Linguistic Typology

My Hand, My Self: Inalienable Grammar

In English, you can talk about "a hand" as a detached object. But in many languages, the rules of grammar…

3 weeks ago

A World Without ‘P’: Phonemic Gaps

Did you know that some languages get by perfectly without sounds we consider fundamental, like the 'p' in 'puppy'? This…

3 weeks ago

A Thousand Grains of Rice: The World of Classifiers

Why can you say "three dogs" in English, but speakers of Chinese, Japanese, and Mayan languages must use a special…

3 weeks ago

How to Count Without Numbers

What if you couldn't say "one", "two", or "three"? For anumeric cultures in the Amazon and beyond, this is a…

3 weeks ago

Can a Language Have No Adjectives?

How would you describe a "big red ball" in a language with no words for "big" or "red"? Many languages…

3 weeks ago

Parsing the Unparsable: The Dhaasanac Language

Journey to the Omo Valley to meet the Dhaasanac people of Ethiopia, whose language defies easy categorization. Instead of marking…

3 weeks ago

Know Your Type: A Language Learning Hack

Is your target language a "Lego" language or a "sculpture" language? This practical framework introduces language typology (isolating, agglutinative, fusional)…

3 weeks ago

The Rhythm of Speech: Stress-Timed vs. Syllable-Timed Languages

Ever wonder why English sounds rhythmically different from Spanish or Japanese? The answer lies in a fascinating linguistic concept: the…

3 weeks ago

Go Buy Bring Come: The Logic of Serial Verbs

In languages from Thailand to Ghana, you can say "go buy bring the book" and be perfectly grammatical. This fascinating…

3 weeks ago

The Language of Sensation: Exploring Ideophones

We all know onomatopoeia, but many languages have something far richer: ideophones. These "adverbs of the senses" don't just mimic…

3 weeks ago

This website uses cookies.