. Many linguists, such as David Crystal, conceptualize the field as being primarily scientific. The term linguist applies to someone who studies language or

3657-749: The smallest units in a language with some independent meaning . Morphemes include roots that can exist as words by themselves, but also categories such as affixes that can only appear as part of a larger word. For example, in English the root catch and the suffix -ing are both morphemes; catch may appear as its own word, or it may be combined with -ing to form the new word catching . Morphology also analyzes how words behave as parts of speech , and how they may be inflected to express grammatical categories including number , tense , and aspect . Concepts such as productivity are concerned with how speakers create words in specific contexts, which evolves over

3726-404: The smallest units. These are collected into inventories (e.g. phoneme, morpheme, lexical classes, phrase types) to study their interconnectedness within a hierarchy of structures and layers. Functional analysis adds to structural analysis the assignment of semantic and other functional roles that each unit may have. For example, a noun phrase may function as the subject or object of the sentence; or

3795-488: The structure of a language at a specific point in time) or diachronically (through the historical development of a language over a period of time), in monolinguals or in multilinguals , among children or among adults, in terms of how it is being learnt or how it was acquired, as abstract objects or as cognitive structures, through written texts or through oral elicitation, and finally through mechanical data collection or through practical fieldwork. Linguistics emerged from

3864-445: The structure of the word "tenth" on two different levels of analysis. On the level of internal word structure (known as morphology), the word "tenth" is made up of one linguistic form indicating a number and another form indicating ordinality. The rule governing the combination of these forms ensures that the ordinality marker "th" follows the number "ten." On the level of sound structure (known as phonology), structural analysis shows that

3933-471: The study of language in canonical works of literature, popular fiction, news, advertisements, and other forms of communication in popular culture as well. It is usually seen as a variation in communication that changes from speaker to speaker and community to community. In short, Stylistics is the interpretation of text. In the 1960s, Jacques Derrida , for instance, further distinguished between speech and writing, by proposing that written language be studied as

4002-531: The study of written, signed, or spoken discourse through varying speech communities, genres, and editorial or narrative formats in the mass media. It involves the study and interpretation of texts for aspects of their linguistic and tonal style. Stylistic analysis entails the analysis of description of particular dialects and registers used by speech communities. Stylistic features include rhetoric , diction, stress, satire, irony , dialogue, and other forms of phonetic variations. Stylistic analysis can also include

4071-436: The study was geared towards analysis and comparison between different language variations, which existed at the same given point of time. At another level, the syntagmatic plane of linguistic analysis entails the comparison between the way words are sequenced, within the syntax of a sentence. For example, the article "the" is followed by a noun, because of the syntagmatic relation between the words. The paradigmatic plane, on

4140-586: The subfield of formal semantics studies the denotations of sentences and how they are composed from the meanings of their constituent expressions. Formal semantics draws heavily on philosophy of language and uses formal tools from logic and computer science . On the other hand, cognitive semantics explains linguistic meaning via aspects of general cognition, drawing on ideas from cognitive science such as prototype theory . Pragmatics focuses on phenomena such as speech acts , implicature , and talk in interaction . Unlike semantics, which examines meaning that

4209-611: The term Hobson-Jobson referred to any festival or entertainment, but especially ceremonies of the Mourning of Muharram . In origin, the term is a corruption by British soldiers of "Yā Ḥasan ! Yā Ḥosain !" which is repeatedly chanted by Shia Muslims throughout the procession of the Muharram; this was then converted to Hosseen Gosseen, Hossy Gossy, Hossein Jossen and, ultimately, Hobson-Jobson. Yule and Burnell wrote that they considered

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4278-482: The term philology is now generally used for the "study of a language's grammar, history, and literary tradition", especially in the United States (where philology has never been very popularly considered as the "science of language"). Although the term linguist in the sense of "a student of language" dates from 1641, the term linguistics is first attested in 1847. It is now the usual term in English for

4347-494: The title a "typical and delightful example" of the type of highly domesticated words in the dictionary that also implied their own dual authorship. The scholar Traci Nagle, however, also finds a note of condescension in the choice. Rhyming reduplication (as in "Hobson-Jobson" or "puli kili") is highly productive in South Asian languages, where it is known popularly as an echo word . In English, however, rhyming reduplication

4416-508: The title, generally praising the book but finding the title inappropriate. Indeed, anticipating this reaction, the title was kept secret – even from the publisher – until shortly before publication. The volume received praise on its initial publication from, among others, Rudyard Kipling . Paul Pelliot , the French Sinologist, welcomed the 1903 version, though including a list of corrections and questions. More recently, however,

4485-420: The very outset of that [language] history." The above approach of comparativism in linguistics is now, however, only a small part of the much broader discipline called historical linguistics. The comparative study of specific Indo-European languages is considered a highly specialized field today, while comparative research is carried out over the subsequent internal developments in a language: in particular, over

4554-563: The word in its original meaning as " téchnē grammatikḗ " ( Τέχνη Γραμματική ), the "art of writing", which is also the title of one of the most important works of the Alexandrine school by Dionysius Thrax . Throughout the Middle Ages , the study of language was subsumed under the topic of philology, the study of ancient languages and texts, practised by such educators as Roger Ascham , Wolfgang Ratke , and John Amos Comenius . In

4623-529: The words. He gives as an example the word " babu ” (babú) which in the original is “an educated or distinguished person" and a term of respect. But as a hobson-jobson “baboo" is degrading as it "attempts to reduce educated Indians (especially Bengalis) to mimics and harlequins." James A. Murray made extensive use of Hobson-Jobson in writing entries on South Asian words for the Oxford English Dictionary . The term "law of Hobson-Jobson"

4692-596: The world of ideas. This work is the first to use the word etymology to describe the history of a word's meaning. Around 280 BC, one of Alexander the Great 's successors founded a university (see Musaeum ) in Alexandria , where a school of philologists studied the ancient texts in Greek, and taught Greek to speakers of other languages. While this school was the first to use the word "grammar" in its modern sense, Plato had used

4761-516: Was the first known instance of its kind. In the Middle East, Sibawayh , a Persian, made a detailed description of Arabic in AD 760 in his monumental work, Al-kitab fii an-naħw ( الكتاب في النحو , The Book on Grammar ), the first known author to distinguish between sounds and phonemes (sounds as units of a linguistic system) . Western interest in the study of languages began somewhat later than in

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