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
Verbal nouns
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
To be verbs
Transitive and intransitive verbs
Auxiliary verbs
Modal verbs
Regular and irregular verbs
Action verbs
Adverbs
Relative adverbs
Interrogative adverbs
Adverbs of time
Adverbs of place
Adverbs of reason
Adverbs of quantity
Adverbs of manner
Adverbs of frequency
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
Hints of the first language
المؤلف:
P. John McWhorter
المصدر:
The Story of Human Language
الجزء والصفحة:
24-30
2024-01-23
362
Hints of the first language
A. Because creoles are the result of language starting anew, they shed light on what the world’s first language was probably like.
B. Because gender and conjugation take time to appear, we can assume that the first language was one like creoles, or Chinese, in lacking these.
C. In the same way, because languages take time to wend into marking shades of possession, exactly how one learned of something, shades of subjecthood, and so on, we can assume that the first language did not have alienable possessive marking, evidential markers, ergativity, and similar traits.
D. Languages distinguish nouns, verbs, adjectives, and adverbs with prefixes and suffixes: happy, happiness, happily. Because affixes start as separate words and arise through grammaticalization over time, we can assume that in the first language, one word could often stand as a noun, verb, adjective, or adverb, as in languages today with few affixes, such as Chinese. Sranan creole is a language like this, where the word hebi can have many meanings:
Sranan Creole (Suriname):
A saka hebi! A hebi e-hebi mi!
the bag heavy the weight is-weigh me
“The bag is heavy! Its weight is weighing me down!”
E. Thus, while we most likely cannot know what the first language’s words were, creoles give us the closest approximation of what its grammar would have been like.
أم البنين .. صانعة الوفاء وراعية الفضيلة
هل كان الشيخ الوائلي يعلم؟!
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