User:John Stephenson/Contributions

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Revision as of 07:16, 24 March 2009 by imported>John Stephenson (→‎Linguistics: nativism)
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John Stephenson

Articles I've created

Linguistics

  • Syllable [r]: Unit of organisation in phonology that divides speech sounds or sign language movements into groups to which phonological rules may apply. [e]
  • Voicing (linguistics) [r]: Either the physical production of vibration by the vocal folds as part of articulation, or the potential phonological distinction this allows, i.e. the distinct difference between units such as [b] and [p] in many languages. [e]
  • The Sound Pattern of English [r]: A landmark work on the rules of English phonology by Noam Chomsky and Morris Halle, which importantly rejected the phoneme as a true phonological unit; subsequently built upon by other analyses that recognised the syllable and other units of prosodic organisation. [e]
  • Language acquisition [r]: The study of how language comes to users of first and second languages. [e]
  • Semantics (linguistics) [r]: The subfield of the study of language which focuses on meaning. [e]
  • Dialect [r]: Regional or social variety of a language distinguished by pronunciation, grammar, or vocabulary, especially a variety of speech differing from the standard literary language or speech pattern of the culture in which it exists. [e]
  • Language planning [r]: In sociolinguistics, the name for any political attempt to change the status of a language in some way or develop new ways of using it, e.g. a government devising laws to promote a language, or scholars producing an official dictionary; the former is status planning (changing the political recognition of a language), the latter corpus planning (changing the way a language is used). [e]
  • Multilingualism [r]: The state of knowing two or more languages, either in individuals or whole speech communities. [e]
  • Lingua franca [r]: Any language used for widespread communication between groups who do not share a native language or where native speakers are typically in the minority; name from 'Lingua Franca', a pidgin once used around the Mediterranean. [e]
  • Comprehension approach [r]: several methodologies of language learning that emphasise understanding of language rather than speaking. [e]
  • British Association for Applied Linguistics [r]: academic society for professional applied linguists, language teachers and other interested parties, based in the United Kingdom. [e]
  • LESLLA [r]: (LESLLA) forum for research into the development of second language acquisition skills by adult immigrants with little or no formal education. [e]
  • Sue Savage-Rumbaugh [r]: (b. 1946) American primatologist most famous for her work with two bonobos, Kanzi and Panbanisha, investigating their apparent use of language via lexigrams and computer-based keyboards. [e] sourced from Wikipedia, but much originally mine
  • Contact language [r]: any language which is created through contact between two or more existing languages; may occur when people who share no native language need to communicate, or when a language of one group becomes used for wider communication. [e]
  • Creole (language) [r]: Native language, such as Haitian Creole, which under most definitions originated as a pidgin (a rudimentary language without native speakers, created by at least two groups of speakers as a contact language. i.e. to allow immediate communication) but became as complex as any other language through being acquired by children as a first language. [e]
  • Historical linguistics [r]: The study of how languages change over time, and linguistic patterns within that change. [e]
  • Comparative linguistics [r]: (also known as comparative philology) A branch of historical linguistics that uses a number of methods of comparing languages to establish their historical relatedness. [e]
  • Writing system [r]: A set of signs used to represent a language, such as an alphabet, or a set of rules used to write a language, such as conventions of spelling and punctuation. [e]
  • Orthography [r]: Art or study of correct spelling and grammar according to established usage. [e]
  • Romansh language [r]: Romance language spoken in the Graubünden canton of eastern Switzerland; one of the official languages of the country, with about 35,000 speakers. [e]
  • Grammar [r]: Please do not use this term in your topic list, because there is no single article for it. Please substitute a more precise term. See Grammar (disambiguation) for a list of available, more precise, topics. Please add a new usage if needed.
  • Sign language [r]: A system of language in which expressions are conveyed using body movements rather than the human voice. [e]
  • Mandarin language [r]: (traditional Chinese 官話, simplified 官话; pinyin Guānhuà) Sino-Tibetan language, the standard form of which constitutes 'Standard Chinese'; world's largest language by speakers, with approximately 900,000,000 users. [e]
  • Chinese characters [r]: (simplified Chinese 汉字; traditional Chinese: 漢字) are symbols used to write varieties of Chinese and - in modified form - other languages; world's oldest writing system in continuous use. [e]
  • Welsh language [r]: A Brythonic Celtic language spoken mainly in Wales and Patagonia, Argentina. [e]
  • Jamaican Creole [r]: Several varieties of a full language spoken in Jamaica that developed from a pidgin and remained in some contact with English, created as a conseqence of enslaved speakers of many African languages requiring a means to communicate; also known as Patois. [e]
  • Hawaiian Creole [r]: Creole language (created through children acquiring a pidgin as their first language and thereby making it complex) popularly known as Hawaiian 'Pidgin', with vocabulary largely from English; spoken in the U.S. state of Hawaii, it replaced an earlier pidgin based on the Hawaiian language. [e]
  • Pidgin Hawaiian [r]: Extinct pidgin language spoken in Hawaii, which drew most of its vocabulary from Hawaiian; spoken mainly by immigrants to Hawaii, and died out in the early twentieth century. [e]
  • Noun class [r]: System which categorises and marks the nouns of a language according to their meaning, form or pronunciation; commonly known as 'grammatical gender', but many languages have several noun classes. [e]
  • Romance languages [r]: Branch of the Indo-European language family, originally spoken in southern, eastern and western Europe and descended from Vulgar Latin, the language of the Ancient Romans; includes modern Spanish, Portuguese, French, Italian and Romanian. [e]
  • Written language [r]: The communication and representation of a language by means of a writing system. [e]
  • Claude Lévi-Strauss [r]: French anthropologist who developed structural anthropology as a method of understanding human society and culture. [e]
  • Nativism (psychology) [r]: Add brief definition or description
  • Linguistics template

English

New material

Politics

New material

Culture

Japan

I have also started articles on Japan's islands, regions and prefectures, e.g. Honshu, Kansai and Mie. There are some maps I've uploaded.

UK

Places

Science

New material

Other

Imported from Wikipedia

Articles started by others

Articles which I intend to make a significant contribution to include Linguistics, Language, Second language acquisition, Monitor Theory, the Critical Period Hypothesis, Applied linguistics, Phonology, Phonetics, vocal cords, Elizabeth II, House of Commons, Japan, Japanese language and Singapore English. I rewrote the German language page, but don't intend to go back to it much. I also restarted the abortion article, and wrote most of the early versions of spoken language. I expanded dinosaurs. As for Japanese popular culture, I started that using bits written by other people and myself elsewhere.