Grammar
Tenses
Present
Present Simple
Present Continuous
Present Perfect
Present Perfect Continuous
Past
Past Continuous
Past Perfect
Past Perfect Continuous
Past Simple
Future
Future Simple
Future Continuous
Future Perfect
Future Perfect Continuous
Passive and Active
Parts Of Speech
Nouns
Countable and uncountable nouns
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Singular and Plural nouns
Proper nouns
Nouns gender
Nouns definition
Concrete nouns
Abstract nouns
Common nouns
Collective nouns
Definition Of Nouns
Verbs
Stative and dynamic verbs
Finite and nonfinite verbs
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Transitive and intransitive verbs
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Modal verbs
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Adverbs
Relative adverbs
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Adverbs of reason
Adverbs of quantity
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Adverbs of affirmation
Adjectives
Quantitative adjective
Proper adjective
Possessive adjective
Numeral adjective
Interrogative adjective
Distributive adjective
Descriptive adjective
Demonstrative adjective
Pronouns
Subject pronoun
Relative pronoun
Reflexive pronoun
Reciprocal pronoun
Possessive pronoun
Personal pronoun
Interrogative pronoun
Indefinite pronoun
Emphatic pronoun
Distributive pronoun
Demonstrative pronoun
Pre Position
Preposition by function
Time preposition
Reason preposition
Possession preposition
Place preposition
Phrases preposition
Origin preposition
Measure preposition
Direction preposition
Contrast preposition
Agent preposition
Preposition by construction
Simple preposition
Phrase preposition
Double preposition
Compound preposition
Conjunctions
Subordinating conjunction
Correlative conjunction
Coordinating conjunction
Conjunctive adverbs
Interjections
Express calling interjection
Grammar Rules
Preference
Requests and offers
wishes
Be used to
Some and any
Could have done
Describing people
Giving advices
Possession
Comparative and superlative
Giving Reason
Making Suggestions
Apologizing
Forming questions
Since and for
Directions
Obligation
Adverbials
invitation
Articles
Imaginary condition
Zero conditional
First conditional
Second conditional
Third conditional
Reported speech
Linguistics
Phonetics
Phonology
Semantics
Pragmatics
Linguistics fields
Syntax
Morphology
Semantics
pragmatics
History
Writing
Grammar
Phonetics and Phonology
Reading Comprehension
Elementary
Intermediate
Advanced
Spoken versus written language
المؤلف: P. John McWhorter
المصدر: The Story of Human Language
الجزء والصفحة: 25-18
2024-01-16
470
Spoken versus written language
A. Vocabulary. Spoken language makes use of a more limited vocabulary than written language. This is partly because writing allows the preservation of words over time. In spoken—that is, normal!— languages, old words die away.
1. The Lokele of the Democratic Republic of the Congo use a talking-drum language that has many words no one recalls the meanings of. There is no dictionary to preserve them the way ruth—the root of ruthless—is preserved in English dictionaries.
2. Spoken English makes use of a small subset of all the words in the language. Linguists Wallace Chafe and Jane Danielewicz have shown that even educated Americans use hedges to compensate for the difficulty of making maximal use of English vocabulary when speaking in real time, such as in this quote:
She was still young enough so I… I just… was able to put her in an… uh—sort of… sling… I mean one of those tummy packs… you know.
Languages only used orally tend to have thousands or maybe tens of thousands of words—not the hundreds of thousands that written languages hoard in dictionaries for eternal reference.
B. Syntax. Spoken language uses shorter, simpler sentences than written language. This is part of a folktale narrated by a speaker of Saramaccan Creole. Because this is spoken language, the sentences are rather short.