Morphology

The Lost Gender: What Happened to Latin’s Neuter?

Classical Latin had three grammatical genders, but its modern descendants like Spanish and French only have two. This article investigates…

4 months 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…

4 months ago

The Root of the Word: Arabic’s 3-Letter System

Discover the secret behind Arabic's vast vocabulary: the triliteral root system. This elegant 'word skeleton' method allows a single 3-letter…

4 months ago

The Linguistics of ‘Google It’: When Brands Become Verbs

Ever wonder how "Google" went from a company name to a common verb in our dictionary? This article explores the…

4 months ago

The Dictionary of Obscure Sorrows

Have you ever felt a longing for a place you've never been, or the bittersweetness of a fleeting moment you…

4 months ago

The Grammar of Nicknames

Ever wonder why William becomes Bill, but not Willam? Or how a Russian Aleksandr affectionately becomes Sashenka? Nicknames follow a…

4 months ago

The One-Word Sentence: A Deep Dive into Polysynthetic Languages

In languages like Inuktitut or Mohawk, a single, complex word can convey a thought that requires a full sentence in…

4 months ago

I Heard, I Saw, I Inferred: The Linguistic World of Evidentials

In English, we use optional phrases like "I heard" or "I saw" to show how we know something. But in…

4 months ago

The World’s Lego Languages: How Agglutination Builds Meaning Brick by Brick

This article explores the world of agglutinative languages like Turkish, Finnish, and Swahili, where long, complex words are built by…

4 months ago

The “Wug” Test: How a Fake Bird Revealed the Secrets of Child Language Acquisition

In 1958, a fictional bird called a "wug" helped solve one of the biggest mysteries of the human mind: how…

4 months ago

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