Questions tagged [lexicon]
Questions relating to lexicons: the catalogue of a language's words.
76 questions
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Are there languages that strictly distinguish "to give" in the sense of "to transfer possession" from "give" in the sense of "to transfer ownership"?
I can think of many languages having a general "to give" verb that then also pick out these more specific senses—English "to hand", "to lend", "to supply", and ...
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Which languages, other than French, show a habit of trying not to repeat the same word too soon in writing?
I have learnt French, so I am somewhat familiar with that tendency.
But still, reading this headline I randomly came across just now, that tendency struck me even more.
Botswana menace d'offrir 20 000 ...
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What types of Arabic word were never adopted in Persian?
The Persian lexicon has a very large number of Arabic borrowings, including a small portion of very frequently used ones, and a larger portion of Arabic vocables seemingly spanning across all semantic ...
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Similarity between Norwegian and Danish compared to other languages?
I had one question about a very interesting map showing the lexical distances between different languages of Europe (https://alternativetransport.wordpress.com/2015/05/05/34/). I am studying the ...
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How to create a generic model for terms that works cross-linguistically?
I am thinking how to create a "dictionary term" data model, and notice I don't have a real clear definition of a "term" which works across languages. Focusing on a "term" ...
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Is compounding a universal word-formation strategy?
From what I've read, compounding is one of a number of word-formation processes. By word-formation, I mean "the process of creating new lexemes in a language."
One common process is the ...
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Why are "eat" and "drink" different words in languages?
In theory, the words "eat" and "drink" are fundamentally the same action to me: putting something (...edible?) in your mouth. Oftentimes when speaking English, I confuse the words &...
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How do we shape our language's lexicon?
Society always drops, creates and re-uses words. But how does that happen? When do we get to decide what word to use, dump, or create, and in what method does that occur? Does someone invent a new ...
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How can an endonym for a specific group mean "people" or "humans" in this group at the same time?
I understand that some people who speak Inuktitut self-designate as "Inuit" which allegedly means "people", or "human beings" or something similar. I've heard the same ...
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Are there languages with separate words for 'mouth opening' and 'mouth cavity'?
I am looking for languages which have separate words for the visible opening of the mouth (the external part, including or not including the lips), and the cavity (the internal part). Put another way, ...
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Are adpositions lexical or grammatical morphemes?
In English, prepositions have something in common with most grammatical morphemes: they're a closed class. However, some phrasal prepositions in English contain lexical morphemes: "on top of," "on ...
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Subcategorisation Frame with DPs
I want to construct a subcatagorisation frame for some words, for example that take a DP complement. Take the preposition "between" as example. I arrive at this point:
Form: "...
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Need data on # of syllables per word in languages with CV & CVC syllables only
In languages with limited syllable structures (CV and CVC), how can I get data on the respective percentages of words in the known vocabulary that have 1 syllable, 2 syllables, 3 syllables, and 4 ...
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Are synonyms belonging to different dialects "absolute synonyms"?
As in the words tin - can, taxi - cab, autumn - fall, lift - elevator, etc. Would these be considered as absolute synonyms?
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Is there a word in which the concept and its complement is expressed?
Is there a word in which the concept and its complement is expressed, for example if I would like to express "the dichotomy of truth and falsehood" in one word. Obviously, the construction need not ...
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What to reference for grammatical features being more reliable than lexical features for diachronic research?
I often hear people mention in passing that grammatical features are more reliable than lexical features in diachronic research, specifically when detecting pseudepigraphs, because it is relatively ...
user17305
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Edit Doron: Reflexivity in Syntax or the Lexicon
Perhaps I am missing something here, but does Edit Doron adopt:
1) a lexicalist view of morphology (as it seems from "A Unified Approach to Reflexivization in Semitic and Romance" by Edit Doron and ...
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Animal Species discrimination in languages
Making my own language, primitive, so I'm trying to figure out how much did primitive languages discriminate different species in the same families of animals.
For example;
Dog vs Wolf, Lion vs ...
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Principles and Parameters: projectionist?
The question/problem I have is related to the way recent generative approaches focus on the Lexicon and Syntax.
I would like to know if Principles and Parameters can be considered a projectionist ...
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Which linguists from the 1940s–1970s believed that language comprised two distinct parts, “lexis” and “grammar”?
I’m looking for information about the linguists and/or researchers from before the 1970s who at the time believed that vocabulary and grammar should be taught as two completely separate entities, that ...
Patter English
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Lexical similarity among languages used in Southeast Asia
Among many languages used in Southeast Asia (especially I want to talk about Malay, Tagalog, Vietnamese, and Thai), is there any study about which pair of languages is close to each other in ...
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Are there any publicly available spell checking corpora?
I need some corpora that contain sentences with misspelled word(s) in order to evaluate the performance of my own spell checking approach. So, the corpora should define the right word alongside the ...
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Is it possible to determine the number of words in a language?
Recently I got into a discussion with my friend concerning sizes of lexicons of different languages. He stated something about Japanese having considerably more words than English. (The exact ...
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In what languages do eleven start with /b/ and fourteen start with /e/? [closed]
How do I find a foreign word for a number that starts with a given sound?
I'm writing an article about what English might look like if its numerals were in hexadecimal (base sixteen). For this, I ...
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Lexical density
I'm trying to work out the lexical density of a spoken text. My problem is with contractions that include a primary auxiliary verb as a main lexical verb.
E.g. She's intelligent.
From what I ...
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