Morphology

The Ghost of a Verb: How Words Become Grammar

Ever wonder how the word "will" came to signal the future? This linguistic magic trick is called grammaticalization, a process…

2 weeks ago

The Brain’s Filing Cabinet: What is a Lemma?

Ever had a word on the tip of your tongue? This frustrating moment is a perfect window into the brain's…

2 weeks ago

More Than a Suffix: The World of Clitics

What do 'll in "we'll" and 's in "cat's" have in common? They are clitics—phonologically weak words that can't stand…

2 weeks ago

The Fossil in ‘Sing, Sang, Sung’: Ablaut

Ever wonder why we say "I sing" but "I sang" and "I have sung"? These aren't just random, annoying exceptions…

2 weeks ago

Swahili’s 18 Noun Classes

Forget the simple "he" or "she" of European languages. Swahili categorizes its nouns into at least 18 different classes, a…

2 weeks ago

The Rotuman Language: A Phonetic Puzzle

Deep in the Pacific, the Rotuman language presents a fascinating phonetic puzzle that has captivated linguists for decades. Its words…

2 weeks ago

The ‘About-To-Be’ Tense of Lithuanian

Lithuanian, one of Europe's oldest languages, possesses a fascinating grammatical tool that English lacks: a specific way to talk about…

2 weeks ago

How Hungarian Builds Words: The Agglutinative Engine

Explore the beauty of Hungarian, a language that builds incredibly long words by 'gluing' suffixes together in a process called…

2 weeks ago

The Dual Pronouns of Ancient Sanskrit

In our modern world, we count 'one' and 'many.' But Ancient Sanskrit had a third, forgotten category: the dual, a…

2 weeks ago

The Fluid Verb: Tense and Aspect in Swahili

Swahili verbs are masterpieces of modular design, built by "gluing" prefixes for tense, person, and more onto a single root.…

2 weeks ago

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