Understanding morphology shapes our knowledge of language. In an earlier post, we discussed morphemes. Here, we discuss the study of morphemes, called Morphology. Linguists study morphology by studying how people learn and use morphemes, and how morphemes interact with each other when they are put together. One common purpose of morphemes is to change a […]
Browsing Tag: Linguistics
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More than words: infants also learn complex rules for combining words and phrases
Did you know that the sentences you say aren’t just a string of words in an order, but clusters of phrases that build on each other, like building with blocks? Scientists study the structure of a language and the way words relate to each other, called syntax. The syntax, or form, of a sentence is […]
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Important EEG Waves
When we measure baby brainwaves, what do we measure and what does it mean? When scientists measure brainwaves, they find a lot of them happening at different times. Scientists call these waves components, but we will continue to call them waves in this post. Some of the waves show up […]
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What are Broca’s Area and Wernicke’s Area?
These two areas of the brain are well-known to be used to understand and produce language. Broca’s area is the part of the brain most commonly linked to language production. One way that people can learn about the function of Broca’s area is by studying people who have damage to this brain region. In fact, […]
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Lemma: the essential form of a word
What do you know when you know a word? You probably know many forms of the same word, with small modifications, or what linguists call inflections— small grammatical changes that don’t really change the meaning of the word. While the technical term for the whole group of possible forms together is a lexeme, the most […]
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Did you know words are built from even smaller meaningful parts?
A morpheme is the smallest unit of a word that can carry meaning. You might think that’s the same as a word, but there are even smaller bits that you know the meaning of, maybe without realizing it. Think about the following words: unlock, untie, unwrap, unwind, unwind, unstick. What does that little piece un- […]
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[f] for Phoneme: the units of speech sounds
Phonemes are the building blocks of words. A phoneme is a speech sound that can distinguish one word from another in a particular language. They are like little categories in your brain! You sort acoustic sounds into phonemes when you say something or hear someone speak. Not all instances of a phoneme sound exactly the […]