Our free linguistics essays cover a range of topics including sounds (phonetics, phonology), words (morphology), sentences (syntax), and meaning (semantics). Some of our essays also cover themes such as how language has evolved over time, how it varies in difference situations, groups and places (sociolinguistics, dialectology), how language is acquired/learned and how it is used in context.
Grygiel (2007) indicates that the operation of the process of metonymy is based on broadly understood contiguity of two entities, states or actions. The author (2007) stresses that the working of the mechanism of metonymy rests on physical contiguity as opposed to metaphor where the transfer takes place because of certain existing or imagined likeness, … Read more
United States ; General. The national language for The United States of America is English, though some also speak Spanish and multiple other languages that vary per region. Although all of these other languages are only spoken in small parts of The United states. In American English they tend to spell words in a “lazy” … Read more
Australian English The official language in Australia is obviously English, but in some aboriginal-towns people still speak original aboriginal-languages instead of English. Australian English is called Strine. Strine doesn’t only have accents but also knows words that are not really used in other English languages. For example: ‘ barbie, means barbecue ‘ chook, means chicken … Read more
When two languages interact it is referred to as a language contact. Two or more languages are used either by one individual or in speech communities. The ways the languages impact each other are transfer and integration. The feature of the item can remain as the idiolect of bilinguals or start to function as a … Read more
Thomas (1995: 21) notes that it is easy to pick holes in earlier approaches to the study of pragmatics, because the ‘pioneers’ of the field were reacting against an approach to linguistics which was strongly biased towards meaning in abstract rather than meaning in use. Lyons (1981: 171) states that pragmatics is ”variously defined as … Read more
