Morphology

The Logic of Back-Formation: From ‘Editor’ to ‘Edit’

Which came first: the editor or the edit? The answer reveals a fascinating linguistic process called back-formation, where we reverse-engineer…

6 hours ago

The Lexicon of the Lab: Inside Scientific Latin

Ever wonder why scientists use a "dead" language to name living things? Scientific Latin is more than just a tradition;…

6 hours ago

Grammatical Viruses: The Spread of ‘-gate’

The suffix '-gate' has become a linguistic shorthand for scandal, but where did it come from? We trace its journey…

6 hours ago

The Sound of Size: Consonant Gradation in Finnish

Ever notice how Finnish words seem to change their consonants for no reason? This isn't random linguistic magic; it's a…

6 hours ago

The One-Word Language Myth: Yaghan

The viral myth claims *mamihlapinatapai* is an untranslatable Yaghan word for a romantic, unspoken look. The truth, however, is far…

7 days ago

The Birth of Grammatical Gender in PIE

Why is a table feminine in French? The answer is thousands of years old and has little to do with…

7 days ago

The Ghost in the AI: Rediscovering Linguistics

We think of AI models as magical black boxes, but what if they're simply rediscovering the rules of language that…

7 days ago

Finland’s “Possessive Suffixes”

In English, we say 'my house', but Finnish takes a more intimate approach. Instead of a separate word for 'my',…

7 days ago

The Georgian Consonant Clusters

Georgian is famous for jaw-dropping consonant clusters like `gvprtskvni` ("you peel us"), which seem to defy the rules of pronunciation.…

7 days ago

The Three Genders of Dyirbal

Ever heard of a language that groups women, fire, and dangerous things into a single grammatical category? Dive into the…

7 days ago

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