terms and definitions
- Conlanging
- Stands for "constructed language" - the process of creating your own language, either from an existing source (a posteriori) or from scratch (a priori).
- Creole
- A blending of more than one language that therefore becomes a language in its own right.
- Generalization
- When a word expands its definition over time.
- Linguistics
- The scientific study of language.
- Melioration
- A word gaining a more positive definition over time.
- Morpheme
- The smallest unit of a word that has meaning.
- Morphology
- The study of word formation.
- Pejoration
- A word gaining a more negative definition over time.
- Pidgin
- A blending of a primary language and elements of other languages.
- Phonetics
- The study of sounds.
- Phoneme
- A unit of sound.
- Phonology
- The study of sound systems.
- Specialization
- When the broad definition of a word shrinks over time.
- Syntax
- The study of sentence structure.
- Semantics
- The study of meaning.
- X-Bar Theory
- A method of drawing sentence structure trees.