# Dominant group/Linguistics

“Linguistics is the scientific study of human language. Linguistics can be broadly broken into three categories or subfields of study: language form, language meaning, and language in context.”

## Linguistics

Def. "[t]he scientific study of language" is called linguistics.

## Dominant group

* Accident hypothesis: dominant group is an accident of whatever processes are operating.
* Artifact hypothesis: dominant group may be an artifact of human endeavor or may have preceded humanity.
* Association hypothesis: dominant group is associated in some way with the original research.
* Bad group hypothesis: dominant group is the group that engages in discrimination, abuse, punishment, and additional criminal activity against other groups. It often has an unfair advantage and uses it to express monopolistic practices.
* Control group hypothesis: there is a control group that can be used to study dominant group.
* Entity hypothesis: dominant group is an entity within each field where a primary author of original research uses the term.
* Evolution hypothesis: dominant group is a product of evolutionary processes, such groups are the evolutionary process, produce evolutionary processes, or are independent of evolutionary processes.
* Identifier hypothesis: dominant group is an identifier used by primary source authors of original research to identify an observation in the process of analysis.
* Importance hypothesis: dominant group signifies original research results that usually need to be explained by theory and interpretation of experiments.
* Indicator hypothesis: dominant group may be an indicator of something as yet not understood by the primary author of original research.
* Influence hypothesis: dominant group is included in a primary source article containing original research to indicate influence or an influential phenomenon.
* Interest hypothesis: dominant group is a theoretical entity used by scholarly authors of primary sources for phenomena of interest.
* Metadefinition hypothesis: all uses of dominant group by all primary source authors of original research are included in the metadefinition for dominant group.
* Null hypothesis: there is no significant or special meaning of dominant group in any sentence or figure caption in any refereed journal article.
* Object hypothesis: dominant group is an object within each field where a primary author of original research uses the term.
* Obvious hypothesis: the only meaning of dominant group is the one found in Mosby's Medical Dictionary.
* Original research hypothesis: dominant group is included in a primary source article by the author to indicate that the article contains original research.
* Primordial hypothesis: dominant group is a primordial concept inherent to humans such that every language or other form of communication no matter how old or whether extinct, on the verge of extinction, or not, has at least a synonym for dominant group.
* Purpose hypothesis: dominant group is written into articles by authors for a purpose.
* Regional hypothesis: dominant group, when it occurs, is only a manifestation of the limitations within a region. Variation of those limitations may result in the loss of a dominant group with the eventual appearance of a new one or none at all.
* Source hypothesis: dominant group is a source within each field where a primary author of original research uses the term.
* Term hypothesis: dominant group is a significant term that may require a 'rigorous definition' or application and verification of an empirical definition.
Examples from primary sources are to be used to prove or disprove each hypothesis. These can be collected per subject or in general.

## Linguistic structures

"Linguistic structures are pairings of meaning and form. Any particular pairing of meaning and form is a Saussurean sign. For instance, the meaning "cat" is represented worldwide with a wide variety of different sound patterns (in oral languages), movements of the hands and face (in sign languages), and written symbols (in written languages)."
"Linguists focusing on structure attempt to understand the rules regarding language use that native speakers know (not always consciously). All linguistic structures can be broken down into component parts that are combined according to (sub)conscious rules, over multiple levels of analysis. For instance, consider the structure of the word "tenth" on two different levels of analysis. On the level of internal word structure (known as morphology), the word "tenth" is made up of one linguistic form indicating a number and another form indicating ordinality. The rule governing the combination of these forms ensures that the ordinality marker "th" follows the number "ten." On the level of sound structure (known as phonology), structural analysis shows that the "n" sound in "tenth" is made differently from the "n" sound in "ten" spoken alone. Although most speakers of English are consciously aware of the rules governing internal structure of the word pieces of "tenth", they are less often aware of the rule governing its sound structure. Linguists focused on structure find and analyze rules such as these, which govern how native speakers use language."
"Linguistics has many sub-fields concerned with particular aspects of linguistic structure. These sub-fields range from those focused primarily on form to those focused primarily on meaning. They also run the gamut of level of analysis of language, from individual sounds, to words, to phrases, up to discourse."
"Sub-fields that focus on a structure-focused study of language:"
* Phonetics, the study of the physical properties of speech (or signed) production and perception.
* Phonology, the study of sounds (or signs) as discrete, abstract elements in the speaker's mind that distinguish meaning (phonemes).
* Morphology, the study of morphemes, or the internal structures of words and how they can be modified
* Syntax, the study of how words combine to form grammatical sentences
* Semantics, the study of the meaning of words (lexical semantics) and fixed word combinations (phraseology), and how these combine to form the meanings of sentences
* Pragmatics, the study of how utterances are used in communicative acts, and the role played by context and non-linguistic knowledge in the transmission of meaning
* Discourse analysis, the analysis of language use in texts (spoken, written, or signed)
* Stylistics, the study of linguistic factors (rhetoric, diction, stress) that place a discourse in context.
"Many linguists would agree that these divisions overlap considerably, and the independent significance of each of these areas is not universally acknowledged. Regardless of any particular linguist's position, each area has core concepts that foster significant scholarly inquiry and research."

## Interlingual communication

“When intelligibility is non-reciprocal, the language or dialect spoken by the culturally dominant group, or the language or dialect with the greater functional value, seems to be the preferred medium for interlingual communication.”

## Hypotheses

* Dominant group is a subject of linguistics.