Linguistic Skills

It is the creation of a new word. It is sometimes contrasted with semantic change, which is a change in a single word's meaning. The boundary between word formation and semantic change can be difficult to define: a new use of an old word can be seen as a new word derived from an old one and identical to it in form. Coinage: The invention of totally new terms is known as coinage. The most typical sources are invented trade names for one company's products which become general terms (without initial capital letters) for any version of that product. For example: nylon, zipper, teflon etc. But after their first coinage, they tend to become everyday words in the language. Borrowing: One of the most common sources of new words in English is the process simply labeled borrowing, that is, the taking over of words from other languages. For example: Alcohol  (Arabic) Boss (Dutch) Croissant (French) Lilac (Persian) Piano (Italian) Pretzel (German) Robot (Czech) Tycoon (Japa...

Edward Sapir (1954) maintains that language is purely human and non-instinctive of communicating ideas,emotions and desires by means of voluntarily produced symbols. Human language is a rare blessing from above. Unlike the language of animals, it is highly complex. It is system of systems. It always remains on the move. Its variations are of multifarious (various/numerous) steps. Some of these variations are mentioned as follows: Pidgin Creole Dialect Idiolect Register Diglossia Jargon/argot Slang Euphemism Taboos Lingua Franca Isogloss Pidgin: It is sort of lingua Franca. It is a variety of a language that developed for some practical purpose, such as trading among people who had a lot of contacts, but who did not know each other's language. As a contact language, pidgin would have no native speakers. Some linguists hold the view that pidginisation probably requires a set-up that entails at least three languages, one of which dominant over the others. There are b...

Origin of language is an amazing riddle. Linguists could not trace out a tangible evidence to verify various hunches ( feel that something is true, without any evidence) about it. Long discussions about the origin of language proved fruitless. In consequence, "Paris linguistic society 'founded in 1866 passed the bylaws that banned this discussion. The linguists nicknamed them in different ways. Following is the detail: 1. The Divine Source According to one view God created Adam and taught him certain names. Whatever, Adam called every living creature that was the name thereof. According to Hindu concept, language sprang from the head of the goddess "Sarasvati" the wife of Brahma, the creator of the universe . Its basic hypothesis accrued (to increase over a period of time) from the ideas that if infants were allowed to grow up without hearing any language, then they would spontaneously begin using the original God given language. This theory proved a hunch, since...