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95-560: Zalmodegikos was a Getan king who ruled around 200 BC. This Ancient Greek biographical article is a stub . You can help Misplaced Pages by expanding it . Getae The Getae first appear in historical records as fierce opponents of the Persian invasion in 513 BC, as described by the early Greek historian Herodotus . They faded out of historical records during the Roman empire , when many appear to have become Romans while others north of

190-703: A kingdom consisting of descendants of those whom the Greeks had called Getae , as well as Dacians , or Daci , the name applied to people of the region by the Romans. Augustus aimed at subjugating the entire Balkan peninsula , and used an incursion of the Bastarnae across the Danube as a pretext to devastate the Getae and Thracians. He put Marcus Licinius Crassus in charge of the plan. In 29   BC, Crassus defeated

285-540: A "veritable ethno-cultural unity" between the Getae and the Dacians. According to Glanville Price , the account of the Greek geographer Strabo shows that the Getae and the Dacians were one and the same people. Others who support the identity between Getae and Dacians with ancient sources include freelance writer James Minahan and Catherine B Avery , who claim the people whom the Greek called Getae were called Daci by

380-414: 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

475-594: A certain point, the phrase Geto-Dacian was coined in the Romanian historiography to suggest a unity of Getae and Dacians". Lucian Boia took a sceptical position, arguing the ancient writers distinguished among the two people, treating them as two distinct groups of the Thracian ethnos. Boia contended that it would be naive to assume Strabo knew the Thracian dialects so well, alleging that Strabo had "no competence in

570-560: 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

665-399: A contemporary inscription shows. Other strong princes included Zoltes and Rhemaxos (about 180   BC). Also, several Getic rulers minted their own coins. The ancient authors Strabo and Cassius Dio say that Getae practiced ruler cult , and this is confirmed by archaeological remains. In 72–71 BC Marcus Terentius Varro Lucullus became the first Roman commander to march against

760-427: 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 the structure of a language at a specific point in time) or diachronically (through

855-434: 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

950-416: 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

1045-588: A remarkable uniformity of the Geto-Dacian culture; however, he is one of the few Romanian archaeologists to make a clear distinction between the Getae and Dacians, arguing against the traditional position of the Romanian historiography that considered the two people the same. Nevertheless, he chose to use the term "Geto-Dacians" as a conventional concept for the Thracian tribes inhabiting the future territory of Romania, not necessarily meaning an "absolute ethnic, linguistic or historical unity". Crossland suggested

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1140-419: 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

1235-419: 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

1330-424: 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

1425-462: 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,

1520-430: 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

1615-440: 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

1710-469: 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

1805-447: 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

1900-452: 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

1995-451: 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 a particular language), and pragmatics (how the context of use contributes to meaning). Subdisciplines such as biolinguistics (the study of

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2090-428: 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

2185-516: The Zaths , may have been the Getae and/or Jats. More recent authors, like Tadeusz Sulimirski , Weer Rajendra Rishi , and Chandra Chakraberty, have also linked the Getae and Jats. Less credible, however, are parallel claims by Alexander Cunningham that the Xanthii (or Zanthi ) and Iatioi  – mentioned by Strabo, Ptolemy and Pliny – may have been synonymous with

2280-701: The Danube . Also, Edward Bunbury believed the name of Getae, by which they were originally known to the Greeks on the Euxine , was always retained by the latter in common usage: while that of Dacians, whatever be its origin, was that by which the more western tribes, adjoining the Pannonians , first became known to the Romans. Some scholars consider the Getae and Dacians to be the same people at different stages of their history and discuss their culture as Geto-Dacian . Historian and archaeologist Alexandru Vulpe found

2375-720: The Eastern Roman Empire ( Goths , Gepids , Kutrigurs , Slavs ). For instance, in the third book of the History of the Wars Procopius details: "There were many Gothic nations in earlier times, just as also at the present, but the greatest and most important of all are the Goths, Vandals, Visigoths, and Gepaedes. In ancient times, however, they were named Sauromatae and Melanchlaeni; and there were some too who called these nations Getic." The Getae were considered

2470-623: The Greeks , who were establishing colonies on the western side of Pontus Euxinus, nowadays the Black Sea. The Getae are mentioned for the first time together in Herodotus in his narrative of the Scythian campaign of Darius I in 513   BC, during which the latter conquered the Getae. According to Herodotus, the Getae differed from other Thracian tribes in their religion, centered around

2565-508: 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

2660-432: 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

2755-626: 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

2850-412: 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

2945-504: 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

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3040-455: 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,

3135-410: 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

3230-543: 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

3325-716: The Bastarnae with the help of the Getic prince Rholes . Crassus promised him help for his support against the Getic ruler Dapyx . After Crassus had reached as far the Danube Delta , Rholes was appointed king and returned to Rome. In 16   BC, the Sarmatae invaded the Getic territory and were driven back by Roman troops. The Getae were placed under the control of the Roman vassal king in Thrace, Rhoemetalces I . In 6   AD,

3420-647: The Dacians lived on both sides of the Lower Danube ; the ones south of the river (today's northern Bulgaria ), in Moesia , were called Moesians , while the ones north of the river were called Dacians. He argued that the Dacians are "Getae or Thracians of Dacian race": In ancient times, it is true, Moesians and Getae occupied all the land between Haemus and the Ister; but as time went on some of them changed their names, and since then there have been included under

3515-527: The Dacians, the principal god of the Getae was Zalmoxis whom they sometimes called Gebeleizis . This same people, when it lightens and thunders , aim their arrows at the sky , uttering threats against the god; and they do not believe that there is any god but their own. Pliny the Elder in his Naturalis Historia mentions a tribe called the Tyragetae , apparently a Daco-Thracian tribe who dwelt by

3610-410: The Danube where gradually overwhelmed by other peoples moving from the north and east towards the Roman frontier. The ethnonym Getae was first used by Herodotus . The root was also used for the Tyragetae , Thyssagetae , Massagetae , and others. Strabo stated in his Geographica ( c. 7   BC – 20   AD) that the Dacians lived in the western parts of Dacia , "towards Germania and

3705-575: 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

3800-725: The Getae and Massagetae to the Jats of South Asia. Likewise, the Dacians have been linked to the Dahae of Central Asia (and the Dahae to the Dasas of South Asia). W. W. Hunter claimed in 1886, suggested that the Jats were an Iranian people – most likely Scythian / Saka in origin, Alexander Cunningham (1888) believed that references in classical European sources – like Strabo , Ptolemy and Pliny  – to peoples such as

3895-404: The Getae and released him. According to Diodorus, Dromichaetes entertained Lysimachus at his palace at Helis, where food was served on gold and silver plates. The discovery of the celebrated tomb at Sveshtari (1982) suggests that Helis was located perhaps in its vicinity, where remains of a large antique city are found along with dozens of other Thracian mound tombs. As stated earlier, just like

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3990-654: The Getae and/or Jats. The Xanthii were later established to be a subgroup (tribe or clan) of the Dahae. Subsequent scholars, such as Edwin Pulleyblank , Josef Markwart (also known as Joseph Marquart) and László Torday , suggest that Iatioi may be another name for a people known in classical Chinese sources as the Yuezhi and in South Asian contexts as the Kuṣānas (or Kushans). Linguistics Linguistics

4085-475: The Getae to the Goths. At the close of the 4th century AD, Claudian , court poet to the emperor Honorius and the patrician Stilicho , uses the ethnonym Getae to refer to the Visigoths . During 5th and 6th centuries, several historians and ethnographers ( Marcellinus Comes , Orosius , John Lydus , Isidore of Seville , Procopius of Caesarea ) used the same ethnonym Getae to name populations invading

4180-435: The Getae. This was done to strike at the western Pontic allies of Mithridates VI , but he had limited success. A decade later, a coalition of Scythians , Getae, Bastarnae and Greek colonists defeated C.   Antonius Hybrida at Histria . This victory over the Romans allowed Burebista , the leader of this coalition, to dominate the region for a short period (60–50 BC). In the mid-first century BC Burebista organized

4275-559: The Getae: "Daci quoque suboles Getarum sunt" (The Dacians as well are a scion of the Getae). In his Roman History (c.   200   AD), Cassius Dio added: "I call the people Dacians, the name used by the natives themselves as well as by the Romans , though I am not ignorant that some Greek writers refer to them as Getae , whether that is the right term or not...". He also said

4370-492: The Great defeated the Getae and razed one of their settlements. In 313   BC, the Getae formed an alliance with Callatis , Odessos , and other western Pontic Greek colonies against Lysimachus , who held a fortress at Tirizis (modern Kaliakra ). The Getae flourished especially in the first half of the 3rd century BC. By about 200   BC, the authority of the Getic prince, Zalmodegicus , stretched as far as Histria , as

4465-406: The Romanian historiography and the archaeological interpretation, particularly on the "Geto-Dacian" culture. In his opinion, Alexandru Vulpe saw ancient people as modern nations, leading the latter to interpret the common language as a sign of a common people, despite Strabo making a distinction between the two. From the 7th century BC onwards, the Getae came into economic and cultural contact with

4560-477: The Romans. This same belief is stated by some British historians such as David Sandler Berkowitz and Philip Matyszak . The Bulgarian historian and thracologist Alexander Fol considers that the Getae became known as "Dacians" in Greek and Latin in the writings of Caesar , Strabo and Pliny the Elder , as Roman observers adopted the name of the Dacian tribe to refer to all the unconquered inhabitants north of

4655-474: The Thracian ethnic group should be divided, one of this divisions should be the " Daco-Getae ". The linguist Ivan Duridanov also identified a " Dacian linguistic area " in Dacia , Scythia Minor , Lower Moesia , and Upper Moesia . Romanian scholars generally went further with the identification, historian Constantin C. Giurescu claiming the two were identical. The archaeologist Mircea Babeș spoke of

4750-488: The Thracian tribes in the Balkans surrendered to Darius on his way to Scythia , and only the Getae offered resistance. One episode from the history of the Getae is attested by several ancient writers. When Lysimachus tried to subdue the Getae he was defeated by them. The Getae king, Dromichaetes , took him prisoner but he treated him well and convinced Lysimachus there is more to gain as an ally than as an enemy of

4845-630: The adjacent shores; at one spot the Getae , by the Romans called Daci ". Appian , who began writing his Roman History under Antoninus Pius , Roman Emperor from 138 to 161, noted: "[B]ut going beyond these rivers in places they rule some of the Celts over the Rhine and the Getae over the Danube , whom they call Dacians". Justin , the 3rd century AD Latin historian, wrote in his Epitome of Pompeius Trogus that Dacians are spoken of as descendants of

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4940-671: 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

5035-449: 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) is concerned with understanding the universal and fundamental nature of language and developing

5130-404: 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

5225-559: 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

5320-462: 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

5415-426: 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

5510-430: 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

5605-450: 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

5700-465: The field of Thracian dialects". The latter claim is contested, some studies attesting Strabo's reliability and sources. There is no reason to disregard Strabo's belief that the Daci and the Getae spoke the same language. Boia also stressed that some Romanian authors cited Strabo indiscriminately. A similar position was adopted by Romanian historian and archaeologist G. A. Niculescu , who also criticized

5795-511: The god ( daimon ) Zalmoxis whom some of the Getae called Gebeleizis . Between the 5th and 3rd centuries BC, the Getae were mostly under the rule of the flourishing Odrysian kingdom . During this time, the Getae provided military services and became famous for their cavalry. After the disintegration of the Odrysian kingdom, smaller Getic principalities began to consolidate themselves. Before setting out on his Persian expedition, Alexander

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5890-644: 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

5985-402: 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

6080-433: 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,

6175-414: 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

6270-461: 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

6365-498: 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

6460-415: The interpretation of ancient sources. Some historians such as Ronald Arthur Crossland state that even Ancient Greeks used the two designations "interchangeable or with some confusion". Thus, it is generally considered that the two groups were related to a certain degree; the exact relation is a matter of controversy. Strabo, as well as other ancient sources, led some modern historians to consider that, if

6555-412: 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

6650-429: 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

6745-622: The name of Moesia all the tribes living above Dalmatia , Macedonia , and Thrace , and separated from Pannonia by the Savus , a tributary of the Ister . Two of the many tribes found among them are those formerly called the Triballi , and the Dardani , who still retain their old name. There is a dispute among scholars about the relations between the Getae and Dacians , and this dispute also covers

6840-426: 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

6935-421: 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

7030-478: 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

7125-643: The province of Moesia was founded, incorporating the Getae south of the Danube River . The Getae north of the Danube continued tribal autonomy outside the Roman Empire. According to Herodotus , the Getae were "the noblest as well as the most just of all the Thracian tribes". Herodotus. Histories , 4.93.</ref> When the Persians , led by Darius the Great , campaigned against the Scythians ,

7220-416: 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

7315-424: 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 ,

7410-587: The river Tyras (the Dniester ). Their tribal name appears to be a combination of Tyras and Getae ; see also the names Thyssagetae and Massagetae . The Roman poet Ovid , during his long exile in Tomis , is asserted to have written poetry (now lost) in the Getic language . In his Epistulae ex Ponto , written from the northern coast of the Black Sea, he asserts that two major, distinct languages were spoken by

7505-571: The same people as the Goths by Jordanes in his Getica written at the middle of the 6th century. He also claims that at one point the "Getae" migrated out of Scandza , while identifying their deity Zalmoxis as a Gothic king. Jordanes assumed the earlier testimony of Orosius. The 9th-century work De Universo of Rabanus Maurus states, "The Massagetae are in origin from the tribe of the Scythians, and are called Massagetae, as if heavy, that is, strong Getae. There have long been attempts to link

7600-401: 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

7695-749: 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

7790-404: 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

7885-561: The sources of the Danube", while the Getae lived in the eastern parts, towards the Black Sea , both south and north of the Danube. He also wrote that the Dacians and Getae spoke the same language, after stating the same about Getae and Thracians. Strabo's account of the lands inhabited by the Getae: Pliny the Elder , in his Naturalis Historia (Natural History), c.   77–79   AD: "... though various races have occupied

7980-445: 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

8075-471: 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

8170-531: 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

8265-436: 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

8360-586: 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

8455-616: The sundry tribes of Scythia, which he referred to as Getic, and Sarmatian. Jerome (Letter CVII to Laeta. II) described the Getae as red and yellow-haired, though he may be referring to the Goths, with whom the Getae were sometimes confused in Late Antiquity. The Getae are sometimes confused with the Goths in works of early medieval authors. This confusion is notably expanded on in works of Jordanes , himself of Gothic background, who transferred earlier historical narratives about

8550-482: 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

8645-486: The two designations may refer to two groups of a "linguistically homogeneous people" that had come to historical prominence at two distinct periods of time. He also compared the probable linguistic situation with the relation between modern Norwegian and Danish languages. Paul Lachlan MacKendrick considered the two as "branches" of the same tribe, speaking two dialects of a common language. The Romanian historian of ideas and historiographer Lucian Boia stated: "At

8740-420: 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

8835-563: 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

8930-492: 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

9025-516: 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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